St. Joseph with the Infant Baby Jesus, Guido Reni (1635)

IN 1955, Pope Pius XII proclaimed May 1st, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker in response to Communist May Day celebrations, which pandered to the working class while placing it under the merciless control of an oligarchy.  As a laborer who worked with his hands, St. Joseph was everything the Communist slave was not. In Divini Redemptoris, On Atheistic Communism, of March 1937, Pope Pius XI advocated that the battle against world Communism be entrusted to the great saint’s intercession. How far we have come since 1937 and 1955! The Vatican II Church has long since abandoned the fight against world Communism and in fact has joined in its ascendancy under the United Nations and centralized financial forces. That fact should only motivate us the more to honor the saint on this day.

St. Joseph, again, is the ideal representative of the working-class man (and woman), industrious in his labors, strengthened by virtue and unmoved by slogans of class envy. He is the construction worker, the appliance repairman, the plumber, the farmer, the truck driver and the electrician — uncelebrated, but necessary to everyday survival. One of the terrible fruits of the quasi-Communism everywhere has been the deprivation of a living wage to the working man so that his wife must now work outside the home too and, with feminism and state control of the family, he has lost any privilege as head of his home. His family, in many cases, has been blown apart or never really established, replaced by a series of temporary connections and confused offspring — or perhaps just a nice dog (cheaper in the long run.) More and more, he can’t even dream of buying a house (while his neighbor from India can). He’s offered bread and circuses — marijuana, alcohol, sports, online gambling, video games, tattoos, rock music — in return. The goal of the universal state is to animalize the working man (and working woman). The whips and chains of ancient slavery were better.

From Divini Redemptoris:

To hasten the advent of that “peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ” so ardently desired by all, We place the vast campaign of the Church against world Communism under the standard of St. Joseph, her mighty Protector. He belongs to the working-class, and he bore the burdens of poverty for himself and the Holy Family, whose tender and vigilant head he was. To him was entrusted the Divine Child when Herod loosed his assassins against Him. In a life of faithful performance of everyday duties, he left an example for all those who must gain their bread by the toil of their hands. He won for himself the title of “The Just,” serving thus as a living model of that Christian justice which should reign in social life.

With eyes lifted on high, our Faith sees the new heavens and the new earth described by Our first Predecessor, St. Peter. While the promises of the false prophets of this earth melt away in blood and tears, the great apocalyptic prophecy of the Redeemer shines forth in heavenly splendor: “Behold, I make all things new.”

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