As always, welcome to all those who are tuned in to Radio Mater on this May 1st in which Labor Day is celebrated, as well as Saint Joseph the Worker and also the beginning of the month of May dedicated to the veneration of the wife of Saint Joseph , Mary of Nazareth.
Today people are celebrating work, but looking at the current situation, not only in Italy, one might say that there is little to celebrate, particularly for the most vulnerable people and among these people with disabilities and also workers precarious.
On this occasion, the Italian bishops also invited us Christians to look with ever greater attention at "human capital at the service of work". Pope Francis summarized it in four adjectives the physiognomy of work that must be: free, creative, participatory and supportive and developed in a path that involves believers and social partners in promoting innovation and scientific progress in order to offer an increasingly vast range of goods and qualified assets , but also to promote a fair distribution of resources, so as to encourage the inclusion of those who are 'discarded', to protect the environment and defend work with its dignity.
The Document of the Italian bishops underlines the importance of the relationship between "intelligent machines and the new opportunities for interaction between them and with human beings will increasingly increase our ability to do and modify our ability to act". Together with the reminder of the importance of education and training of all workers in the search for solutions and tools that humanize work.
The document of the Italian bishops underlines another element: that ability to cooperate and do. «An indispensable and increasingly delicate task will be that of including the rejected and the weakest. Knowing that the solution cannot be that of a mere monetary disbursement like that of the citizenship subsidy, since the dignity of the person passes through his ability to be useful and to contribute to social and civil progress". «The true treasure of a community (and therefore of our country) and the guarantee for its future – conclude the bishops – is the sum of the efforts and skills, of the commitment to contribute to civil progress by teaming up in solidarity with the problems of their fellow citizens.
If we know how to preserve and enrich this treasure, we will also be able to overcome the challenge of the dignity of work today and in the future."
The bishops' message closes with this exhortation: «Only by overcoming the famine of hope by focusing on trust, acceptance and innovation and not closing oneself in the sterility of fear and conflict, only by understanding that the other is not the one who competes with me for a given wealth but it is a gift and an opportunity to build a bigger cake, only by giving dignity to every job, economic and social well-being will be spread to the entire community".
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At the beginning of this month of May, we want to visit Maria's feelings regarding her future.
Mary, after the Angel's announcement, will have retraced the past centuries in her memory to read in the prophecies and events of her people a basis to calm her soul.
With a hint of fear the story of Hagar will have come back to her mind.
Knowing the story of Hagar, evaluating the unprecedented grandeur of the mystery announced by the Angel, thinking about the religious and civil conditions in which the woman of her time lived, she could have thought that, as Abraham did with Hagar, that Joseph too could do the same , indeed, with even more plausible reasons: that son that Mary carried in her womb, unlike Ishmael for Hagar, that son had not come out of her loins, of her betrothed Joseph.
But Joseph anticipated the revolution that that creature, kept in Mary's womb, would bring salvation to the world. Not an observance of slaves but of children who know how to live in the very heart of the law.
«As a man, Joseph must have been distressed by saying: I do not want to observe the letter of the law, but, instead, grasp its soul». And so he did. We know that in the Bible the one who generates is the man, while the woman gives birth. «Man puts the seed, the firstfruits of him, he puts all of himself to say "You, son, will be my memory, from which I will have immortality".
In the Bible the first spark of immortality shines on the horizon, delivered to our history with the birth of one's own male child.
In Jewish tradition, "a man without children is the most unhappy of men, because his name is swallowed up by oblivion: he has no future."
Isaac is the life that lasts for Jacob. Jacob is the life that lasts for Abraham.
Musical break dedicated to the virgin
(A classic Schubert or Gounod or other Hail Mary)
Our broadcast is entitled: "An era of spirituality in the company of Saint Joseph)
Dear Saint Joseph, now we want to reflect and pray to you and with you.
Today is a very important day, we begin the month of May which ancient tradition dedicated to your sweet wife, Maria, even if the first day of May is also consecrated to your memory, as a craftsman worker and also for your commitment of assistance in protecting the effort of our profession to live and live honestly.
We want to carve out a small space to dedicate to your life as a respectable worker, invoked and blessed as the patron and model of workers; above all we want to express our trust in you and ask you for perseverance in our life of faith animated by great and timeless hope.
We are experiencing a very dramatic moment in the world of work. Since the greed for easy money has taken over productivity, the god mammon, money, which your son Jesus has placed among the enemies of the true God, the relationship between people has become increasingly conflictual. Furthermore, today, in addition to this phenomenon of greed and hoarding, the scarcity of work also makes life more difficult, for this reason, please help us not only to find a way to calmly procure what we need for the sustenance of daily life, but to recover that jolt of spirituality that allows us to look at the purpose of our existence on this earth.
