THE WORD AND THE FEAST

Work your way to heaven

Celebrating St. Joseph the Worker - 1st May 2017

Gen 1:26-2:3; Mt 13:54-58

We are disciples of the Carpenter's Son; that is how the people to refer to Jesus today. We celebrate not just the dignity but the divinity of work today. Karl Marx insisted that Work should be the extension of one's being, not a commodity to be sold or paid for. That is what the Christian perspective holds on too. The first reading from Genesis today presents to us work as participation in the creative power of God. We become co-creators with God when we make our work the expression and extension of our being. It is the way we fulfill the purpose for which we have been created. Infact, that is the way for us to trace the path that God has designed for each of us to reach heaven.

Three tendencies that are directly against it are:

1. Laziness and inactivity: deliberately choosing not to do anything and scheming to be parasitic on the labour of others;

2. Compulsion and burden: looking at work as a compulsion and carrying it out grudgingly, blaming everyone and the situation for the lack of inner joy;

3. Commodification and exploitation: looking at a person as a means through whom things can be produced and sold and commodified and stripping the true dignity of labour from the person.

These are totally anti-Christian attitudes to work. Work shoud become a joyful, conscious and deliberate choice to give of one's best towards building a better place for the entire humanity. In the highly commercialised, globalised, world today, may St. Joseph, the Worker inspire us to work our way to heaven.