St Joseph: A Working Father

Today, we look at the sixth attribute of Saint Joseph’s fatherhood, “A Working Father,” as presented to us in the Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde (With a Father’s Heart).

We have looked at Saint Joseph as “A Beloved Father,” whom the Church lovingly venerates, as “A Tender and Loving Father,” evident in his constant care and devotion to Mary and Jesus, as “An Obedient Father,” who listened to God’s will and obeyed, as “An Accepting Father,” who embraced his circumstances and lovingly took responsibility for his part in God’s plan, and as “A Creatively Courageous Father,” who faced difficulties head-on, applying his skills with loving inventiveness.

In this “Year of Saint Joseph” we hope to ponder and increase “our love for this great saint, to encourage us to implore his intercession and to imitate his virtues and his zeal.” We are penetrating ever deeper into the fatherly heart of Saint Joseph, that heart that Jesus and Mary knew and loved so well.

A Working Father

This sixth attribute of Saint Joseph’s fatherly heart involves his relationship with work. The Apostolic Letter states plainly, “Saint Joseph was a carpenter who earned an honest living to provide for his family.”

Scripture tells us that Joseph was a tradesman, a worker in wood, that is a joiner or carpenter. But, since he lived and worked in a small town he is unlikely to have been a specialist. The demand would not have been great enough for him to have earned a consistent living at just one trade. So, his daily work probably obliged him to do some masonry, perhaps to fit a wooden door frame into a stone wall, or some smithing, to fit a metal hub to a cart’s wooden wheel. He would also have routinely made and repaired his own hand tools, as well as his neighbor’s, requiring a range of woodworking and metal forging and finishing skills. Saint Joseph was, most likely, an artisan, a skilled craftsman. When the people of Nazareth needed something built or mended they probably said to one another, “Go to Joseph.”

As a carpenter, Saint Joseph’s work made him master of the technology of his time; hand tools. Everything was done by hand and the sweat of the brow; from felling and splitting the tree, to hauling, sawing, carving, and planing the timbers, to drilling, joining, and sanding and sealing the finished piece. This was not the work for an old man, as Joseph is so often depicted, but for a man of vigor and grit, accustomed not only to strenuous labor but to the entire process of taking raw materials and creatively transforming them into useful and even beautiful objects. According to his time and circumstances, he was a problem solver for the people around him, just as all tradesmen are to this day.

No doubt, Joseph loved his trade; not just for the money it brought his family, for he was a workman worth his wage, but for what it allowed him to do for others. For a man of faith, like Saint Joseph, work is an opportunity “to develop our talents and abilities and to put them at the service of society and fraternal communion. It [work] becomes an opportunity for the fulfillment not only of oneself but also of that primary cell of society which is the family.”

Joseph’s trade was a family business into which Jesus was apprenticed, as was the custom of their time and culture. As He grew up, Jesus would have spent more and more of His day with Joseph in the workshop or on the job site. Joseph would have taught Jesus how to use his tools, keep them sharp, put them away neatly, and eventually to make His own set of tools. Jesus would have seen how Joseph listened to his customers, treated them justly and with respect, and fulfilled his obligations to deliver a job well done. Jesus would also have seen Joseph’s acts of kindness and generosity toward the poorest of his customers; knowing that he was given his skills as much for the benefit of those around him as for himself.

We are reminded that the simple satisfaction that accompanies hard work, done conscientiously, are blessings from God, and signs of our cooperation “with God himself” by which we “become creators of the world around us.” Our labor, undertaken with faith and love, “is a means of participating in the work of salvation, an opportunity to hasten the coming of the Kingdom.” We see this especially in the life of Saint Joseph, whose ordinary daily work was literally at the service of the Savior and His Kingdom.

Finally, a few words about the exchange between father and son who work together: “Jesus learned the value, the dignity and the joy of what it means to eat bread that is the fruit of one’s own labour.”

Jesus learned values from Joseph; not just carpentry skills. Joseph taught Jesus by example, to make work an act of love and service for others; to love in difficult situations, to persevere in love, to form and renew loving intentions, and to love from the heart to the end. Love was the supreme value of this father and son business.

Jesus saw the dignity of Joseph at work; his respect for God’s law, God’s creation, the people around him (even if they acted undignified), and for how work can truly ennoble a man. Joseph dutifully took his place at the great workbench of life by which God makes man a co-creator, shaping history in cooperation with His Divine Will. God given dignity was the trademark manner in which this father and son business was conducted.

For Joseph, work was a joy. How could it be otherwise? He was working with his Son, Jesus. From morning to night, they worked side by side, passing the roles of master and apprentice back and forth over their years together. They ended their work days exhausted, handing their wages over to Mary to bake into the bread their family would share together the next day. Rising with the sun, they thanked God, donned their leather aprons, shouldered their tools and lumber, and applied themselves to the duties of service that lay ahead of them. They worked together, in the joyful exchange of love between father and son.

Jesus grew in age and grace before God and men during His “hidden” years in Nazareth; He grew to manhood accompanied by Saint Joseph. But, just as truly, Joseph grew in age and grace by the loving companionship of Jesus. How often Joseph must have found such deep joy in the fact that Jesus was there, near him, and that was always enough. For, Saint Joseph knew by experience that the greatest gift that God gives to us, is Himself.

Let us “Go to Joseph” as our model of a Working Father, with Jesus as our constant companion, and make all our daily labor, labors of love.