Saint Joseph, protector of workers

by Mario Carrera

In the small company of Nazareth, Saint Joseph knew that the tools of his work were the tools of an artist who helped God to make the world better and more beautiful.

Through work man collaborates with God in completing creation.

This is reported on one of the first pages of the Bible. After creating the world, God commands man and woman: «Fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky...» (Gen 1:8). Subjugating the earth means taking possession of the environment and governing it, respecting the order placed in it by the Creator and developing it to one's advantage to satisfy one's own needs, that of the family and of society. 

This consists in the undertaking of science and work to humanize the world, in order to make it the home of man, a house of justice, freedom and peace for all.

When God created the world, he did not create it finished: creation is not finished. Man has slowly taken possession of the earth, forging it, adapting it to his needs, developing the potential of creation for his good and for the glory of God. In particular today we are witnessing transformations that were unthinkable until a few decades ago.

However, we are not masters of creation. We must collaborate with God in bringing it to fruition, respecting nature and the laws inherent in it. God entrusted creation to us so that we could protect and perfect it, not to exploit and manipulate it as we pleased. The book of Genesis reminds us again: «The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, so that he could cultivate it and keep it» (2, 15). Work - lived in conditions that respect justice and human dignity, as well as the environment entrusted to us by the Creator - is the way in which man carries out this task: this also happened between Joseph and Mary.

The father has the task of moral education of teaching the precepts of the Torah. With it, boundaries are set to everyone's life, including one's affectivity. Every word that he educates is a "bridge", a connection between me and the other that allows us to meet, to interact, to cooperate. «The mother gives affection, her arms, her breasts, her womb; the father gives "the words". The relationship between mother and child is immediate, you learn through osmosis." The one with the father is "mediated" precisely by words. For this reason he prepares and introduces to social, political, community and community life.

Giuseppe will therefore have a great task: that of educating him in the craft of human living. The icon of the educator father is painted from the page of Luke when he tells of Jesus who is "lost" among the Doctors, in the Temple of Jerusalem, while Mary and Joseph anxiously look for him. 

The reproach that Mary addresses to Jesus first of all recalls the authority of Joseph: "Your father and I were anxiously looking for you". A fact that affirms the role of the father and reveals how the task of teaching "the words", the precepts, the commandments is entrusted to him.

According to the Bible, in fact, a child is not born when he is born, but during his growth, which is completed precisely with education. Seven years of emotional formation with the mother are needed, during which the baby is still "milk dough", milk meat. Therefore, in order to give the name to Jesus, to the Savior, Joseph cannot separate him from his mother. Joseph also gives life to Mary, because he looks after her and her son, both together.

Work also has a soul

The meaning of work cannot be given simply from the outside, as a definitive formula and once and for all: it is necessary, on the part of each individual, to continue to search for it, grasping its every manifestation in order to choose it, want it, be able to appropriate it. 

Furthermore, for this, adequate conditions are needed, which cannot be reduced to the personal level, but to the social level. The conditions that make the response itself possible need to be prepared at a social level, because they cannot be determined by the individual worker. This is what, among other things, Pope Benedict XVI explains in Caritas in veritate, in paragraphs 25 and 63.

Not even this step, however, is to be considered final. Work cannot manifest its full meaning except insofar as it in turn refers to something beyond itself that brings it to completion. If we want to avoid an "ideology of work", or at least its idealization, to instead open up to a real "theology of work", as Laborem exercens proposes, it is necessary to forcefully highlight the fact that work has need, in turn, to be inscribed within something greater, aimed not only at the search for its own meaning, but at a salvation, at a fulfillment of the whole man and of all men. Ultimately, work can and must be saved too; it remains an intermediate end, not least of man. As the book of Genesis reveals in an unsurpassably expressive way, as Laborem exercens masterfully states: «man has been called to work since the beginning, but ultimately that work is aimed at supreme rest in God, at resurrection, at taking part in that " garden of life” of which man can possess, in history, some true and temporary anticipations, not the fullness».

Work is something else, not least. Loaded with practical, educational, relational, ethical, symbolic, theological values, it in any case requires the light and contribution of grace that frees and saves it, like every historical offer of freedom. In fact, even work is ultimately a place of possible sanctification, as long as it is accepted as placed, originally and truly, within the only sanctity, that of God.