St. Joseph - Glory of Artisans by Fr. Edward Healy Thompson M.A.

St. Joseph (The Just Man) rendered faithfully to God His due by practising all the duties of religion, continually praising Him, making Him oblations and sacrifices, sanctifying all His feasts, reverencing His Temple, honouring His Priests. In a word, he gave himself wholly to God, and for His glory he would willingly have shed his blood. To men he rendered their due by respecting them in their property, their honour, and their life.

Joseph indeed was poor, but he was not a beggar; neither, because he worked at a trade which implied manual labour, need his state in life be regarded either as mean or contemptible. With the Hebrews, who still retained many of the simple and primitive customs of the Patriarchs, the profession of an artisan, if not noble or distinguished, was yet far from being esteemed as the lowest. The arts were respected as useful to society; and a good artificer was preferred to the richest merchant. Moreover, every father of a family was bound by the law to make his children learn some trade, even if they did not require to practise it, in order that they might not take to dishonest practices or become a burden to others. The employment which Joseph adopted was one that our Divine Master Himself did not disdain to practice in His youth, that He might set us an example of humility and laborious industry.

Thus, in this our age, when the question of the working classes is so prominently before the world, and certain evil teachers are abroad who would make them regard their condition as a misfortune and a wrong, and urge them to seek redress by forcibly appropriating the goods of others, it has pleased God to exhibit Joseph in all his glory as the most sublime model of the labouring man, so that all may turn their eyes upon him, learn from him their true dignity as Christian artisans, and, faithfully imitating his virtues, find under his patronage health to labour and needful employment for the support and maintenance of their families.

Let us admire, then, the profound humility of St. Joseph, who, although, he came of royal blood, preferred the humble and laborious occupation of a carpenter to any other profession more noble and agreeable, in order the better to please God by a hidden and toilsome life, and avoid those perils which often come with a more elevated position in the social scale. Joseph, the scion of Kings, from voluntary humility condemned his hands, worthy of bearing a regal sceptre, to wield instead the hatchet and the hammer, or rather, he consecrated with his holy hands all the instruments of labour, teaching clearly thereby that it is the duty of all who in this transitory life have to gain their daily bread by the sweat of their brow to regard their life of toil as providentially assigned to them, in the mercy of God, to be the means by which they may work out their eternal salvation and secure to themselves an exalted position in the court of Heaven.