In the universal Church, and in Carmel in particular, we profess a special devotion – a dedication – to St. Joseph.
St. Teresa, who attributed to St. Joseph her healing from a serious illness in her youth, dedicated an entire chapter in the book of her Life to make a very emotive panegyric of the one whom she considered a father of her soul. In this way, she contributed greatly – with other saints – to firmly establishing St. Joseph in the religious and spiritual “world”, so to say.
However, Teresa couldn’t foresee that this holy man would enter also in the socio-political world, and with great honors. The context of this new development of the figure of St. Joseph is the 19th century. The industrial revolution in course from the end of 18th century was a real transformation of the traditional structure of the society, almost unmoved for centuries. The economic result was a huge success, but the social outcome was – to say the least – a terrible catastrophe: though production increased, workers were more and more abused. Child labor, long hours of work, unsafe work environments and low wages were among the new problems. And these problems affected family life. The Church felt the need to offer a response, especially because one of the results of such a situation was the birth and rising of the communist and socialist ideologies (the communist Manifest was published in 1848). Although pretending to be friend and ally to the worker, socialism eliminated religion, family and private ownership of property. Each individual become a subject of the state, and the state took the place of God.
In such a situation, the Church wanted to offer a Christian vision of work and family, and proposed the figure of St. Joseph, the workman: he was not a servant of the state, nor an oppressed laborer. He was a family man who found his dignity in work as he provided for his family.
As a result of this endeavor of the church, a body of social doctrine began to take shape in the Church. The drama is that this body – really “revolutionary” in many ways – was not taken seriously in society and even in the Church, except for a number of initiatives of short range. Still today is the great “UNKNOWN” for church and society.
In 1955, Pope Pius XII established a feast to honor the laborers in the person of St. Joseph, to combat socialist ideology and restore the dignity of labor. For them and for families, St. Joseph is a just man, a faithful spouse and father, a hard worker, a guardian and protector, a hidden servant of God – faithful in all he did.
