"Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.” (Mk 3:35)

This morning I was a little mad at myself.

The painting you see above is one we have in our church and when I look at it I can stare at it for ages – I love it: I think it is beautiful!

I was kind of mad with myself because I couldn’t figure out WHY and HOWCOME I hadn’t taken a photo of it beforehand – to post on my blog for today! …but anyway… now I have taken a photo of it so i’m not mad at myself all that much ;-)

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We (rightly) place lots of importance on Mary but sometimes Joseph gets a little bit of a side bench: he is sooooooo very quiet that it’s quite easy to “forget” him – I often do anyway – and it takes a day like this to actually stop and think and go: OH YES ... ST. JOSEPH WAS A GREAT SAINT!

The Gospels do not record a SINGLE word of what Joseph ever said and yet I doubt he was mute! (…it’s just that his lines never made it to the final text I guess ;-)

Joking apart though, we can, from the Gospels conclude that st.Jospeh was a good worker for people identified Jesus as the son of “the carpenter”:

" Isn’t he the carpenter’s son? "

(Mt 13:55a)

The Church today remembers st.Joseph the worker and as we do, It also teaches us also about the dignity of human work.

He isn’t much spoken of in the Gospel but when he is he's one portrayed as an obedient child of God:

He is the one who "plans" to leave Mary “in all secrecy” because "in no way did he want to discredit her" (Mt 1:19) ...let alone have her stoned!

He is the one who furthermore accepts her lovingly and humbly when asked by the angel to do so. (Mt 1:24)

He is the one who accompanies Mary and the (unborn) child Jesus to Betlehem. (Lk 2:4,5)

He is the one who is caring for the both when this Holy Family is fleeing from Betlehem. (Mt 2:14)

He is the one who comforts Mary as they look for the missing boy Jesus. (Lk 2:41-45)

Indeed st.Joseph must have been a great worker but he was a GREATER worker in that he sought and did his very best to love and serve God. He is one spoken of as "an upright man" (Mt 1:19) in the Gospel...

…and sure enough he is “the carpenter” (Mt 13:55a) who works silently in his little workshop providing for his family!!

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If you read my blog you’ll notice that so far I often gave links by typing out the whole loooooooooooooooong adress. Well two days ago – after 6 months PLUS of 'blogging' – (man I am REALLY slow sometimes!) I discovered that there’s this magical function ;-) which enables me to just type a word and link it rather than put the whole loooooooooooooooooong link! So today I’m using it:

Click HERE to read what the Church teaches on human work.

and/or HERE to go to - and read - a lovely booklet about st.Joseph (published by the Catholic Information Service :-)

and this below, is a video I just found (today) and one which I liked:

This you tube was uploaded/is property of Ipitube)

...or click HERE to view it full screen! (see that is another "thing" I unexpectedly found: you take ‘a’ line out of the “embed” script and - lo and behold - it gives you the video in FULL screen ...magics!!!! ;-)

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…anyway the bottom line is this:

many dads are (unknowingly) holy and for those who are still working on it/continue to work towards holiness st.Joseph’s example is ideal:

he served

quietly and lovingly! :-)