As summer approached following my first year of seminary formation, I went to the archdiocesan vocations director and asked him, “What parish do you want me to go to this summer? I’ll go wherever you assign me.”
The response wasn’t what I expected. Sounding like my dad, he told me, “Get a job.” At that time, seminarians weren’t placed in a summer parish assignment until after their second year of theological studies.
As I reflect on the Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker, which we celebrate on Thursday, May 1, I consider all my work experiences over the years. From a very young age, work has been a part of my life.
Everyone contributes to family life
In our family, the younger members were assigned chores around the house. The expectation was that my eight siblings and I were to contribute to the support of family life by helping keep the house clean, keeping things around us in good repair, and undertaking whatever tasks my parents determined were of help to the family.
We did not have a dishwasher, so for the longest time I recall that I had the job of “dish dryer,” as everything had to be washed and dried by hand. This was a sensitive job as you had to be careful with the dishes and the glassware. Others were designated to sweep the floor, vacuum the house on Saturday – to handle any chores that resulted in keeping the house in order.
St. Paul writes in his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, “In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat” (2 Thes 3:10). My parents didn’t threaten to withhold food; it was just understood that everyone did his or her part to contribute to family life.
As we got older, there were the outside chores, e.g., cleaning gutters, for which Dad invited his sons to assist him. When I think about it, I was probably more of a hindrance than a help as I held the ladder for him. But in having us assist him, he was teaching us the value of work. In time, we picked up lawn mowing jobs, delivered newspapers and made a few dollars by shoveling snow from neighbors’ driveways and sidewalks.
Starting in high school, I had jobs at McDonald’s and Montgomery Ward. In college, I was an assistant to an estimator of a general contracting company and then contributed as a draftsman for an architectural firm. All these job opportunities provided me with personal spending money. Helping at home and being employed prior to entering the seminary provided a foundation for the work of pastoral ministry that I would later be asked to undertake.
Why the Church treasures work
This is part of what it means to be responsible in the world, to support yourself and others. If you’re capable and have the physical well-being, there is an expectation that you will use the various graces and gifts with which you have been blessed to support not only yourself but assist your family and others as best as you can.
You do that through work, expending your energy and expertise by providing goods and services, or by trying to make and do things that assist others. Work, along with your time and talent, sustains you and others. It is an expression of responsibility.
The Church’s teachings about work are rooted in Genesis where God invites humanity to be fruitful and multiply, and to work, i.e., to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28). Before the fall of Adam and Eve, work was a matter of dignity. They were to tend the Garden of Eden, to be cooperators with God in caring for creation.
The Church has treasured work throughout its history. Countless documents, most notably Pope St. Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum” and Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical “Laborem Exercens,” highlighted the importance of work in God’s plan for salvation. Work was also a prominent theme in the Second Vatican Council’s “Gaudium et Spes” (“The Church in the Modern World”):
“Throughout the course of the centuries, men have labored to better the circumstances of their lives through a monumental amount of individual and collective effort. To believers, this point is settled: considered in itself, such human activity accords with God’s will. For man, created to God’s image, received a mandate to subject to himself the earth and all that it contains, and to govern the world with justice and holiness…” (34).
A model of faith, love, service
There is great value in the Church’s reflections and emphasis on the dignity of work. They remind us that as cooperators with God in caring for creation, we help bring about the betterment of the communities and world in which we live.
At times, our jobs and labor are accompanied by stress, sorrow and even failure. Sometimes, we might lose a job because we no longer have the required skills to carry it out effectively or, worse, we’re told, “We don’t need you.”
Jesus labored in his ministry to bring us to salvation. He experienced the hardships that can accompany those who toil. From his earthly father, he learned carpentry skills and how to deal with adversity that can come in carrying out life’s work.
St. Joseph provided for the temporal needs of Mary and Jesus. But he was also called upon to protect them. He took Mary into his home when she learned she was pregnant, and later, following the birth of Christ, guided them into Egypt to protect him from being among the innocents killed by Herod.
Jesus saw his father work and how he handled the unexpected challenges. What St. Joseph modeled were lessons in faith, love and service that his son would teach during his public life.
The importance of the Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker emphasizes the dignity of work and esteems the laborer. This day is meant to encourage all who feel the burden of hard work, even when it becomes overwhelming. They are encouraged to remember the great value of their work as it is a way in which they participate, and cooperate with God, in caring for the creative order.
St. Joseph the Worker, guide us and pray for us!