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

Today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. 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.

America was founded with a philosophy very similar to the biblical ideal of valuing work and not accepting a permanent leisure class. Unfortunately, as America gets further from its roots, it is common now to hear even so-called conservatives. denigrating the very laborers among whom Jesus Christ and St. Joseph lived and died, and of whom Joseph and Jesus were members. Manual labor, working for one’s living, is not just a necessity—it is a great and splendid vocation