St. Joseph the Worker
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I read a fascinating article entitled, Death by Loneliness, by a Psychiatrist who, after treating 1000s of patients realized there are four essential ingredients everyone needs to be happy:
1. To share in the life of God
2. We all need family and friends
3. We need to find meaning and purpose in suffering
4. Every human needs meaningful work
Today, on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker we meditate on the meaning and purpose of work.
Meaningful work can mean a job that pays money. But the real meaning of work goes well beyond that. Work is where we use the powers of the soul and body
1. To help God make the world a better place
2. To help other people receive what they need to reach their full potential
3. Work helps us to get good at things we couldn’t get good at any other way
4. Most importantly – work helps us become a better person.
a. St John Paul II wrote: Through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes "more a human being".
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Yes, we work to make money and take care of our families and others but that is a secondary by-product of work. The first purpose of work is to make us better people – more excellent humans. Work is necessary to develop and reach our full potential as a person.
So often I think: “Oh, if I would have only known then what I know now.”
But that is impossible. Not because I can’t go back in time, but because the only way I know now what I didn’t know then, was by working – working through trial and error, interacting with people, through good times and bad, through conflict and joy, through seeing an arduous task through to the end, through perseverance and patience.
I think we can all say we have learned a great deal through our work in the home and outside of it.
Hopefully we have grown to become more excellent humans through all that we have gone through by doing our work inside and outside the home.
Do you see – work is one of the most important means to develop into the person we are supposed to be forever.
But we can’t develop those characteristics and virtues without engaging in work.
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If it is necessary to work to become a better person, then what is your work? What is your mission? How are you using your God given gifts for the good of the world and the good of others?
We work to help God make the world a better place. The greatest way to do that is by being a mom or a dad. Every child we bring into the world makes the world better. In fact, that is the most important thing we should say to a kid – “Hey, the world is a better place just because you are here.” Then the mom and the dad better do their work, raise that kid well so he really does make the world better and not worse. That is why the greatest work is done right in the home and in the family because the goodness of the world is only as good as the family. If the family is all messed up then the world will be a disaster.
Then there are the professions – the things we get paid to do. But work is not defined by getting paid. Work is to give of yourself, using your gifts for the good of others and there lots of ways to take care of others in their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
The main point is this: If work is necessary for our continual growth and happiness, then always need some work, some mission.
God has given every person a particular calling. This calling may evolve with the different stages in life, but it does not end. Even in Heaven we will have the mission of doing good for others. So, what is your mission?
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Our Work can help God save souls
St John Paul II writes that our work “presents us with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that Christ came to do. This work of salvation came about through suffering and death on a Cross. By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day in the activity that he is called upon to perform…The Christian finds in human work a small part of the Cross of Christ and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted his Cross for us.”
If we do our work with the added intention of uniting it to the saving work of Jesus then all our work contributes to saving souls. All we have to do is do the morning offering:
Father, I give you my prayer, work, joy and sufferings of this day, and I unite it to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
in reparation for my sins,
for the intentions of my family and friends,
and for the conversion of sinners.
Use any variation of this prayer you like or make up your own.
Start your day by offering up everything and then God will use everything to save souls.
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The greatest work in the history of the world was the suffering and death of Jesus.
This means that we can do the greatest work, the greatest good precisely when we feel the most useless – when we are suffering or incapacitated or sidelined. If unite our cross to the cross of Jesus, if we offer it up, then we help Jesus save souls. That is the most important work to do. Don’t waste your suffering. Offer it up! This may be the most productive and fruitful time in your life. For Jesus said: Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.