St. Joseph The Worker

Image: Merode Altarpiece (Rt panel), Robert Campin

Happy feast day to all those who toil! From John Paul the Great's Encyclical On Human Work:

Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons.