September 3, 2006

It would seem to be a contradiction: On Labor Day people stop working. It is, though, a way of acknowledging that there is a fine human economy between work and recreation. This summer Pope Benedict XVI addressed the importance of "taking some time off" as an opportunity for self-reflection and getting a right perspective on the purpose of life. One of the modern encyclicals, Laborem Exercens, explains how work is more than a utilitarian function. To work, in whatever kind of job, is to display our dignity as having been made in the image of God. Our rational and imaginative intellect and free will can respond to the Divine Love that made the universe, and be God's agents in building civilization.

When the first man and woman had authority to "name the creatures," they were manifesting their stewardship over creation, not simply by being "at the top of the food chain" but by protecting and properly using all creatures, animate and inanimate. This perspective saves ecology from turning into idolatry of nature. St. John Chrysostom said that labor is a powerful medicine: It exercises all the strengths, physical and moral, with which we are endowed. It can be a poison if it turns in on itself and is exploited for unworthy purposes, as the sordid history of slavery and greed has shown. Then it becomes the "curse" of which the Book of Genesis speaks, but it was not originally meant as such by God. A translation of Homer's Iliad reads: "To labor is the lot of man below/ And when Jove gave us life, he gave us woe." But the true God and Father of us all sent his Son into the world as a carpenter, trained in the shop of Joseph the Carpenter, as a sign that the only labor that is a woe is labor not consecrated to God. In a 1920 letter to the American Federation of Labor, Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore said: "I cannot conceive any thought better calculated to ease the yoke and to lighten the burden of the Christian toiler than the reflection that the highest type of Manhood has voluntarily devoted Himself to manual labor."

The Benedictine Rule requires that monks spend time in manual labor: Laborare est orare — to work is to pray. Even hobbies, crafts, and volunteer work are outpourings of the creative dignity of homo faber — man the builder.

Conversely, but not in contradiction, to pray is to work. "Liturgy" means work. The origin and conclusion of all human work is the "Opus Dei" or "Work of God," which is the united prayer of the Church. Sunday is not a "day off." It is the "day on" which gives focus to the rest of the week. True worship as servants of God saves us from the indignity of being slave to anyone.

Fr. George W. Rutler