March 5 - Our Lady of the Miracle (Italy, 1440)

The month of March is traditionally dedicated to Saint Joseph. Jesus lived his family life with Joseph and Mary in Nazareth, before embarking on his public life and the proclamation of the Gospel. He learned the carpenter trade from Joseph.

Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth. The Gospel specifies the kind of work Joseph did in order to support his family: he was a carpenter. This simple word sums up Joseph's entire life.

For Jesus, these were hidden years, the years to which Luke refers after recounting the episode that occurred in the Temple: "And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them" (Lk 2:51). This "submission" or obedience of Jesus in the house of Nazareth should be understood as a sharing in the work of Joseph. 
Having learned the work of his presumed father, he was known as "the carpenter's son." If the Family of Nazareth is an example and model for human families, in the order of salvation and holiness, so too, by analogy, is Jesus' work at the side of Joseph the carpenter. In our own day, the Church has emphasized this by instituting the liturgical memorial of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1. Human work, and especially manual labor, receive special prominence in the Gospel. Along with the humanity of the Son of God, work too has been taken up in the mystery of the Incarnation, and has also been redeemed in a special way.

At the workbench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of the Redemption.
In the human growth of Jesus "in wisdom, age and grace," the virtue of industriousness played a notable role, since "work is a human good" which "transforms nature" and makes man "in a sense, more human."

Adapted from :
Pope Saint John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos (1989) paragraphs #22 and 23