Saint Joseph

On the first of May we celebrate Joseph, but not as on March 19. That one is the feast of Mary’s husband; this is the feast of the man who worked. The feast is recent and was born for a precise reason. May 1 is International Workers’ Day in half the world, and in 1955 Pius XII established the memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker on that very day. It wasn’t a way of covering up the other holiday: it was a recognition that manual work has a dignity of its own, and that the family in which, for Christians, God is born was a family of people who earned their living with their hands. Joseph’s trade, in the Gospel of Matthew, is given in a single word: téktōn. The usual translation is carpenter, but the Greek word is broader — it meant someone who worked with heavy materials, someone who built. In a village like Nazareth it meant doing a bit of everything: beams, tools, plows, doors. That’s where the line comes from that the neighbors say when Jesus starts to teach, one of the most down-to-earth passages in the Gospels: isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Joseph is the patron saint of workers. And today, in many parishes, is the day when those who work are blessed — and those who have no work are remembered. If your name is Joseph or Josephine, today is your name day, even though the big feast is still March nineteenth.