While many of us try to avoid work at all costs, in the Holy Family, it was something that expressed love.
Too often our modern mindset is firmly fixed on the desire to eliminate work from our lives. Technology has only increased this desire, as we hope that the future will provide plenty of leisure, while robots do all the work.
Yet, work is not meant to be absent from human life. In fact, work can be an "expression of love."
This is how St. John Paul II explained work in his encyclical on St. Joseph, Redemptoris Custos.
Jesus, being God himself, could have avoided work and simply snapped his fingers like Mary Poppins to complete tasks.
Instead, Jesus worked and sanctified his work, a sign that it is a pathway to being authentically human. This we see already in Eden, as Adam and Eve worked before Original Sin.
When approaching work, we should look to the Holy Family for inspiration and recognize how it can make us holy.
Work takes on a new meaning when in this context and helps us to see it as a necessary part of human life, not something to be avoided, but to be embraced as an expression of love.
