St. Joseph the Worker: The Feast and Person
St. Joseph’s Workshop, stained-glass window, 20th century. Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Chestnut Hill, PA. (photo: courtesy Fr. Larry Toschi, OSJ)
The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker is a relatively recent addition to the liturgical calendar, being instituted by Pope Pius XII in 1955. May 1st was purposely chosen for the feast’s date, to Christianize International Workers Day, popularly known as May Day, which atheistic Communism exploited to promote class struggle to advance the cause of labor.
Veneration of St. Joseph as the patron of workers and guilds initially emerged in the Middle Ages. With the Industrial Revolution, it became a staple of papal teaching. Gravely concerned about the negative impact of unfettered capitalism and revolutionary socialism on laborers and their families, Pope Leo XIII urged workers to look to St. Joseph as their model and patron, so that they might learn from him. Subsequent pontiffs built on Leo XIII’s appreciation of the saint.
Another perspective on St. Joseph the Worker is offered by the Church Fathers: Joseph the earthly artisan is a reflection of God the heavenly Artisan. Jesus thus has an Artisan in heaven as His Father and an artisan on earth, who, as St. Francis de Sales expresses it, “has the place of God the Father for the Son.” This theme even made its way into the liturgical texts originally composed for the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker: “God, who is Father and Worker making all things, make us to imitate Joseph, our father and a worker.”
St. Joseph’s Workshop (detail), stained-glass window, 1891, designed by Wilhelm Lamprecht and manufactured by John Morgan & Sons, New York. Chapel of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Chestnut Hill, PA. (photo: courtesy Fr. Larry Toschi, OSJ)
Joseph, the earthly artisan who cooperated in God the heavenly Artisan’s plan for human salvation, also offers a segue to St. Francis de Sales’s original idea that God’s creative act is an ever-present reality, and human activity is to resemble and cooperate with God’s creative action and presence in the world. Two centuries later, Francis’ insight was retrieved and further developed by our Oblate founders—Blessed Louis Brisson, OSFS, and Venerable Mother Mary de Sales Chappuis—who were contemporaries of Pope Leo XIII and, like him, also sought to minister to workers in the wake of industrialization. In Brisson’s words:
“When we work, when we set our hands to these material things that God has created, we return praise and honor to God. […] Work makes us sharers in the divine action, and, consequently, in the holiness and grace that emanates from God the Father. […] By work, we cooperate with God and with the Word. Now cooperation in the action of God is sanctifying. […] By steeping ourselves in this doctrine, our work of each day, whatever it may be—manual or intellectual—will take on a character so elevated, so complete in its union with God (“The Sacredness of Work,” Conference no. 7, Retreat of 1888).”
These insights from the Church Fathers, St. Francis de Sales, and our Oblate founders underscore a key point: work is not an end in itself, but draws its meaning and value from being a participation and cooperation in God’s ongoing creative and salvific activity in the world. Closing the circle, Pope St. John Paul II sees St. Joseph as modeling this principle.
Rebalancing the 20th-century Church’s view of St. Joseph the Worker, John Paul II emphasizes that Joseph’s work was in the service of his divinely-ordained vocation to serve as the earthly father of the Son of God:
St. Joseph’s Workshop, stained-glass window, 20th century. Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Chestnut Hill, PA. (photo: courtesy Fr. Larry Toschi, OSJ)
[All] Saint Joseph’s privileges flow from the fact that he was chosen to act as father to Christ. […] Jesus Himself, as a man, experienced the fatherhood of God through the father-son relationship with Saint Joseph. This filial encounter with Joseph then fed into Our Lord’s revelation of the paternal name of God. What a profound mystery! (Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way [2004], 139).
As we celebrate Father’s Day this weekend, let us honor St. Joseph the Worker, and pray that, through his unfailing heavenly intercession, we may be ever more faithful to our sacred vocation to cooperate and collaborate in God’s ongoing work of creation and sanctification in our world, as indeed the carpenter of Nazareth did in his role in salvation history as the earthly father of Jesus.
Fr. Joseph F. Chorpenning, OSFS
Chair of the International Commission for Salesian Studies (ICSS).
Fr. Chorpenning is Chair of the International Commission for Salesian Studies (ICSS). His new book, Saint Joseph and the Carmelite Reform of Saint Teresa of Ávila: Father, Teacher of Prayer, Intercessor in Every Need, was recently published by The Catholic University of America Press. It is available to purchase from Catholic University of America Press, as well as from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
