In order to counteract the rising tide of Communist propaganda that undermined the dignity of the workers whom it was supposed to help, the Catholic Church named May 1 the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. All Christians who read the Bible, however, will recognize in Joseph exactly the sort of ordinary man and worker whom the world overlooks, but God honors most.
When the Son of God became man on earth, He was not born in a palace. True, He was of the royal line of David, but then David had been a shepherd first. Jesus grew up with Joseph, the carpenter, and Mary in the humble town of Nazareth. And once He had grown up, Jesus loved to spend time in Capernaum, a Galilean town known for being almost entirely populated with manual laborers, fishermen, and other humble folk. Jesus warned (Matthew 20:16) that in the kingdom of God, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Therefore, it is obvious that the Christian ethic was always one of honoring and glorifying poor and humble laborers, rather than arrogant and self-absorbed aristocrats. It was that biblical idea which America’s Founding Fathers adopted.
This is particularly important on May Day, which Communists claim as their own holiday for rioting and demanding redistribution of wealth.
St. Josemaria Escriva made an observation about Joseph that inspired my theme for this article. “St. Joseph was an ordinary sort of man on whom God relied to do great things. He did exactly what the Lord wanted him to do, in each and every event that went to make up his life,” Escriva affirmed. “That is why Scripture praises Joseph as ‘a just man’. And in Hebrew, a just man means a good and faithful servant of God, someone who fulfills the divine will, or who is honorable and charitable toward his neighbor.”
We might also adapt the quote to say, “Joseph was an ordinary sort of worker on whom God relied to do great things.” We know from the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25) that our entrance into heaven is dependent upon the charitable works that we perform and how well we do our duty and use our talents on earth. Work is an integral part of our personal acceptance of and working out of redemption, just as it was a sign of honor to Adam in the garden of Eden that God told him to work and keep the garden (Genesis 2:15).
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If, then, work is so important to our sanctification and journey toward heaven, it is no surprise that Jesus loved to spend time with and chose His foster-father and apostles from ordinary working men, the sort of men who have kept societies running for millennia, but without any fanfare or royal recognition.
And that is where the Christian perspective is so very different from the Communist perspective. The Christian sees his work as not only a duty, but an honor, one which will earn for him not only hopefully material necessities and comforts in this life, but even eternal reward. The Communist, though, sees work as a burden, always imposed by some evil tyrant, and bringing with it inevitably a horde of evils.
Christians condemn exploitation of workers when necessary and call for just wages — indeed, almost all basic rights for workers now recognized in America are recognized because of Jews and Christians — but they do not see every situation involving a worker and a boss as destined by fate to involve class struggle. Nor does the Christian, of course, hold with the explicitly atheistic Communist belief that workers must take revenge upon employers in order to be respected. In the Christian’s eyes, a worker is always respected and honorable so long as he does his duty in God’s name; that is, work is inherently honorable.
Like Joseph, the ordinary sort of man whom millions of Christians praised throughout history, Americans honor workers not out of a socialist sense of bitterness or entitlement or class division, but because God blessed work and made it the straight and sure path to heavenly glory.
