The Son of the Carpenter

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Leaving that district, he went to his hometown, and his disciples accompanied him. With the coming of the Sabbath, he began teaching in the synagogue, and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him? And these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Jude and Simon?’” (Mark 6:1-3).

After some time, Our Lord returned to His own hometown of Nazareth with His disciples. Our Lady would have greeted Him with great joy. Possibly it was the first time that His followers had seen the place where He had spent His early years.

In Our Lady's house, they would have been given the opportunity of recovering their strength. You could imagine Our Lady being particularly attentive to them and serving them as nobody else had ever done.

In Nazareth everybody knows Our Lord. They know Him by His occupation and by the family He belongs to; He's the same as anyone else; He's the carpenter, Mary's son. As happens to so many people, Our Lord followed the occupation of the man who was His father here on earth. That's why they call Him “the carpenter's son” (Matt 13:55).

He had taken up Joseph's trade. Possibly Joseph has already died some years previously. His family, watching as it did over the greatest of treasures, the Word of God made man, was simply one more family in the neighborhood, but one that was loved and appreciated by everybody.

In the Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et spes, it says, “The Word made Flesh willed to share in human fellowship. He was present at the wedding feast at Cana. He visited the home of Zacchaeus. He sat down to dine with publicans and sinners. In revealing the Father’s love and man's sublime calling, He made use of the most ordinary events and details of everyday social life, and illustrated his words with expressions and imagery drawn from everyday living.

“He sanctified those human ties; above all, the family ties which are the normal basis of social structures everywhere. He willingly observed the laws of his country and chose to lead the life of an ordinary craftsman of his time and place.”

Our Lord must have remained at His Mother's house for several days. He must have visited other relatives and acquaintances.

“And on the Sabbath, He began to teach in the synagogue.” The people of Nazareth were amazed. A man who made furniture and farm implements, who had often repaired such items for them when they broke down, was speaking to them with astounding authority and far greater wisdom than they had ever heard.

They could only recognize in Him what was human. They could see no more than they had observed for thirty years—the most complete normality. It was hard for them to discover the Messiah behind such normality as this.

Our Lady's occupation similarly was that of any other housewife of her place and her day. She spoke in the particular manner proper to a Galilean woman, and dressed in the same way as the women of that region did.

Joseph's workshop, which Our Lord had inherited, would be exactly like others to be found in those days in Palestine. Possibly it would have been the only one in Nazareth. It would have smelt cleanly of sawn and planed wood.

Joseph would certainly have charged the usual rates for his work. Maybe he made it easier for people who may have had financial worries. But being “a just man” (Matt. 1:19), he charged what was fair.

The tasks carried out in that little workshop were those proper to that trade. They did a little of everything. Their work might involve constructing a beam, making a simple cupboard, mending a crooked table, planing down a door which would not close.

They would hardly have made wooden crosses there, as depicted in some pious paintings. Who would have placed such an order as that? They didn't import timber from heaven but had it supplied from the neighboring forests.

The inhabitants of Nazareth “took offense at Him” (Mark 6:3). But Our Lady would not have done so. She looked on Him with immense love and admiration. She understood Him well.

Meditation on this passage of the Gospel, which indirectly reflects Our Lord's early life in Nazareth, helps us to examine whether our ordinary life, filled as a rule with ordinary work and normality, is a way of sanctity, as was the life of the Holy Family.

It will be such a way, if we try to live it with human perfection and honesty, as well as with faith and a supernatural outlook. These were virtues that Joseph would have put into practice in a regular way.

We mustn't forget that by remaining where we are and doing our work here on earth, we're gaining heaven for ourselves, and at the same time helping the Church and the whole of mankind.

Our Lord shows that He's familiar with the world of work—something He would have picked up day in, day out, from the humble, humdrum work of Joseph in his workshop. In His preaching He frequently used images, parables, and comparisons taken from the occupations, trades, and professions engaged in and lived by Himself and His fellow countrymen.

José Luis Illanis, in his book On The Theology of Work, says “Those who hear him understand the language he uses very well. Jesus did His work in Nazareth with human perfection, which means finishing it off thoroughly, and carrying it out with professional competence. That's why, when He returns to His hometown, He's identified by His trade as the carpenter. Today He teaches us the superlative value of ordinary life, of work, and of the tasks we have to carry out each day.”