The echo of your existence and its supportive protection reach us with the scent of resin, characteristic of the workshop of a carpenter who with effort, sweat and in the simplicity of the village of Nazareth has earned bread for your little family.
Your laboratory was modest, simple, a shop, in an environment that lived on agriculture and pastoralism. Simple houses, rudimentary work tools.
In your business you have found your mission, the sustenance for living and your fulfillment as a person in a loving relationship with your singular and special family.
The honorific title with which the gospel defines you is that of "just" man. This "justice" was not only that of not being in debt to anyone, but being a "just man", a treasure chest of the highest qualities of a man who knows how to decline all his actions and feelings on the scale of fidelity to the values that carries in the soul.
Labor Day and the figure of Saint Joseph also make us discover the dignity of work which serves to create harmony in creation.
I like to compare work, especially as it was experienced by you together with Jesus in Nazareth, to a leaf crossed by sunlight. A leaf seen against the light allows us to see a network of veins and a connective tissue that gives body and consistency to the leaf itself.
For every human being, work provides the sense of fatigue.
Work without a noble motivation becomes slavery.
In the first pages of the Bible we read that God handed over the custody of creation to Adam and Eve so that everything could be at the service of man.
In the laboratory of your home in Nazareth the dignity of work was cultivated.
Your family in Nazareth studied life also through work.
Just 55 years ago Paul VI, a pilgrim to Nazareth, said that your house was a school of evangelical living.
In fact, in Nazareth they learned to observe, listen, meditate and penetrate the profound meaning of things.
On that occasion, Paul VI expressed his desire to be able to become a child and go to the humble school of the family of Nazareth.
Certainly thinking of you, oh beloved Saint Joseph, he said that the first thing your house teaches us is silence, which is not the absence of words, mutism but fidelity to commitments. So let's let ourselves be caressed by the music.
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You, dear Saint Joseph, have the dignity of being the shadow of the Father.
Your human qualities are imbued with divinity, since you are the faithful reflection of the Father who assigned you the task of educating Jesus in the craft of human living and for this reason the Gospel says that «Jesus in Nazareth grew in age and grace before God and men."
Last year Paul VI was canonized, a bright star in the firmament of the Church, so I like to quote him again in that speech given on 4 January 1964 in your country, oh dear Saint Joseph. Pope Montini on that occasion said: «Three times in the Gospel we speak of conversations between an angel and Joseph in his sleep». Paul VI then questioned himself by asking himself: «What do these talks mean? - he replied - They mean that Joseph was guided and advised inwardly by the heavenly messenger. He had a dictate of God's will that took precedence over his actions: and, therefore, his ordinary behavior was moved by an arcane dialogue that indicated what to do: “Joseph, do not be afraid; do this; go, leave, come back!”».
What then do we see in our dear and beloved character, Saint Joseph? We see a wonderful docility, an exceptional promptness of obedience and execution. He does not argue, he does not hesitate, he does not cite rights or aspirations. He launches himself in obedience to the word spoken to him; he knows that his life will unfold like a drama, which however is transfigured to a level of extraordinary purity and sublimity: well above any human expectation or calculation."
Your being a "just man" has filled the sphere of your human activity. Your existence was not easy, it was a constant challenge like the lives of many of us. You lived it to the full, you didn't give up in the face of difficulties. With your example today too you teach us that our faith cannot exist only in the practices of prayer or in the observance of the commandments and precepts, but has the possibility of offering a flavor of eternity to all acts, modeling all of them in the thought of God. the events of our lives.
You teach us that our existence is not the usufruct of an income, but a mandate; a task, a commitment, not a game in which we can not participate. God has bet on our life and our holiness consists in complying with the Father's will.
Observing the watermark of your human story, oh dear and beloved Saint Joseph, we discover your consistent attention to God's plans. We can see it from your obedience, your readiness in fulfilling the inspirations that God's plan was unfolding before your eyes.
Before acting you always stopped to weigh the results of your actions on God's scales.
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Your way of behaving, O Joseph, teaches us that, by climbing the steps of the ladder to carry out the will of the Father, you have entered into an ever greater divine intimacy. By cultivating your love towards your beloved fiancée, Maria, in a wonderfully trusting way, you helped her to carry with greater confidence and trust the great mystery that had taken hold of her very life.
I am convinced that you did not close yourself off in an intimate life, in the confines of private life, but you opened yourself up to helping the poor families of Nazareth and thus you became a mirror of God's love.
You, dear Saint Joseph, teach us that when life is a confident response to a desire for love that comes from Above, even death itself is nothing other than returning home.
We ask you to help us weave the threads of our existence; create a fabric in which the threads of daily life are intertwined in order to create the tapestry, that embroidery of immortality to be enjoyed alongside God the Father, the Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit, giver of all good in the world.
