THE JUST MAN LIVES BY FAITH

SAINT JOSEPH THE WORKER  

Acts 5:27-33; Ps 34:2,9,17-20; Mt 13:54-58

Faith is the Work pleasing to God

As we celebrate Saint Joseph the Worker as the patron of workers, we turn our minds to the value and dignity of human work and endeavour. We recall that human work predates the fall of Adam and Eve, for when God fashioned man in the Garden of Eden, he made him the steward of his creation, with a command to cultivate and tend his creatures. By that means, God invited man to participate in his work of creation, which did not finish with the creation of man and woman. The cultivation of the soil and the stewardship of all creation were noble tasks God entrusted to man out of love. The care of God’s creation was also an invitation to participate in the life of God, for creation bears the imprint of Eternal Wisdom. Thus, it teaches the knowledge of God the Creator. Hence, paying attention to creation would guide man to the knowledge of God and his holy will. Faith in God was natural to man, made in the image of God before the fall, and a natural admission of man to God’s life and presence with and within his creatures. Man and woman were naturally pleasing to God as his creatures with a vocation to adoption through listening and doing God’s will. Therefore, work was a divinely instituted means for man to attain union and communion with God.

The fall of Adam and Eve caused their spiritual death as God forewarned them before the fall that eating the forbidden fruit would cause them to die and know evil. Sin, which is disobedience to God’s will, caused the spiritual death of man and added toil to their work as a reflection of the absence of spiritual life in man and his physical life and work. Work ceased to be a means to communion with God but only a way of survival or sustenance. Toil is the expression of death in our physical work and life, which lacked the eternal outlook that was present. Because man was out of touch with God, who is life, he faced the darkness of death and hopelessness in despair experienced in our works as toil. The incarnation of the Eternal Word chased away the darkness of death and brought spiritual light again to enlighten man’s physical and spiritual horizon with new hope of eternal life. The hope rekindled by the risen Lord is the motivation of the disciples, who refused to stop proclaiming their faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the return of God’s life to man. Obedience to God is the meaning of work that we lost at the fall, which the apostles recovered through their association with the risen Lord. “‘We gave you formal warning’ he said ‘not to preach in this name, and what have you done? You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and seem determined to fix the guilt of this man’s death on us.’ In reply, Peter and the apostles said, ‘Obedience to God comes before obedience to men.’”

Saint Joseph’s greatness rests on his obedience to the will of God. Listening and obeying the will of God and the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ will make us very unpopular in the world. But that is where the dignity of man’s labour or work lies. When we do our works in conformity with the will of God, they draw their essence from God and extend the Father’s will. Our works participate in the creative and redemptive work of Jesus Christ when we listen and obey. The Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ, was pleased to be recognised as the son of the carpenter and a carpenter because that was the occupation God willed for Joseph, the just man, and his foster father. “Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude? His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all? And they would not accept him.” Jesus refused to deviate from obeying his Father’s will till death; likewise, the disciples when they threatened them with death. May the strength of our faith in the risen Lord keep us steadfast in doing the will of the Father daily in our lives as Saint Joseph did.

Let us pray: O God, Creator of all things, who laid down for the human race the law of work, graciously grant that by the example of Saint Joseph and under his patronage we may complete the works you set us to do and attain the rewards you promise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.