Today, we celebrate St Jospeh the worker, a great feast day in our joyful Easter season. You may remember that back in Lent, we celebrated the feast day of St Joseph, the spouse of Mary, on March 19. Today’s feast was established by Pope Pius 12th in 1955 in order to foster deep devotion to St Joseph amongst the Catholic faithful, and also in response to the celebrations for workers on May 1 that were held in Europe in communist countries. St Joseph, the foster father of Jesus here on earth, is an example of the holiness of human labor in his work as a carpenter. Through his patience, perseverance, strength, and industriousness, Joseph would have not only trained Jesus in his work as a carpenter, but also in the values of the Jewish faith. We Catholics are not only called to be capable, well-trained, industrious workers, but we are to bring the values of our faith to our workplace as well. In the Gospel today, we hear from the bread of life discourse from the 6th chapter of John's Gospel, in which Jesus tells us that when we partake of the bread and the wine in the Lord’s supper, we will truly eat his flesh and drink his blood, in which we will reside in Jesus and Jesus will reside in us. Jesus says this in the name of his heavenly Father, the heavenly Father in whom Jesus has life, the life that we have in Christ. As we honor St Joseph the worker today, as we honor Christ’s foster father, we honor his example of faith and we honor his son in whom we have life.
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