1 May – St. Joseph the Worker: Mighty Intercessor and Silent King

I have often asserted in these pages that St. Joseph is a powerful intercessor.  I have received amazing interventions by this great saint, who is the earthly father of the Son of God.  I recently committed my material cares to him in this time of need.  Since then I have experienced his intercession as at no other time in my life.  He has interceded in ways that are so obvious – it is so clear that it is he doing things – that it’s funny.

Pray to St. Joseph, especially in your needs concerning your work and your vocation.  St. Joseph is a powerful intercessor.  He comes through for you especially when you are specific about what you need and when you need it.

I recommend St. Joseph especially for fathers in families.  Fathers, GO TO CONFESSION!  I think that would please Joseph.

May I suggest that you pray, often, the Litaniae Sancti Ioseph?

And remember the mighty Bux Protocol™.  This is more needed today than ever before.  Joseph is the Patron of the Church, after all.

Today’s feast of St. Joseph, the Worker, is modern.  It was given to the Church by Ven. Pope Pius XII in 1955.

We celebrate Joseph today especially as a patron of workers.  No doubt the thought behind the feast was, among other motives, to offset the incorrect atheistic, materialist view of work and workers presented by Socialism and Communism.

May Day had been a civic feast in many places since ancient times and festivals were held.

COLLECT 1962MR:

Rerum conditor Deus, qui legem laboris humano generi statuisti: concede propitius; ut, sancti Ioseph exemplo et patricinio, opera perficiamus quae praecipis, et praemia consequamur quae promittis.

Do not to confuse the verbs condo, condere and condio, condire, both of which give is “conditor“… one being cónditor and the other condítor.

SLAVISHLY LITERAL VERSION:

O God, creator of things, who established the law of labor for human kind: grant, propitiously; that, by the example and patronage of Saint Joseph, we may bring to completion the works which you command, and we may attain the rewards which you promise.

At the heart of our vocation as images of God we all have work to do.  God, our Creator, “worked” and then rested and saw that His work was good.  This is also our paradigm as His images.

When our First Parents revolted against God’s command, the entire human race fell.  The human race consisted of only two people, but it was the whole of the human race.  In their fall, we fell.

As a consequence of the Fall, man is now out of sync with God, himself, others and nature.  We do not live in the harmony that would make the tasks of stewardship of the gift of life and the honor of being at the pinnacle of material creation without sorrow, toil and pain.

And yet even before the Fall man had been given labor by God the Father.  Man had duties in the Garden.  It was our Fall that transformed that labor into toil.

God knew every one of us from before the Creation of the universe.  He calls us into existence at the exact point and place in His plan He foresaw in His providence.  We have a role to play in God’s plan.  We have work to do.

When we dedicate ourselves to fulfilling our part in God’s plan according to our vocations, whatever they may be in our own circumstances, God will give us every actual grace we need to do His will and come to our perpetual reward in heaven.

He gives us the work, the grace and the glory.  The harder the times and work, the greater the honor and glory.

With our wounded nature, our disordered passions and appetites, it is hard to understand that the work we do in life is a manifestation of both present grace and anticipated glory.

As an early American preacher once said,

“grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected”.

Put another way, God gives us the work and then He makes our hands strong enough for the task.  The achievement is therefore both His and truly ours.

As St. Augustine says, God crowns His own merits in us.

Two last things.

Try to wrap your head around the paradox in the vocation of St. Joseph.  Firstly, he was a relatively poor craftsman, a tekton, which in Greek is “builder” and certainly includes “carpenter”. However, when you consider the implications of the genealogy at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph was also the true heir to the Davidic throne!  And we don’t have in Scripture a single word spoken by him.  Hidden vocation and hidden thought.  The fine scripture scholar Brandt Pitre has a recording of talks he did on St. Joseph which I highly recommend: HERE.

Also, you will love Fr. Calloway’s book on Joseph.