Work, Mental Health, and the Gift of Becoming: Lessons from St. John Paul II on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker
“Daddy, why do you have to go to work?”
For about a week or so, my daughter Maggie stopped me just before I left for work and looked up at me with her wide, pleading eyes to beg me to stay with her and play.
Maybe it was the way she said it or the tears that welled up in her eyes as she anticipated my answer, but every time she asked, it felt like my heart would crack a little.
Part of me wanted to say yes — to scoop her up and spend the day lost in laughter, sidewalk chalk, and playing doctor.
But another part of me knows, with deep conviction, that it is best for me and best for her that I leave, work hard, and work well while I am gone. And that part of me — the one that is confident in the necessity of work — is one formed by the example of St. Joseph the Worker and the wisdom of St. John Paul II.
In the modern world, if you attempt to do any research on work and mental health, the primary discourse revolves around the mental distress caused by work and the need for more workplace mental health benefits.
In a survey of American workers, 81% of those surveyed listed their workplace as the source of at least one mental health challenge. And 83% of respondents suggested that they would be looking for better mental health benefits in their next role.
The numbers don’t surprise me. I’ve been a part of a toxic work environment in the past, and I have experienced firsthand the spiritual and emotional toll it can take. But even a toxic work environment doesn’t change the reality that work is essential to thriving as a human being.
Physicians since the time of Hippocrates (circa 400 BC) have cited work as an essential component of a healthy life. And more recent studies have extended the value of work to mental health as well, citing employment as a therapeutic intervention for those suffering from minor to significant personality disorders.
Yet, in this month of May, listed as Mental Health Awareness Month, you are unlikely to see an expert stand tall and say, “One of the best things you can do for your mental health is to go to work, work hard while you are there, and use the fruit of that work for the benefit of another.”
Providentially, however, the Church communicates a different message. The first day of Mental Health Awareness Month is the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker — a man who underwent an intense amount of distress (public ostracization, fleeing to a foreign country to evade the murder of his son, and restarting his business upon his return) and found peace in a daily adherence to the responsibility of work.
Work adds value to your mental and emotional health in at least three transformative ways.
First, it calls you out of selfishness or isolation and pulls you toward the ultimate source of meaning and happiness on earth… self-gift.
In his encyclical on St. Joseph, St. John Paul II highlighted the work of St. Joseph as “the daily expression of love in the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth.” Joseph’s labor — sanding wood, carving beams, fixing tables — wasn’t just about producing goods. It was one of the ways he said I love you to Mary and Jesus, day after day. It was how he offered himself to the Father’s will, not with grand gestures, but with the steady, faithful rhythm of providing, protecting, and building a home.
Love often isn’t flashy or Instagrammable. It’s the daily, faithful, and responsible commitment to showing up, getting the work done, and providing in a way that says, “I love you this much.”
Today, on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, the Church invites us to recover that vision of work — not as something that steals us away from what matters, but as something that, when ordered rightly, reveals what matters.
The second boost to your mental health that work provides is that it makes you a better human being.
Work is inherently a creative enterprise. By creative, I don’t just mean the creation of goods or services or anything of the sort. I mean creative in the sense that what you do and how you do it shapes who you become.
The implications of this cannot be understated. You are a co-creator, with God, in who you are becoming. And every choice you make matters. When you work hard and work well, you become a better person, and your capacity for love expands exponentially. But the opposite is true too. When you choose to procrastinate, when you choose to lie to get ahead, when you choose sloth over hard work, or when you choose to use people as a means to an end, you become lesser and shrink your capacity for love.
And everyone in your life — especially your family — is worse off because of it.
St. John Paul II wrote: “By work, not only is the transformation of nature achieved, adapting it to human needs, but also, and especially, man becomes ‘more a human being,’ and work contributes to the fulfillment of the human person.”
Work is so important that it shapes the world; it shapes you.
When we approach our labor — whether in an office, a kitchen, a classroom, or a construction site — with a spirit of love and service, we are not just completing tasks. We are forming our souls. We are becoming more generous, more patient, more resilient, more creative. We are participating in God’s own creative love, using our hands and minds to continue the work He began at the dawn of time.
Of course, it’s not always easy to see it that way. There are days when work feels like an interruption of life rather than an expression of it. There are days when the emails never end, the meetings blur together, and the pressures of providing seem to outweigh the joy of it.
But St. Joseph firmly states, by his life and example, that the importance of work doesn’t come from its worldly significance. It comes from the fruit it bears in your life and the lives of those you love. The hidden, ordinary labor of Joseph — unnoticed by the world — was seen by God and experienced as an act of love by Mary and Jesus. And so is yours.
Every spreadsheet, every cleaned room, every patient cared for, every child taught, every small act done with love — it is all seen. It is all woven into the great tapestry of God’s redeeming work in the world.
And finally, the third benefit of work to your mental health is that it creates an avenue of intimacy with God.
Providentially, however, the Church communicates a different message. The first day of Mental Health Awareness Month is the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker — a man who underwent an intense amount of distress (public ostracization, fleeing to a foreign country to evade the murder of his son, and restarting his business upon his return) and found peace in a daily adherence to the responsibility of work.