SAINT JOSEPH THE WORKER

May 01, 2017

St. Joseph the Worker

He was born in Bethlehem in about the year 70 B.C. He was betrothed to Virgin Mary, when the arch-angel Gabriel appeared to Virgin Mary and told her about the God’s plan of conception of Jesus to Virgin Mary through Holy Spirit without any human father. St. Joseph was a carpenter by profession. When he came to know that Virgin Mary was pregnant, he wanted to secretly send her away. But God’s angel appeared to him in a dream and told him to accept Virgin Mary because she was pregnant due to the grace of Holy Spirit. Jesus was born at Bethlehem, when Virgin Mary and Joseph were there for enumeration in the Roman census. As per the Gospel of Mathew, Joseph was the descendent from King David. So Herod thought that Jesus, the son of Joseph may claim the throne and usurp his kingdom later. In order to safeguard his kingdom he took the savage action of killing all the male children under age 2 years at that time. To safeguard Jesus from the killers, an angel appeared to Joseph in a second time in a dream to warn Joseph to flee to Egypt to save Jesus from the killer king Herod. Again the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream for a third time to tell Joseph to return to Nazareth as the killers have died. He was the protector of Jesus when he was young. He was not present in the marriage at Cana and also at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. God nominated Joseph to take care of his son to observe all laws of Moses for the child like circumcision etc. As per Jewish law if a woman became pregnant without being married, she would be stoned to death. To avoid such thing to happen to Virgin Mary, Joseph’s care of Jesus was necessary. He died on July 20, 18 A.D. As per records devotion to St. Joseph started from the year 800 A.D. onwards. He was declared as the protector of Catholic Church in 1870 by pope Pius-IX. But the feast of St. Joseph the worker was announced by pope Pius-XII in the year 1955.

He is the patron of unborn children, Fathers, Workers and Immigrants. People pray through Joseph for a peaceful death.

St Joseph the Worker

The feast of Saint Joseph the Worker is not a mere Catholic copying of the Communist First of May – any more than Christmas is a mere copy of the pagan feast of Saturnalia. The dates are taken over, for obvious reasons; but the content is radically different.

The Christian view of work is the opposite of the materialist view. A worker such as St Joseph is not a mere lump of labour – “1.00 human work units.” He is a person. He is created in God’s own image, and just as creation is an activity of God, so creation is an activity of the worker. The work we do echoes the glorious work that God has done. It may not be wasted; or abused; or improperly paid; or directed to wrong or pointless ends. To do any of these things is not oppression, it is sacrilege. The glory of the present economic system is when it gives so many, of whatever class, the chance to build and create something worthwhile, whether from their own resources, or in collaboration with others, or by attracting investment from others. But its shame is when that does not happen: when people are coerced, by greed or by poverty, into being “lumps of labour.” Whether the labour is arduous or not makes no difference; whether it is richly paid or not makes no difference.

Because she must combat the anti-humanist Communist heresy the Church is sometimes thought to be on the side of capital. Reading the successive Papal encyclicals on labour and society, from Rerum Novarum (1891) onwards, will soon dispel that illusion. The enemies of the Church have no reason to read them; all too often we feel too comfortable in our present economic state and refrain from reading them also.