Labor Day is a special holiday set aside to reflect upon the simple yet beautiful truth that human labor gives us dignity and the opportunity to reflect the nature of God, whose own work of creation gave birth to the universe. When we work honestly and do our jobs well, we contribute to the development of our families and society and participate in the work of bringing about God’s Kingdom.
Throughout his pontificate, Saint John Paul II spoke often and eloquently about the meaning and dignity of human labor. In fact, in September of 1981, he wrote an entire Encyclical Letter entitled “On Human Work” (Laborem Exercens). Below are some excerpts from the Encyclical that I think can help to guide our reflections as we observe Labor Day.
Through work man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family.
From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth.
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 fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes "more a human being"
[Men and women] can justly consider that by their labor they are unfolding the Creator's work, consulting the advantages of their brothers and sisters, and contributing by their personal industry to the realization in history of the divine plan."
The Christian finds in human work a small part of the Cross of Christ and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted His Cross for us. In work, thanks to the light that penetrates us from the Resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of "the new heavens and the new earth” in which man and the world participate precisely through the toil that goes with work. Through toil - and never without it! On the one hand this confirms the indispensability of the Cross in the spirituality of human work; on the other hand the Cross which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work itself, from work understood in depth and in all its aspects and never apart from work.