By Joseph R. Wood
The new month brings a trio to my liturgical calendar: full moon, First Friday, and the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker.
Tracking astronomical events on my calendar is a vestige from long ago, when the Church had its own astrology. It accepted the possibility of the influence of the heavens on earthly events as natural causes, just as the relative orientation of the earth to the sun causes the seasons, and the sun and moon cause the tides.
The Church has always rejected a deterministic astrology that denies both free will and providential influence in human affairs. Astrologers were often dangerous enemies of the Church. That never prevented frauds from claiming prophetic powers to read the stars and scam the unwary. And not a few people still glance at their horoscope from time to time, something that in Church teaching belongs to the same realm as Tarot cards and Ouija boards.
But wise and foolish people alike have always been captivated by the power of the full moon. It may not turn people into lunatics, but its beauty is hard to ignore. It affects our hearts.
I’m glad my calendar signals the arrival of another full moon. Modern people need the reminder to look up sometimes.
The First Friday devotion arose from the revelation of the promises of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the late seventeenth century. By then, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler had already provided a better understanding of the physical causes and effects of the solar system.
That didn’t stop people from consulting astrologers, but it may have made them more cautious about admitting it. The Church had won the battle against deterministic astrology just as it began a long struggle against the claims of a godless, mechanistic, and exclusively material universe.
The First Friday devotions have helped us preserve the truth of a telos given by God to the order of the universe, which began in a good Creation by a good Creator and unfolds through providential guidance toward its end in that same Creator.
Compared to full moons, astrology, and First Friday promises, today’s feast of Saint Joseph the Worker is a newcomer to my calendar.
Devotion to Joseph was slow to develop in the Church. Some sources claim that Eastern Christians took the lead in the early centuries of the Church. Aquinas noted the necessity of Joseph’s role. But writing in the fourteenth century, Dante does not mention him among the blessed in the Paradiso. His feast on March 19 was only added to the universal calendar in the fifteenth century.
As Elizabeth Lev explains in this month’s Magnificat, in the seventeenth century there was a «seismic shift in artistic representations of Saint Joseph.» From being depicted «as a debilitated geriatric, essentially harmless to women,» artists transformed Saint Joseph into a younger, vigorous man credible as protector of Mary and Jesus, perhaps in the fullness of his working life.
Devotion to Joseph grew rapidly. In 1870, Pope Pius IX declared him Patron and Guardian of the Universal Church, a powerful title if there ever was one, and added a second feast.
In 1955, Pope Pius XII changed the second feast to May 1 and named it for Saint Joseph as Worker. This is a rare example, perhaps unique, of a feast placed on the calendar in response to secular political tides. It was meant to coincide with International Workers’ Day, offering a Catholic alternative to celebrations of atheistic Marxist movements.
Today’s feast is an optional memorial, but it carries greater weight for many Catholics who love this recognition of the holiness of a humble carpenter or house builder.
«The Worker» is one of many titles borne by Saint Joseph. We hear of Silent Saint Joseph, who says nothing in the Gospels but acts promptly at divine command. The «Sleeping Saint Joseph» is a recurring theme for artists.
There is another possible title that suggests a vital aspect of Joseph’s life, in keeping with his work and silence: Contemplative Saint Joseph.
The Desert Fathers kept their eremitic and spiritual lives on track by engaging in the kind of manual labor that Saint Joseph had practiced. Benedictine monks took as ethic the ora et labora, «pray and work.» Their original opus Dei or «work of God» was and remains the Liturgy of the Hours. And they allotted time for study, as well as for manual work in the fields or crafts that sustained the monastery.
That self-sufficiency, far from the world, was essential to Saint Benedict in his Rule for monasteries, just as Joseph was guided to Nazareth, away from civil authorities who would have threatened Christ in his infancy.
Unlike today’s «knowledge workers,» consumed by intellectual tasks, prestige, and advancement in corporations, government agencies, universities, and law firms, contemplatives have usually combined the kind of manual labor of Saint Joseph with prayer and study.
Saint Charles de Foucauld emphasized the contemplative nature of the Holy Family. He encourages us to «reserve some hours for pure Adoration and Contemplation of Jesus, as Mary and Joseph did in Bethlehem and Nazareth.»
The pattern of contemplative life throughout Church history follows the life of the contemplative Holy Family. Saint Charles urges us, as Joseph embarked on the flight to Egypt, to «do what God wants, but do it as Mary and Joseph did, with eyes fixed on Jesus and souls always united to him.»
Perhaps the Three Magi who visited Jesus in Bethlehem, sometimes characterized as astrologers, taught Joseph something about contemplating the true Cause of the universe, announced by a star. Joseph died, according to tradition, before the Friday that would eventually be known as Good Friday, from which First Fridays would later flow.
But in all the events of his life, Saint Joseph the Worker, Silent and Contemplative, must have looked up occasionally after a hard day’s work to appreciate the beauty of a full moon, while guarding and contemplating Him for whose work it was created and would be, like all Creation, redeemed.
About the author
Joseph Wood is a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America. He is a pilgrim philosopher and an accessible hermit.