If our dispositions are really sincere, God will always grant us the supernatural light to imitate Our Lord's example, and to learn from Joseph, from those ordinary simple things that he did every day.

We will seek not only to accomplish our work well but through it, willingly and lovingly, to practice an abundant self-denial and sacrifice—part and parcel of giving good service.

Our personal examination of conscience before God and our conversation with Him will often turn to those tasks that occupy so much of our time. We have to have the courage to consider this matter deeply.

We have to do our work conscientiously, making our time fruitful without giving way to laziness. We must sustain our desire to improve our professional preparedness each day, to look after the details of our daily tasks, to embrace with love the cross and the weariness that each day's toil brings with it.

Work, any honest work done conscientiously, makes us sharers in Creation and co-redeemers with Christ. St. John Paul II, in his encyclical, Laborem exercens, the Exercise of Work, says, “This truth by which man through work participates in the work of God Himself, his Creator, has been particularly brought to the fore by Jesus Christ, by that very Jesus, before whom many of His first hearers in Nazareth were astonished and said, ‘Where did this man get all this? How did He come by such wisdom?’”

Paul VI says, “The years Jesus spent in Nazareth are an open book where we learn to sanctify each day's occupation. Even enforced absence from work, as through illness, for example...is a situation willed or permitted by God so that we may practice the supernatural and human virtues.”

St, Paul says to the Colossians, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). We can ask St Joseph to teach us to work competently and to co-redeem through our work.

The Book of Proverbs says, “Show me a man who does a good job and I will show you a person who is worthy of the company of kings” (Prov 22:29).

One of the goals of our life, of ordinary lay people in the middle of the world, should be to be somebody who does a good job and is known for doing that good job. Joseph must have been such a person.

The astonishment of Our Lord's neighbors in Nazareth—“Is not the carpenter's son?” (Mark 6:3)—is a revealing detail that throws a great deal of light on His life, and also on that of St. Joseph. It reveals to us that the greater part of the Redeemer's life was taken up by work, like the lives of all people.

Our work is not a punishment; it's a means that God has given us to grow ourselves and also to help the world to develop. The task that Our Lord carried out day after day was an instrument of redemption, like all of Christ's actions.

A lady asked me once, Father, when I turn on my computer, can that be redemptive? And the answer is yes. Every little action that we do as part of our work that's offered to God, that's united to the sacrifice of the Mass of each day, becomes redemptive; takes on a new value.

Even though it was simple human work, specifically that proper to a carpenter in a small town, who would have to do many similar jobs, it could be, and was, converted into actions which were of redemptive value because they were performed by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made man.

Through our Baptism, we are called to be another Christ. St. Josemaría liked to say that we have to make of each day a Mass, and our work to offer ourselves completely.

I heard a man saying once how he was at a board meeting from nine in the morning till five in the evening. He was put on the spot many times during those hours. It was a very intense day of work. When he came out after that day and that meeting, he felt totally exhausted. It felt like he'd never felt so exhausted in the whole of his life.

He remembered those words of St. Josemaría that we have to try and make each day of work a Mass. He said he felt like this day had been like a Mass.

Everything we do can come to acquire great value. It can turn all honest human work into a work of co-redemption. Even though in man's estimation it might be lowly and unimportant, our work, if it is united to Christ, acquires a value beyond compare.

Fulton Sheen used to say that one time in the 1960s he was on his way to the Second Vatican Council, and he was standing at a bus stop early one morning in Rome. There was a street cleaner who was sweeping the streets, and he began to engage him in conversation:

What time did you get up this morning?

Four. What time will you finish your work tonight?

Nine. How many hours will you work today?

Fifteen. What is your philosophy of life?

The street cleaner said, Father, if I push this brush with more love of God than the love of God with which you're going to the Second Vatican Council, then God loves me more. Fulton Sheen said that man was right. The value of our work comes not from the type of work that we do, but from the love with which we do it.

The very tiredness that any kind of work brings with it, and which is a consequence of original sin, takes on a new meaning. What seemed a punishment is redeemed by Christ, turned into a mortification which is very pleasing to God, which serves to purify us of our own sins, and to share in the co-redemption of the whole of mankind with Our Lord.

Joseph would have taken holy pride in his work, doing a good job, and finishing things well. Our Lord wants us also to take a similar holy pride in whatever it is that we're doing.

