As we celebrate Labor Day this week, we take it as a time to honor those who have worked and sacrificed to promote better working conditions for laborers. As Catholics, we can be proud of our heritage. In 1891, at a time when many religious leaders were urging workers not to organize, Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical entitled Rerum Novarum (translated “concerning new things”) in which he affirmed the rights of labor to organize and to work for living wages and proper conditions. This encyclical was the beginning of a strong tradition of Catholic social teaching in other areas, though labor continued to be an important aspect of the teaching.
Such reflections have given rise to a deeper understanding of what our labor is all about. In the Second Vatican Council, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) stated, “Far from thinking that works produced by man’s talent and energy are in opposition to God’s power, and that the rational creature exists as a kind of rival to the Creator, Christians are convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God’s grace and the flowering of His own mysterious design.” So as we celebrate Labor Day, we begin to see that our work allows us to share in God’s creative power. We can see that gift in the nurse who brings God’s comfort and healing power to the sick, but we can also see it in the men on the smelly truck who take our garbage. We can see it in the teachers in our schools, but we can also see it in the student who, after school, helps us overcome our hunger by asking, “Do you want fries with that?” We can see it in those who do not get paid for their work – the stay-at-home-mom, who does so much for her family and gets so little recognition or thanks, the retired couple who babysit their grandchildren or those who are sick or elderly and who cannot do much beyond the important work of praying for all of us.
In a poem entitled “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” Robert Frost describes a man chopping wood when two tramps come up who want the job simply because they need the money. While recognizing their need, Frost concludes the poem: “But yield who will to their separation, / My object in living is to unite / My avocation and my vocation / As my two eyes make one in sight. / Only where love and need are one, / And the work is play for mortal stakes, / Is the deed ever really done / For Heaven and the future’s sakes.”
Father H
