News Item: : Feast of St. Joseph the Worker
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Monday 01 May 2017 - 21:19:15

We've already mentioned that Dom Bernard Marechaux was a French Benedictine abbot and spiritual writer, who lived from 1849-1927. Here is another reflection of his that we have found to be both encouraging and helpful. It seems a perfect antidote to the celebration of Antonio Gramsci that was described and critiqued in our previous post.

Model of Workers

Out of what beneficent goodness did Providence give St. Joseph as a model to workers! St. Joseph was a craftsman. Jesus Himself was, too, and under the eyes of His adopted father, so good was He at His craft that He was usually called the son of the carpenter, the son of the worker (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3).

What a lesson of humility for human pride! The Son of God came down to earth to be an example to man and at the same time to pour His grace upon him, which grace was contained in His examples. The human actions of Jesus are not (merely) simple gestures that we are to imitate - they are, in addition, resevoirs of inexhaustible, superabundant graces for humanity, and from which one can draw limitlessly.

It was necessary that the actions of the Son of God be imitable by all men; that is why it pleased Him to choose for Himself and for His earthly family a life most humble, that of an artisan. In adopting this life for Himself and His own, He sanctified it for all those who lead such a life and provided living springs of grace which are available to the humblest and littlest of all.

Now Jesus, in His wisdom and gentle Providence, decided to entrust very specially into the hands of St. Joseph, His adopted father, under whose eyes He was apprenticed as a worker, all the graces that He acquired in those thirty years with him. This he did in order to be able to pour them out on the immense multitude of human beings for whom the necessity of earning daily bread consists in leaning over a worker's bench or an artisan's table.

St. Joseph the worker is the model and patron of workers; he it is who dispenses the graces of Jesus the Worker. To these graces St. Joseph adds the precious contribution of his own merits.

When a worker is faithful to God, St. Joseph scatters choice blessings on him and his family. It is not rare for God to draw from these blessings saintly preachers, rescuers of souls, just as He drew Jesus, the Saviour of the world, from the workshop of St. Joseph.

O! would that contemporary society, disillusioned with sophisms and fallacious promises, recognize that nowhere is the worker's humble life so much honoured as it is in the Church! The Church could not underestimate it without doing a disservice to its origin, because it emerged from the house of Nazareth where Joseph, Mary and Jesus lived by the work of their hands.

O, St. Joseph, raise up apostles from those working in the world and lead them back to God under the noble patronage of your example.

Let us recognize here a commendable design of Providence. The work of St. Joseph the Worker was a humble life, and because of this, it was doomed to be forgotten.

Here is precisely how, from this life of humility, God could fashion a patronage that extends itself to billions of human beings and, one may even say, to all humanity that is subject to the law of work.

Far above the half-faded images of founders of empires, law-givers and conquerors, appears the gentle and inspired face of St. Joseph the Worker, brightened by the divine radiance of Jesus. That is how God glorifies the humble!

Dom Bernard Marechaux

We pray that God will give all of us grace on this day, through the intercession of St. Joseph the Worker, to accept our daily duties in a humble spirit of penance, and to complete our work patiently for the greater glory of God.

St. Joseph the Worker - Pray for us!

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
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