Feast of St. Joseph the Worker May 1

Wednesday is May 1st, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker

Life of Saint Joseph 

—silent, capable and holy
—called by God as a young man to play the most important part in the drama of salvation after Mary, Jesus’ mother
—foster father of Jesus and protector of the Holy Family
In the Gospels, very few details are given to us about the man God chose to raise his Son on earth. Some of the information we know about Joseph comes from legends found in writings from the first six hundred years of Christianity. The saints and great teachers of the early Church reflected on the significance, virtue and holiness of Joseph. Great men and women have had a strong devotion to this saint up to the present time. Popes have entrusted to Saint Joseph the needs of the Church.
And then there are the stories . . . Stories from every century and from diverse places recount the protection of Joseph. Passed down from generation to generation, and enshrined in families, religious communities, and countries, these stories reveal to us the virtues, attitudes, and qualities of Joseph. There is, for instance, the story from the 1800s of the miraculous staircase of Our Lady of Light Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Sisters of Loretto conducted a school in Santa Fe., Twenty years after its founding in 1853, they decided to add a chapel to the campus. It would be patterned after the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, with vaulted ceiling, buttresses, and spires instead of the simple lines of the adobe churches of Santa Fe. Antoine Mouly and his son, architects from France who were already in Santa Fe building the Saint Francis Cathedral, were hired by the sisters to design the chapel. Five years later, when the chapel was completed, everyone realized that a dreadful mistake had been made. There was no access to the choir loft. Carpenters were consulted, but there seemed to be no solution other than installing a ladder to the choir loft or tearing down the structure, both of which were unacceptable. Because the sisters needed the space for their growing student body, they began a novena to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the last day of the novena, the story goes, a man appeared at the convent with a donkey and a toolbox. He was looking for work, he told the sisters, and he asked if he could build a staircase for the chapel. The sisters were delighted. The gray-haired man had only a hammer, a saw, and a T-square.
Months later he finished, and disappeared without waiting for pay or thanks. The superior went to the local lumberyard to at least pay for the wood, only to discover that no wood had been obtained from the yard for the staircase in the school’s chapel.
The circular staircase the mysterious carpenter built is considered today to be an architectural masterpiece. It makes two complete 360-degree turns, yet has no central supporting pole as other circular staircases have. The staircase hangs with no support! Architects who have studied the staircase have said it defies the Law of Gravity. There isn’t a single nail in the structure, only wooden pegs. The splicing of the wood is precise, beyond what would have been possible using the tools of that period. And even more mysteriously, the wood used in the staircase did not come from New Mexico. The sisters were convinced that the carpenter was Saint Joseph himself. The humble, quiet ways of this mysterious benefactor are exactly what one would expect of the foster father of Jesus.

This week's Strength for the Week excerpted from St. Joseph: Help in Life's Emergencies