Father's Friday, 5/01/2020 Message

I will be a little long today in my writing, as I want to tie some things together as it pertains to understanding how the things we do in our daily lives of work are meant to be seen as being done in cooperation with God. While today is devoted to celebrating the Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker, it is also First Friday, when devotion to the Sacred Heart is celebrated, and as the beginning of the Month of May, we honor Our Blessed Mother in many ways, beginning with the Consecration this afternoon at 3:00. 

The Memorial today was instituted in 1955 by Pope Pius XII to emphasize the dignity, value, and meaning of human work in the eyes of God, and, so, that we have an intercessor, model, and, protector.  In our current situation with the battle against Covid-19, good news is coming each day with advances towards a vaccine, and therapeutic medications. Let us thank God for His inspiring with the wisdom and intelligence all those involved in these advances. I will conclude with some statements from Paragraphs 33 and 34 of a Document from Vatican II, called, Gaudium et Spes,: "33. Through his labors and his native endowments man has ceaselessly striven to better his life. Today, however, especially with the help of science and technology, he has extended his mastery over nearly the whole of nature and continues to do so. In the face of these immense efforts which already preoccupy the whole human race, men agitate numerous questions among themselves. What is the meaning and value of this feverish activity? How should all these things be used? To the achievement of what goal are the strivings of individuals and societies heading? The Church guards the heritage of God's word and draws from it moral and religious principles without always having at hand the solution to particular problems. As such she desires to add the light of revealed truth to mankind's store of experience, so that the path which humanity has taken in recent times will not be a dark one. 34. Throughout the course of the centuries, men have labored to better the circumstances of their lives through a monumental amount of individual and collective effort. To believers, this point is settled: considered in itself, this human activity accords with God's will. For man, created to God's image, received a mandate to subject to himself the earth and all it contains, and to govern the world with justice and holiness;(1) a mandate to relate himself and the totality of things to Him Who was to be acknowledged as the Lord and Creator of all. Thus, by the subjection of all things to man, the name of God would be wonderful in all the earth.(2)This mandate concerns the whole of everyday activity as well. For while providing the substance of life for themselves and their families, men and women are performing their activities in a way which appropriately benefits society. They can justly consider that by their labor they are unfolding the Creator's work, consulting the advantages of their brother men, and are contributing by their personal industry to the realization in history of the divine plan.(3)

Thus, far from thinking that works produced by man's own talent and energy are in opposition to God's power, and that the rational creature exists as a kind of rival to the Creator, Christians are convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God's grace and the flowering of His own mysterious design. For the greater man's power becomes, the farther his individual and community responsibility extends. Hence it is clear that men are not deterred by the Christian message from building up the world, or impelled to neglect the welfare of their fellows, but that they are rather more stringently bound to do these very things.(4)"

Let us pray for each other. 

God bless you,
Fr. Robert