Dear and wise Saint Joseph, obtain for us from the goodness of God the conviction that we are living this season of history, not so much to invent extraordinary things, but to cultivate and live examples and testimonies capable of arousing constantly new resources both in the Church and in society unfortunately orphaned of values.
Prayer to the sleeping Saint Joseph.
A brief musical break
In the Bible the book of Qohèlet is a treasure chest of wisdom. Qohèlet is a human face that becomes word and words which, in turn, become living creatures and protagonists of a story. Qohèlet is a preacher who gives answers, but above all he is a character who knows how to ask questions, such as, for example, when he questions himself, asking himself: «What profit is there for man in all his toil and in all his anxiety? of his heart with which he toils under the sun?
Fatigue and worry seem to constitute the backbone of human existence. After the paradisiacal parenthesis of the Garden of Eden, for Adam and Eve the scenario of existence is marked by fatigue and work. In the cycle of creation, six days are occupied by the work of God's "doing" to make man's room habitable. A lot of work on God's part: a masterpiece destined for "a day without sunset" so that the Creator can please himself, writing the poem of creation and combining it with the alphabet of creation. The grammatical rules for this poem were written with the sweat of the brow and the painful creative imagination of man.
I found this quote attributed to Saint Francis who said: «He who works with his hands is a worker. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. Anyone who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."
From the very beginning in the pages of Genesis, man is called to be a craftsman with the task of giving a name to living reality.
Abel becomes the artist of creation and poet of praise to God, because unlike Cain who becomes a metal craftsman. The first martyr of envy and hatred, Abel, crosses nature with his heart and makes it a hymn of blessing to divine goodness.
In the history of the people of Israel, divine wisdom exalts the professions "paints the days and works of the worker in bright colours, fights idleness, protects the right to rest".
In Jewish tradition, a period of apprenticeship was obligatory to acquire a working profession as a source of support.
Saint Paul in one of his letters denounces that the "lazzaroni" have no right to eat.
Work is a fundamental component of human life. Work has always marked the path of humanity and that of every single individual.
To bring his son Jesus into our history, to give him legal paternity, God passed into the hardened hands of a worker like Joseph. Jesus in Nazareth, in fact, was known as the shop boy, he was "the son of the carpenter".
For the young Jesus the house of Nazareth had become a laboratory of humanity, a school of work as participation in the creative work of that "Father who is in heaven".
Since the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century, the Church has been constantly present in the problems of work.
From Leo XIII to Pope Francis the exemplary role of Saint Joseph lives in honest industriousness.
We must not forget, as Saint John Paul II states, that in the Gospel «human work and in particular manual work finds a special emphasis. […] Thanks to the workbench where he practiced his craft together with Jesus, Joseph brought his work closer to the mystery of redemption."
"Jesus worked with human hands" to pave the way for the redemption of all humanity through work as a contribution to the well-being of humanity.
We must invoke the help of Saint Joseph to develop the human imagination to open new working paths and allow everyone to look to the future with hope, thus recovering well-being and dignity, because a person without work is half a person.
And we want Saint Joseph to help us acquire a sense of responsibility similar to the invitation that Martin Luther King addressed to the crowd of his friends and companions in the peaceful struggle for the conquest of rights.
Martin Luther King not only asked his adversaries to change, but first and foremost demanded of himself and his followers to live what they preached firsthand, according to the spirit of the Gospel.
In a speech given just a year before his death, ML King proclaimed: «If you had to be street cleaners, you should go and sweep the streets in the same way Michelangelo painted his figures (in the Sostina Chapel); you should sweep the streets as Handel and Beethoven composed their music. You should sweep them the same way Shakespeare wrote his poems. In short, you should sweep them so well that all the inhabitants of heaven and earth stop and say: "Here lived a great sweeper who did his job well."
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Saint Joseph, patron saint of workers
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, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky..." (Genesis 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, those 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 to 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 as also happened between Joseph and Mary.
Prayer of Pope Paul VI to Saint Joseph
O St. Joseph, Patron Saint of the Church,
You who worked alongside the incarnate Word every day
day to earn bread, drawing from Him the
strength to live and work;
You who have felt the anxiety of tomorrow, the bitterness
of poverty, the precariousness of work;
You who radiate today the example of your figure, humble
before men, but very great before
God; he looks at the immense family that is entrusted to You.
Bless the Church, pushing her ever higher
ways of evangelical fidelity; protect workers
in their harsh daily existence, defending them
from discouragement, from negating revolt, as
from the temptations of hedonism; pray for the poor,
who continue the poverty of Christ on earth, inspire
keeping for them the continuous providences of their brothers
more gifted; and keep peace in the world,
that peace which alone can guarantee the development of
peoples and the full fulfillment of human hopes:
for the good of humanity, for the mission
of the Church, for the glory of the Holy Trinity.
Amen.