St. Joseph The Worker

St. Joseph the Worker

On  May 1, the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Joseph the Worker. It is a feast day that is relatively recent to the Church’s liturgical calendar, as it was added specifically as a response to the Communism’s May Day Celebration (International Worker’s Day).

It was very important to the Church to institute its own celebration, due to the distortion Communism had for workers. Communism viewed work as a God-less, joy-less activity. The value of a man … the value of a person, is measured by what society can get out of him. Workers had a contribution to society. But that also means that society is taking everything out of worker. The value of a worker is only the value to what he can contribute to the communism’s society, often to the point of exhaustion.

The Church stated that view of the worker is taking the dignity of work and emptying it of its real value. The dignity of man and the dignity of work are in separately related.

Though most of the May Day celebrations are no longer celebrated, the Church still celebrates this feast day as a reminder of the dignity of man and dignity of work.

The homily goes further and states that God gives us the law of work. How? In scripture, it defines how God created the world. He did so by working six days. Then what happen? God rested. Rest and work are related. Rest is necessary after working. Hear how work and rest correlate within the homily.

The world did not pay attention to Joseph. He was just a worker … just a carpenter. The world ignored Joseph. But Jesus did not ignore him.

Hear more about St. Joseph the Worker and why this feast day is important to us all.

St. Joseph The Worker