This year we missed out on honoring Joseph the Worker.

Thursday, 5/5/16

This should be Ascension Thursday, but the bishops have demonstrated their power by shifting Thursday to Sunday. So, putting off the Lord's Ascension, today we are left with Paul’s move from Athens to Corinth. Arrived there, he found that for neighbors he had a couple named Aquila and Priscilla. Along with all other Jews, the pair had ben banished from Rome  by Emperor Claudius.

Aquila and Priscilla were tent makers, and when they found that Paul had grown up supporting himself as a tentmaker, they asked him to move in with him and to join in their work.

Paul, as young Saul, had been raised to be a Pharisee, and at the same time he worked at his trade as a tentmaker. Now, while the Gospels have very few good things to say about Pharisees, we must give them credit for their working for their  living, rather than being like some of us drawing salaries as representatives of our Religion.

Changing the subject, on May first every year we honor St. Joseph the Worker, and with that, we reflect on the value of doing hard work. But this year with May first having come on last Sunday, we have missed out on acknowledging the value of work.

So, let’s do that now. We humans are born with a fine range  of abilities. We can run, we can memorize, we can swing rhythmically, we can push, lift, rub surfaces clean. And the way we are made, our greatest happiness comes from rightly exercising all these faculties. Conversely, the greatest fault of which we are guilty is in goofing off when we have already goofed off enough.