About Saint Joseph

Like Saint Joseph, we are all workers, regardless of the occupation that we might have. It is the will of God that all of us spend our days in work. We find peace and holiness in work done with love for God. No matter what our task in life, when we do it with a spirit of joy and honesty, we bring dignity to our labour.

We have an example in the lives of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Their lives of unity and love in the house of Nazareth brought nobility, dignity and merit to human labour. As we imagine the daily routine of a family of that period, we can see Mary doing the ordinary chores of a mother and wife of her time. We can reflect on the hardships that Joseph endured to support Mary and Jesus. We can image Jesus doing his part in helping his parents provide the necessities of daily life.

The Holy Family is an excellent example to us of working in love and unity, With the example of Saint Joseph, model of honorable Christian labour, how can we ever shirk our task or look down on it? On the contrary, we should always strive to emulate the example of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. If we do not have work that brings us dignity or a just wage, let us implore the intercession of Saint Joseph for the conversion of the workplace. If we have family and friends who are out of work and facing great hardships, let us implore Saint Joseph to come to the aid of those in need. Saint Joseph knows what it is like to search for work to support a family. It has always been a tradition in the church to call upon Saint Joseph for such a necessity. May Saint Joseph help us to transform our daily labours into acts of love and goodwill.

Saint Joseph, patron of all Christian workers, pray for us who have recourse to your intercession. For the love you have for Jesus and Mary, hear and grant our request.

Saint Joseph Church - a short history

In the 19th century, Singapore was already a thriving port city. While the British ensured that there was money to be made, and jobs aplenty, their jurisdiction of the country extended mainly to the city area. The British authorities cared little for what happens in the interior of the island as long as the gambier and pepper found there made their way to the town itself.

Life in the jungle was fraught with danger with the activities of robber bands and secret society gangs filling up the gaps in jurisdiction left by the British. Yet filling up this vacuum is also the Catholic Church. Heroic priests brought the faith to the Chinese coolies in the interior. They told them of a God who loved them and had become a man, and who reigns not by power, terror and fear so typical of the secret societies and robbers they encounter but through love. They showed their love by living simply with the people, listening to their difficulties, burying their dead, building schools for their children and acting as intermediaries with the British authorities. In 1846, Fr. Anatole Mauduit, of the MEP who had arrived in Singapore two years earlier built a chapel dedicated to St Joseph. By the 1850s, the Church has grown in numbers sufficient to irritate the secret society chiefs who launched a series of attacks on the Christians in the interiors, spilling the soil of Singapore with the blood of its first martyrs.

Worst still, tigers roamed freely in the interior possibly devouring a coolie a day in the 1850s. When the authorities did not let the body of a poor coolie carried of by a tiger be buried, wanting to use the human corpse as bait to lure the tiger back so that it could be shot, Fr Augustine Perie protested, retrieved the coolies' body and prepared it for decent burial, demonstrating that a poor person should never be treated without dignity, in life and also in death.

Yet through all these, our forefathers persisted and clung to their faith. It's been already 160 years since the founding of St Joseph Church. As we look to the future, let us always remember where we have come from, never to take our faith for granted and let what has been hard won be drowned in a flood of materialism, indifferentism and ingratitude. St Joseph, guardian of the Holy Church of God, pray for us!