St. Joseph

Glorious Saint Joseph, you are the pattern of all who work. Obtain for me, please, the grace to work conscientiously and to put devotion to duty before my selfish inclinations. Help me to labor in thankfulness and joy, for it is an honor to employ and to develop by my labor the gifts I have received from almighty God. Grant that I may work in orderliness, peace, moderation and patience without shrinking from weariness and difficulties. I offer my fatigue and perplexities as reparation for sin. I shall work, above all, with a pure intention and with detachment from self, having always before my eyes the hour of death and the accounting which I must then render of time ill-spent, of talents unemployed, of good undone, and of empty pride in success, which is so fatal to the work of God. For Jesus through Mary, all in imitation of you, good Saint Joseph. This shall be my motto in life and in death. Amen.
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I found this prayer to St. Joseph as Patron saint of workers/laborers last summer because I needed to find a way to make my work meaningful to me. At the time I was working retail part time, and then spending 6 to 8 hours a week as data entry and research for children / developmental / educational psychology department on campus. Data entry and folding clothes all day long is difficult to make personal, meaningful and really mind numbing; trying to find a way to make my work account for something or to have an impact on others.

It was also the summer that I first began to become interested in Opus Dei. Again, I have found it to be of renewed interest. I have to seriously and prayerfully consider many things that I have neglected in the past year.

Later this past year, in November and the upcoming elections and ballot propositions in California, there was Prop. 85, which is similar to Prop. 73 from the previous year. Both were efforts to make abortions among minors more difficult to obtain, rather than allowing girls to get them without their parents or legal guardians being aware. They did not pass. I was struggling with the fact and tragedy of abortion in my own family, albeit 19 years ago. Jennifer, a staff member from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship had just had her first-born son over the summer and so I spoke with her. It was then that I named my long-ago aborted brother Joseph. Perhaps, true to his namesake, I should make May 1st, his tentative birthday/day of mourning?

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Thus one may come to see how I do look up to Joseph both in work and in family matters.