You'll find here the root of the deep difference between human work done by a pagan and that done by a Christian, which, as well as being properly finished off like any other, is offered in union with Christ.

Union with God, which we seek in our daily work, offering it at the start, offering it again when we get distracted, and offering it at the end—that's how we sanctify our work. It'll help us to strengthen our resolution to do everything only for the glory of God and the good of souls.

Deo omnis gloria, all the glory to God. It doesn't depend on whether things work out well or don't work out well. We offer Our Lord that effort, that desire.

The prestige which we're properly able to enjoy from doing a good job will attract the best workers to our side and we'll have abundant help from heaven to start many other people along the way of an intense Christian life, so that their work also comes to mean more to them.

If we act in this way, the sanctification of our work and our effort to carry out apostolate in our daily work will run parallel in our lives.

Another key aspect of the sanctification of our work is the sanctification of other people around us. We see souls. God has placed me here in this particular profession, in this particular office or place of work, so that I can be an apostle, a missionary.

This is the role of the ordinary, baptized layperson in the middle of the world carrying out their Christian vocation. If we look at our work in that way, and if we find that our work is truly a source of souls to bring closer to God, and that we're carrying out an effective apostolate, that's a very clear sign that we're really working with rectitude of intention. We're working in the right way with the right dispositions.

St. Joseph would have taught Jesus everything that he knew. He would have done this gradually, as that Child whom God Himself had entrusted to him grew up. One day he might have explained to Him how a plane was used; another day a saw; then the different kinds of chisels. Our Lord “grew in wisdom and age and grace before God and men” (Luke 2:52).

Theology tells us that Christ had two types of knowledge. He had supernatural knowledge, whereby He knew everything, but He also had human knowledge. And in His human knowledge, He was able to grow, little by little.

In some ways, every human person has two types of knowledge. Maybe you have a knowledge of the sea that you've never seen, or a child, before he goes to the sea or the mountains. But then when he goes there, he sees the sea or the mountains differently, with a different type of knowledge. In some ways, you could say that in the human mind, two different types of knowledge exist side by side.

It's not so difficult for us to imagine how Christ could have had two different types of knowledge also in His intellect: one, whereby He knew all things; and the other, whereby little by little He learned things according to His human intellect.

Our Lord would soon have learned to distinguish the different sorts of timber, and which types of wood should be used for each different job. He would have enjoyed His work, enjoyed learning new things, and had a desire to grow in that knowledge.

Our Lord would naturally have followed all the instructions of St. Joseph as to how to look after his equipment, to sweep up the wood shavings on the floor and the sawdust at the end of the day, and leave to his tools tidily and in order, in their proper place. From Joseph, He would have learned how to work with order.

In our workplace, we also have to try and impose order. Maybe as the day goes on, workplaces by nature tend to get a bit disordered. But we have to go back and reorganize our desk, our drawers, maybe our kitchen, or wherever it is that we work, so that there's order there. It’s part of and parcel of working with the virtue.

In these days and weeks of St. Joseph, when we can turn to him and ask him to teach us how to work and to love our occupation and our profession, whatever it may be. We can ask him to have greater desires to do a good job, to learn more things about our work, to grow to have a greater competence.

We're not all called to be geniuses, but we are all called to be competent, to know our job, to give good service, to double-check our work so that the client is happy, so that something hasn't escaped our notice.

We should be happy to get feedback. Organizations are services that look for feedback. That's a very good sign. It's a sign they want to improve; they want to be better. They know that the little things that other people may notice or pick up can help them improve their service.

All professional work is a service, and Joseph would have been very good at that type of service. He's an outstanding teacher of how to work well because he taught his trade to the Son of God. And so, if we entrust our working days and hours to St. Joseph, we learn a lot from him.

If we love our daily work, being there on time, finishing on time, taking care of details, being interested in people around us, seeing how we can bring them closer to God, then we'll do our work well, with professional competence. And then it will become part of the whole task of redemption as we offer it to God.

As St. Joseph worked in that way, Our Lady must have looked on with pride as she saw Jesus learning to work well from him who was her husband and foster father of her Child, whom she loved so much.

Mary, may you help us to keep our eyes on St. Joseph and to learn all the wonderful things from him that he has to teach us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JOSH