Worth his wages: sermon on the feast of St Joseph the Worker

By a Dominican Friar   |   30 April 2025

“Wisdom rendered to the just the wages of their labours, and conducted them in a wonderful way; and she was to them for a covert by day, and for the light of stars by night.”

These words form part of the introit of the Mass of this feast. They come from the Book of Wisdom, and they describe how the Israelites were led safely in the wilderness for forty years after they had come out of Egypt. The people of Israel were guided by a pillar of smoke in the daytime, and by a pillar of fire that shone for them in the dark. But the Church, in the introit of this Mass, applies these words not to the Israelites in general but to the man whom she calls elsewhere “the renowned off-spring of David”, namely, St Joseph.

Why does the Church apply these Old Testament words to St Joseph? They suit him well. “Wisdom rendered to the just the wages of their labours.” As we are told on the first page of the New Testament, St Joseph was a just man. Not only did he keep the whole Law of Moses externally, but he had also the supernatural justice of the Holy Ghost in his heart. St Joseph was living by the gospel even before Christ came into the world to preach the gospel.

What then are the labours of St Joseph, for which he received a reward? We can think in the first place of his manual labours. He was a carpenter; although the Greek word used in the bible can mean someone who works with iron and stone, as well as with wood. Since he was a just man, he did his work honestly; he didn’t produce shoddy work. But to do good work all one’s life, always being just in one’s profession or employment, whatever it is, never tricking other people, or shirking one’s task, is already something worthy of a reward.

Yet for St Joseph, that was only the smaller part of his labours. St Paul mentions another kind of labour when he writes to the Thessalonians, and says, “We remember your work of faith and your labour of love.” This was for St Joseph the greater part of his labours. It took faith to believe that he had been chosen as foster-father of the Son of God. For although he was a great saint, even the greatest of them, St Joseph was not conceived immaculate, like the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He had been conceived in original sin. He shared the human condition. St Joseph’s ancestor King David, after he’d received the revelation that one of his descendants would be the Saviour of the world, said, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that thou hast brought me thus far?” And St Joseph himself might well have asked, with even greater wonder, “Who am I, O Lord God, that thou hast done all this for me? Who am I, that thou shouldst even dwell in my house?”

This was St Joseph’s work of faith, and his labour of love. He believed in what God had done for him, and he had a love that corresponded to it. It’s an extraordinary thought: he was worthy to be the spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and even to be the foster-father of God’s Son. 

But the introit of the Mass, after saying that “Wisdom rendered to the just the wages of their labours”, continues, “and conducted them in a wonderful way”. This also is true of our saint. His whole life, he was being led in a wonderful way. Although he’d resolved, as we can well believe, to preserve his virginity, he was led to marriage. An ancient tradition says that a miracle designated him as the appointed spouse of our Lady, like the miracle recorded in the Book of Numbers, when the staff of the high priest Aaron miraculously budded and blossomed. But a virginal marriage was only the start of the wonderful way along which he was led; almost immediately, he discovered that this marriage was to be fruitful, and that as the staff of Aaron had blossomed by a miracle, so the Virgin was with child of the Holy Ghost. 

And his way continued to be strange. He discovered that although the long-awaited Messiah was at last to be born into the world, it would be in a mere cave or stable. Stranger still, although this child was the Word made flesh, they would all have to flee King Herod in the middle of the night, as if God were incapable of protecting His own Son; and then though Jesus had come to be the glory of Israel, they had to go and live in a pagan country, Egypt, where idols were still being worshipped.

When at last they returned to the holy land, Wisdom continued to lead St Joseph along a strange path. He saw that the Lord would not manifest Himself for many years, and that although he himself was the least of the Holy Family, he was to continue to act as its head. He saw that although his own house had become more holy than the temple in Jerusalem, it was to remain unremarkable in the eyes of his fellow Nazarenes. He was learning all the time the lesson that St Paul would later teach the Corinthians: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 

To the very end, St Joseph’s way continued to be wonderful, not only in the sense that he had Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin for his daily companions, at table and at prayer, but also in the sense that his way was different from what anyone hearing about the Incarnation might have expected. He was allowed to die before Christ had opened the gates of heaven; and so, the soul of St Joseph descended to the world below, as once the Joseph of the Old Testament had had to go down into the prison of Pharaoh. Christ permitted even this, to perfect St Joseph in humility, and so as to honour him the more in good time. Since St Joseph humbled himself unto death, our Lord highly exalted him. As the Psalm says, He raises up “the needy from the earth, that he may place him with the princes of his people”.

And finally, some words that the Church uses about our Lady can be applied also in their measure to St Joseph. An ancient prayer for the feast of the Assumption says that God took her from this present world so that she might make intercession for us in heaven. And He has appointed St Joseph also to make intercession for us in heaven. We might even say that St Joseph’s labours continue: as he worked in his hidden way in Nazareth, so now he works in his hidden way in heaven, until the last of the elect is gathered safely home.