St. Joseph the Worker’s Feast Celebrates the Sacred Dignity of Labor

Today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, a celebration not just of Jesus’s holy foster-father but also of all godly laborers.

Thousands of years before Communism claimed to help laborers, before social justice activists demanded “living wages,” the Catholic Church was founded by a poor carpenter from an obscure village and his friends, who were largely poor, uneducated fishermen and ordinary workers. Even St. Paul, often the darling of more elitist Christians, was a tent maker who wrote that only those who worked should eat (2 Thess. 3:10). But one of the humble laborers who has too often been overlooked in the great saga of salvation history is the foster-father of Jesus and the spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph…

The dignity of the laborer and the honor due to his work is a fundamental biblical doctrine. On this feast of St. Joseph the Worker, it is a wonderful time to honor all those who work and to reassess our lives to ask if we are working as hard and as well as the example of Joseph and Jesus reminds us we must.