In a religious education class, a catechist asked his students to write a short essay on the following topic: ‘Which relic of which saint would you like to have to make your wish come true, and why?’ The catechist laughed while reading one of the essays. One aspiring writer had written, ‘I would like to have a few drops of Saint Joseph’s sweat in a bottle. The reason? Because his sweat would symbolize honest, humble manual labor, he worked hard. In the sweat of his brow, he was able to feed the Son of God, his mother, and himself.’
Today, we honor Saint Joseph the Worker, the foster father of Jesus. On 1 May 1955, Pope Pius XII established the liturgical feast of 1 May in his honour, coinciding with Labour Day. He said: ‘You have a shepherd, defender and father in Saint Joseph the Carpenter, whom God chose through His providence to be the father of Jesus and the head of the Holy Family.’ He is quiet, but has excellent hearing, and his intercession with the Heart of the Saviour is very powerful.
Many of us are familiar with the story of Saint Joseph: from his lengthy genealogy and betrothal to the Virgin Mary, to the angel’s announcement in a dream, the journey to Bethlehem, the Nativity, the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, the flight into Egypt, the return to Nazareth and Jesus’s finding in the Temple. Yet we know very little about him. Only two of the four evangelists mention him, and he is not referenced again in the rest of the New Testament. He is never described or heard from again, and essentially disappears from the narrative after Jesus’ childhood, despite people still referring to the adult Jesus as ‘the son of Joseph’.
Well, not everyone can be a shining star. Joseph’s family includes the Son of God and his wife, the Mother of God. However, it is perhaps Joseph’s hiddenness that is key to understanding him. Like John the Baptist and his parents, and like Simeon and Anna in the temple, he is, in many ways, an Old Testament figure at the crossroads of the Old and New Covenants. He is a devout Jew who embodies the hopes and aspirations of Israel. Unlike the others, however, Joseph stands offstage and disappears completely. For them, it was enough to live.
God chose Joseph because he was a skilled carpenter. God wanted his incarnate Son to be known as the Son of the Carpenter of Nazareth. Indeed, Jesus himself is the ‘carpenter of the world’ par excellence! He chose to be known as a carpenter because this vocation expresses his mission more vividly than the vocations of a fisherman or a farmer. A fisherman waits for fish to approach the boat, and a farmer waits for plants to grow and bear fruit. But a carpenter does not wait for trees and wood to come to him. He goes to the trees and wood and transforms them into beautiful furniture with his hands and tools. Similarly, Jesus does not wait for people to come to him; he goes where they are. The Gospels summarize his daily activities, in which he does not use many comparisons from the carpentry environment…
However, neither the fisherman nor the farmer can change the fish or the plant. They cannot do anything to alter them. However, the carpenter can transform rough wood into a beautiful work of art. His goal is to create, not destroy. If something breaks, he repairs and restores it to its former glory. Similarly, Jesus transforms everything. He enables the lame to walk, the blind to see, and heals the leper. He even calls the dead to life. He can transform a sinner into a saint.
In short, Jesus’ preparation for his mission began in the humble home of Saint Joseph. Summarize as Pharaoh told the people to go to Joseph, so the Church tells us, ‘Ite ad Ioseph — Go to Joseph!’ This is because Joseph is very close to Jesus, next to the Most Holy Mother.
Through the intercession of the Queen of May and Saint Joseph the Worker, may we be granted the grace to find our way to the Heart of the Lord in times of need.
