Saint Joseph the Worker 
Carpenter (c 1st Century Anno Domini A.D.) Feast: 1 May
In early centuries, veneration of St. Joseph received little encouragement. Much later, in A.D. 16th Century, St. Joseph, in a somewhat romanticized image of the Holy Family, began to figure more widely in popular preaching as the ideal "provider & protector"
In A.D. 1870 Pope Pius IX declared him the Patron of the Universal Church 
. In A.D. 1955, however, Pope Pius XII assigned a new feast, May 1, dedicated to St. Joseph the Worker. No doubt this was in some ways an effort to assert a Christian hold on a date celebrated by socialists throughout the world as International Worker's Day. Through St. Joseph-now remembered not just as the spouse of Mary & the surrogate father of Jesus, but as a carpenter 
The Church found an emblem of Catholic social teaching on the dignity of work & the rights of working people. Among those who had intuited this connection was Dorothy Day , cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement. Under the patronage of St. Joseph, she chose May 1, 1933, to launch her newspaper 
at the Communist rally in New York City's Union Square ☭ 
Dorothy Day wrote: "For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight-this little paper is addressed. It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program - to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual but their material welfare."
"Is this not the carpenter's son?" - Matthew 13:55
#SaintJosephTheWorker #PrayForUs 
Posts
No comments :
Post a Comment