March 19 — Feast of St. Joseph
May 1 — Feast of St. Joseph the Worker
Each year when May 1st rolls around, I find myself wondering about it. I'm a cradle Catholic — and there is still so much I don't know. Like why St. Joseph has two separate feast days.
This year, I decided to stop wondering and actually find out.
We celebrate St. Joseph on March 19th, honoring him as husband of Mary, foster father of Jesus, and one of the most extraordinary men who ever lived. Can you imagine what kind of man he must have been — chosen as spouse to the Most Holy Virgin and earthly father to God Incarnate? His patience, his fortitude, his holiness, his purity. We could spend a lifetime unpacking any one of those.
I have a personal tenderness for St. Joseph that goes back to my years as a single mother. In those days, I prayed constantly for the right man to join our family — and I asked St. Joseph's intercession specifically. I felt a strange kinship with Mary in that season. She was perfect and I was certainly not, but we had something in common: we were both waiting on God to provide. I prayed for a husband and father who was patient, faithful, present. Boy, did God answer that prayer with Mike.
So March 19th has always felt personal to me.
But May 1st — that one is newer, and the story behind it is fascinating.
The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker has only been on the Church calendar since 1955. As the Communist movement grew through the mid-twentieth century, May 1st was claimed as May Day — a political celebration of labor and workers' rights, weaponized by the Soviet Union to exalt communism and parade its military power. Pope Pius XII looked at that and essentially said: not so fast.
He reclaimed the day entirely, instituting the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker to remind the world that labor is not merely political or industrial. It can be sacred.
In proclaiming the feast, Pope Pius XII said:
"There could not be a better protector to help you penetrate the spirit of the Gospel into your life… no worker has ever been as perfectly and deeply penetrated by it as the putative Father of Jesus, who lived with Him in the closest intimacy and commonality of family and work."
I love that. The Church didn't argue with the culture. She just offered something truer and deeper.
May 1st, then, is an invitation to look at all of our work through the lens of faith — not just the work that feels meaningful or creative or significant, but all of it. The toddler's mess you've cleaned up five times today. The invoice you don't want to send. The cargo of ordinary, unglamorous tasks that make up most of a life faithfully lived.
St. Joseph did all of that. Quietly, without recognition, in a small town in Nazareth. And it was enough.
He is our patron as we toil. St. Joseph the Worker, pray for us! 🤍
