St. Joseph the Worker, Saturday – 1st May 2021 — Gospel: Jn 14,7-14
Doing Father’s Works
Pope Pius XII established the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1, 1995 as a counter-celebration to the communists’ May Day. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church by Pope Pius IX, the church celebrates this year as the year of St. Joseph. This silent saint, who was given the noble task of caring and watching over the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, now cares for and watches over the Church and becomes a model for all the dignity of human work. Jesus, too, was a carpenter. He learned the trade from his father and spent his early adult years working side-by-side in Joseph’s carpentry.
In the Gospel, Jesus has an equal status with the Father and so he makes an affirmation, ‘to see him is to see the Father’. It is a claim that he is the unique revealer of the Father. The believer, therefore, cannot separate faith in the Father from faith in Jesus and knowing Jesus is to know the Father. In saying “from now on” (14,7b), Jesus wants his disciples to be secure of the present and the future, because of their relationship with him. However Philip’s inappropriate request brings out the continuous misunderstanding of Jesus’ most definite claims about his identity. As humans, it is hard to grasp what we don’t see. Jesus’ reply to him makes another clear claim that he alone reveals the Father through his works. All that Jesus did was told by the Father and so his works are those of the Father. This answer may not have satisfied Philip’s curiosity, but invited him to believe, to lean on his experience of the Lord, and to trust that Jesus is the revelation of the Father, even if he didn’t understand it.
