St. Joseph the Worker and the Dignity of Work

by CAPP-USA

Each year in celebrating the feast of St. Joseph the Worker we remember: “We were created with a vocation to work.” (Pope Francis, 128)

On May 1st, 1955, the inaugural feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Pope Pius XII said “the humble craftsman of Nazareth not only embodies the dignity of the manual worker before God and the Holy Church, but he is also always the provident guardian of you and your families.” (Speech on the Solemnity of St. Joseph the Artisan)

The Dignity of Work

Work “is something willed and approved by God.” (Pope St. Paul VI, 27) In fact, “the door to the dignity of a man is work.” (Address to CAPP Members)

“Work constitutes a fundamental dimension of man’s existence on earth.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 4) and “makes the human person similar to God, because with work man is a creator”. (Pope Francis)

Jesus, by his life as a worker, “sanctified human labor and endowed it with a special significance”. (Pope Francis, 98)

“[W]ork is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question”. (Pope St. John Paul II, 3)

The Example of St. Joseph the Worker

St. Joseph humbly lived the reality that “the human person must indeed work”. (Pope Benedict XVI) and “is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises up”. (Pope St. John Paul II, 24)

“Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 22)

“At the workbench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of the Redemption.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 22)

The Spirituality of Work

The Church rejects a purely secular understanding of work.

“In the work of man, the Christian finds a small part of the cross of Christ and accepts it in the spirit of redemption with which Christ accepted his cross for us.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 27)

“The importance of work in human life demands that its meaning be known and assimilated in order to ‘help all people to come closer to God'”. (Pope St. John Paul II, 23)

“This Christian spirituality of work must therefore become the common heritage of all.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 25)

“It is necessary to live a spirituality that helps believers to sanctify themselves through their work, imitating St Joseph”. (Pope Benedict XVI)

The Rights of Workers and Dignified Work

Pope Pius XII chose May 1st as the day of St. Joseph the Worker to challenge the secular and narrow Communist view of work.

Every ‘May Day’ the Soviet Union, celebrating ‘International Workers Day’, boasted it was the defender of workers. 

However, “the basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 6)​

“Work is of fundamental importance to the fulfilment of the human being and to the development of society.” (Pope Benedict XVI) and it “must serve the true good of humanity”. (Pope Benedict XVI)

“Labor…is not a mere commodity. On the contrary, the worker’s human dignity in it must be recognized.” (Pope Pius XI, 83)

And the lost of dignified work is tragic! “[T]here is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work“. (Pope Francis, 162)

Pope Benedict XVI outlined seven defining principles of what “decent” work is in his encyclical (Caritas in Veritate, 63) and we invite you to review this.

Go to Joseph

“So, if you want to be close to Christ, We also today repeat to you ‘Ite to Ioseph‘: Go to Joseph!” (Speech on the Solemnity of St. Joseph the Artisan)

“[L]et us ask Saint Joseph… with the tools of his trade in his hand, that he might help us fight for the dignity of work, so that there may be work for everyone and that the work may be dignified.” (Pope Francis)