Work

Saint Joseph was the model worker.   There is no other Saint to my knowledge with that title "The Worker".  
This blog provides the perspective of an average Catholic layman who works for a living.  I am not a professional blogger, a person who gets paid for doing this (though I can always dream lol, we know for sure Joseph did [see Matthew 1:18-25]....but I digress.)   I work and get paid by an average American company.
My company is what is commonly called a "broker".   In a sense, my company "brokers" deals between customers like Wal-Mart and Kroger, and clients like Smuckers and Unilever.  (This is not the forum to reveal or discuss my company's name or my specific team's customer and client, but I can discuss privately if you would like. )
My company does this "brokering" at both the corporate and retail level.   I supervise a team of merchandisers who do that at the retail level.   We work with the individual stores to sell in displays, get product orders, and fill the shelves.   That is basically it in a nutshell, nothing too complicated or out of the ordinary.  
Yet, you know what, we can make the ordinary extraordinary.   We can use each moment of every day, each circumstance or situation we find ourselves in at work, as a moment of grace to allow God to use us to spread His Kingdom.  I remember the famous college basketball coach Jim Valvano said one time "God must love ordinary people because he sure made a whole lot of us."   I am not talking about spreading His Kingdom by words, important as that is sometimes, but rather, how we respond to the different situations we find ourselves in, and what we do with them.   Every time we tell a co-worker something positive,  every time we give someone recognition, every time we work with someone who is struggling and help lift them up, every time we face a challenging situation with something positive, we are spreading the Kingdom of God.
This is what keeps me going in my work.  I wake up every morning, and ask how I can make an impact today.  I wake up, find the Lord in prayer, and ask Him to stay close to me throughout the day, no matter how busy I get, so I can always hear His voice calling me gently as He guides me.  I used to be go-getter, and always be pushing to do more and more, and get stressed if things were not going a certain way.   Now, I find myself more being quietly attentive to the Lord, and respond to what He is telling me to do, and I do not get as stressed.  I feel I am accomplishing more this way.  Every moment I have stressed in my life, I could have been doing something constructive.   Now, without that stress, I am doing something constructive more often and truly participating in God's recreation of the world that he began in His Son.  We get more done by following Him than we do without Him, believe me.

For some reason, I cannot imagine Saint Joseph allowing stress to get to him as he worked.  My guess is that he did not get stressed too often as he does not strike me as that kind of person, but I could be wrong.  If he did, I imagine he turned to the Lord in prayer to help him deal with it (or he just talked to his Divine child, and his sinless wife, and I guess that could always help :)) .   Joseph struck me as a quiet man, and although being quiet does not necessarily mean one is not stressed, I think chances are he lived most of his days with an inner calm and tranquility, knowing the Lord was active in his life.  Again, this is just a speculation on my part, not a doctrinal statement.

Saint Joseph the Worker is a model for everyone who works for a living.  Have faith and trust in the Lord, work hard, and God will bless your work for the sake of the Kingdom.

Joseph, model of artisans, pray for us.