Homily for Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker

Homily for the Memorial of
St. Joseph the Worker

May 2, 2019

Collect
Gen 1: 26—2: 3
DBCR School Mass, Takoma Park, Md.

Since holding a corporate job is an essential component of a student’s life at Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School and Corporate Work Study Program—the full name of our institution in Takoma Park, Md.—as it is of all the more than 30 schools in the Cristo Rey Network, we celebrate the memorial of St. Joseph the Worker with a little solemnity, including an all-school Mass.  This year it was observed on May 2, a day late, because of another event on the school calendar for May 1.

Today we’re celebrating St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, as an example and patron for us, particularly as a worker.

St. Joseph the Carpenter (Georges de La Tour)

What makes him an example for us?  Not just that he was a worker, a craftsman, a carpenter—probably a good carpenter.  The 1st thing is that he carried out what our opening prayer calls “the law of work for the human race.”  That may sound a little bit like drudgery or even servitude—work is a law!  But our reading from Genesis spoke of the 1st man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden before they sinned and were punished.  God shows them the beautiful world he’s created for them—the animals, the fish, the birds, the plants, and everything else—and tells them to “subdue” this creation.  That means some form of work—not as a punishment, not as a burden, not as servitude, but as a share in all God’s creative work.  They’re put in charge as his agents to keep things in good shape.  Everything around them on which they will continue God’s own work is his gift to them.  They are to be co-creators with God thru what they do.

That’s what St. Joseph did; he worked with God’s materials—wood and tools and maybe other materials.  Undoubtedly part of his work was also to repair the tools of the people of Nazareth, like plow handles, ax handles, and parts of weaving looms, the tools with which other people would be able to do their work.

Work has its own dignity, a dignity that belongs to it, that lives within it.  God worked, as we heard in Genesis, and he asks us to work along with him.  St. Joseph models this just by being a good carpenter.  He’s an example and patron for us, not because we’re carpenters; none of you do carpentry as your job, right?  Most of us have something resembling an office job.  But we’re people who use God’s gifts in some creative, productive way—even in office work, school work, music, and teaching.  If we don’t do much work with our hands as a carpenter does, we work with machines and paper and electronic gadgets, and above all with our minds—all things that come, ultimately, from God for us to use to “subdue” what’s around us and so make our lives and our world better.

The 2d thing St. Joseph did was to pass on his skill.  He taught the carpenter’s craft to Jesus, which is the way everyone lived and worked in the 1st century anywhere in the world.  Boys learned a skill from their fathers:  how to farm or fish or care for sheep, how to make pottery or benches or ironware, and how to be fathers.  Girls learned household skills from their mothers:  how to weave and sew, cook and bake, nurse a sick child, and how to be mothers.  All children learned social and family skills from their parents.  So Jesus learned from St. Joseph and Mary.

You, my young friends, learn similar things, and so much more, from your parents, teachers, coaches, and work supervisors.  In that, you’re like Jesus at St. Joseph’s side.  But you older students are like St. Joseph when you guide your younger schoolmates or younger siblings, helping them learn important life skills, as eventually most of you will also do for your own children.

In our prayer this morning, we didn’t just observe that St. Joseph is an example and patron for us.  We actually prayed that “God, Creator of all things,” will help us “complete the works” he’s “set us to do”—whatever our work is now and will be in the future, whatever his plan for each of us may be, by which we’ll continue, with God, to create the world, to make the world better and happier:  works that may include learning and teaching, parenting, craftsmanship, engineering, health care, social work, entertainment, a vocation in the Church, any career—all noble work, as St. Joseph shows us.