| On May 1, 1955, Pope Pius XII granted a public audience to the Catholic Association of Italian Workers, whose members had gathered in St Peter’s Square to celebrate their 10th anniversary. They were solemnly renewing, in common, their promise of loyalty to the social doctrine of the Church, and it was on that day that the Pope instituted the liturgical feast of May 1st in honor of Saint Joseph the Worker. He assured his audience and the working people of the world: “You have beside you a shepherd, a defender and a father” in St Joseph, the carpenter whom God in His providence chose to be the virginal father of Jesus and the head of the Holy Family. He is silent but has excellent hearing, and his intercession is very powerful over the Heart of the Saviour. Pope Pius XII expressed the hope that this feast would accentuate the dignity of labor and would bring a spiritual dimension to labor unions. May 1 is celebrated in Communist countries as the Day of the International Solidarity of Workers. Today we should pray for atheistic Communism's influence to cease and a proper application of the principles explained by Leo XIII in Rerum novarum http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13rerum.htm (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13rerum.htm) to be the guide used by nations. . This feast of St Joseph the Worker on May 1, the first day of the month dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, was to counterbalance the May Day celebrations of the Communists. It is exceedingly appropriate that the Church, which has promoted the cause of justice for workers should honor the foster father of Jesus and, by extension, all workers under his patronage in opposition to dialectical materialism. . |
| This is the prayer to Saint Joseph, Patron of Workers: . O glorious patriarch, Saint Joseph, humble and just craftsman of Nazareth, you gave to all Christians, but particularly to us, an example of a perfect life of assiduous work and of admirable unity with Mary and Jesus. Help us in our daily work so that we might find in it an effective means of glorifying our Lord, of sanctifying ourselves and of being useful to the society in which we live. Obtain for us from our Lord, O beloved protector, humility and simplicity of heart, attachment to work, benevolence towards those who work with us, compliance with the divine will in the difficulties of this life and joy in bearing them, consciousness of our specific social mission and the sense of our social responsibility, a spirit of discipline and prayer, docility and respect for our superiors, fraternity towards our equals, support in times of stress, charity and indulgence for our dependents. Help us to follow your example and to keep our sight fixed on Mary, our Mother, your gentle wife. May we never avert our eyes from Jesus, who worked with you at your carpenter's bench, so that we may in like manner lead peaceful and holy lives on earth, the prelude to the eternally happy one which awaits us in heaven for ever more. Amen. |
I agree that the "Traditional" Feast of St Joseph leaves something to be desired, as it appears to postdate the missal of 1570. That being said, the "Feast of St Joseph the Worker" is horrendous. Why? Because, now, in 2017, some 30 years after the "collapse of communism", who celebrates the Soviet "Mayday"? Pius XII was great at politics, terrible at liturgy. The liturgy should reflect eternity, which is unchanging, and not temporality, which is a continual tempest of disordered human events. Using the liturgy as a platform to oppose political events is so very horribly uncatholic. Pius V, to be sure, instituted the Feast of the Holy Rosary to commemorate Lepanto. But today, nobody cares about Lepanto, but the Holy Rosary gains relevance with each passing year. But St Joseph the worker, while certainly an object of sanctity, is an intrusion into the established feasts and cycles of Holy Mother Church., and a violence to Tradition. And the reason for its institution is even worse. Imagine what we would have today if all the popes added just one feast politicizing the liturgy, or re-arranging it for "their times". We would have a temporal church.but Theodore Roosevelt died almost 40 years before there ever was a Pius XII??
The supporters of Pius XII are supporting a Pope who started us down the road to liturgical anarchy, by trying to make the church "relevant" to the modern world, rather than making modern Catholics relevant to the Mother of their Salvation. If Pius XII would have paid more attention to Our Lady of Fatima and less attention to Theodore Roosevelt, the world might be a vastly better place today, and Americans might be vastly less brainwashed.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us, you are our only hope.