-
September 1, 2022Do you ever think it’s strange that we set aside a day to honor work, Labor Day? We typically think of work as something to avoid. We hate Mondays because they signal the start of the work week, and we love Fridays because they signal the end of the work week. We spend tremendous amounts of time, effort, and money on technologies that reduce the amount of work it takes to get the job done. So, why do we set aside a day to honor “labor.”
We honor work because of the worker. In 1981, Pope St. John Paul II wrote an encyclical, Laborem Exercens, on human work. He said, “Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, comes ‘more a human being’” (LE, 9). Works gives us dignity and purpose in life. When people don’t have work, or aren’t treated with dignity in their work, they can fall into depression and listlessness. Whatever work we do, whether manual labor, intellectual work, or housework, helps us to realize our own dignity and work to achieve something. One of the most fulfilling experiences I have in life is to see some difficult work through to completion, like when I was a young boy helping my uncle build and install a gate on my Nanny’s fence, and as a priest finishing writing a difficult homily. Those experiences drive us to accomplish more and bigger things, to push ourselves past our limits.
We think of work as trying to accomplish some goal, and then we can rest, but work itself is good. In fact, work was commanded by God in the book of Genesis, before the fall, when He told Adam to “fill the earth and subdue it,” and placed him in the garden “to till it and keep it.” Work isn’t something that God forces on man as a punishment for His sins, but it’s part of the reason for our creation. God spent six days creating the universe and rested on the seventh day, and man follows the same pattern of work for six days and rest on the seventh. In the Ten Commandments, the Third Commandment says, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates” (Ex 20:9-10).
We rest on the seventh day so that we can do a higher sort of work, the work of worshipping God. Our work provides our “daily bread,” but we rest one day out of seven because we realize that “man does not live by bread alone,” or else that Jesus provides the bread that leads to eternal life. This is an act of trust in God, as we tell Him that we trust Him to make up for the work that we could have gotten done on that day but didn’t, because we were focused on something more important, namely, God and family.
Today we should recognize the dignity of our work. Our work can directly help other people, it can help us to become better people, and it allows us to share in God’s creative work, but we also know that work can sometimes be “toil,” and that there are many people that don’t get to choose what sort of work they do but have to do any work they can get to put bread on their tables. So, thank you to everyone whose work helps to advance our communities, and may God help everyone to find sufficient and dignified work.
