Thursday, May 1, 2014
4th Week of EasterJoseph the Worker
1st Reading: Gen 1: 26- 2:3 or Col 3:14-15, 17 23-24
Gospel: Mt 13:54–58
Jesus went to his hometown and taught the people in their synagogue. They were amazed and said, “Where did he get this wisdom and these special powers? Isn’t he the carpenter’s son? Isn’t Mary his mother and aren’t James, Joseph, Simon and Judas his brothers? Aren’t all his sisters living here? How did he get all this?” And so they took offense at him. (…)
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
“Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another,” said Anatole France in ‘Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard’. Is relaxation, then, just another form of work such that even when human beings relax they work? This makes sense. But we cannot conclude that human beings are bound to perpetual work like carabaos or bulls to a yoke. Work was never meant to be a scourge. When God created the world with his own hands, work became a godly act and therefore sacred. When humans work they participate in a godly act. It was only when the first woman disobeyed God when work took a different meaning. To punish her and her man God said: “You shall eat by the sweat of your brow.” It was then that work became a scourge for human beings. St. Paul later would echo this in his letter to the Thessalonians. He wrote: “If any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
But God sanctified work again when he sent his Son to the world through a family of workers headed by St. Joseph the carpenter. St. Joseph’s feast today draws great significance from the fact that Jesus too embraced Joseph’s profession. As Jesus was known in the community as ‘son of a carpenter’, born in a wooden manger and later died nailed to a wooden cross, work became Jesus’ identity. By this identity he restored dignity to work making it a source of salvation for those who live by the sweat of their brow.
Let us respect work then much as we respect God. Drug lords must reform and look for decent source of income to feed their children. Employees must be honest in the workplace even without the supervisor looking. The self employed must be honest with their products and services. In Luke 3:10-14 we read that honesty in work was also the advice of John the Baptist to the people came to him for baptism and had asked him what they should do in order to be saved.
God had already restored dignity to work as source of our salvation. How sad and pathetic that many people continue to embrace the kind of work that leads them to damnation, some by choice, others by the evil design of their employers. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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