Labor Day chance for workers to be with families as God intended

Published: September 1, 2007

By Dr. Linda Webster
St. Mark Church in Monticello

With Labor Day upon us, summer unofficially ends. Novelists and playwrights often use this modern holiday as literary device, foreshadowing a return to the humdrum and prosaic workdays filling the other three seasons.

First proposed in 1882 by a member of the burgeoning labor unions in New York, the idea of acknowledging the contributions of the working men and women with a public demonstration and a picnic caught on quickly.

Labor organizers around New York encouraged members of one after another to organize “working men’s holidays” and, in 1894, Congress made it official. However, the laborer of 1894 and those who labor in 2007 might come from different worlds.

In 1894, workers sweated in dangerous factories, began working at the ages of 12, 10 or even 8 years old, and began toiling before dawn until well after dark. With the advent of child labor laws, workplace safety standards and the emergence of an information economy, the concept of legitimate labor and its place in our Church gains new importance.

Examples of labor from the Old Testament are pretty clear. In Genesis 3:19, we learn that labor produces sweat — “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat.” Ecclesiastes 2:20 gives us a location — “So my feelings turned to despair of all the fruits of my labor under the sun.”

So, those who labor scripturally work outdoors, produce something and devote enough physical energy to their tasks to work up visible perspiration. Yet, in the New Testament, we don’t see Jesus working as a carpenter and those who follow him are called away from their laborious pursuits.

When Martha complains to Jesus about her sister, Mary, who is shirking her share of household labor, Jesus tells her that Mary has made the better choice in choosing to sit and listen to him. (Luke 10:39-42)

So, which is it? Toiling or letting others toil? The Second Vatican Council document the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" ("Gaudium et Spes") clears up the mystery. Human work is always an opportunity to interact with others, to demonstrate respect for one another and to engage in charity.

Whether one works with one’s hands, sweating outdoors under the sun, or spending a quiet couple of hours in front of a high-speed computer crafting a newspaper column, the end result should be the same — an expression of the human person through some occupation.

Section 67 of the document defines work (or labor) as the opportunity to provide for our families, to associate with others for the purposes of human contact (and perhaps evangelization), and to offer to God homage by doing well and fully those tasks we have agreed to undertake.

Those 19th-century labor organizers who thought up the holiday were rock-solid on Vatican II theology, just 80 years too early. The gatherings were designed to allow human beings to connect with one another, both at the picnic grounds and in the public face of the parade. It was a celebration of what labor produced in the persons of those who labored.

Dr. Linda Webster, a member of St. Mark Church in Monticello, has a bachelor’s degree in theology from St. Gregory University in Shawnee, Okla. This article was originally published in Arkansas Catholic Sept. 1, 2007. Copyright Diocese of Little Rock. All rights reserved. This article may be copied or redistributed with acknowledgement and permission of the publisher.