By Deacon Keith A. Fournier
8/31/2008
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
In the United States we celebrate the first Monday of September as Labor Day. It is a day to reflect and relax.The Catholic Church proclaims the dignity, meaning and redemptive value of all human work.
"Work is for man, not man for work. Everyone should be able to draw from work the means of providing for his life and that of his family, and of serving the human community. The primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and beneficiary. By means of his labor man participates in the work of creation. Work united to Christ can be redemptive."
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - During the last years of his service to the Church and the world, the late, beloved Servant of God John Paul II addressed an assembly of the leaders of the “Catholic Action” movement in Italy on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. He used an extraordinary term, referring to what he called the “gospel of work”. I wrote an article on this address years ago. Sadly, I heard from some Protestant Christians who misunderstood the theme, thinking that the Holy Father was speaking of “works”. Nothing could have been more inaccurate. Rather, he was proclaiming a deeper meaning of the effects of grace on the entirety of our human experience; that in and through Jesus Christ, all human work has been transformed.
In proclaiming this gospel of work, John Paul developed a theme that is rooted in the Sacred Scriptures, expounded upon at length in the Christian Tradition and is desperately needed in this age. In 1981 he authored an Encyclical letter entitled “On Human Work” which beautifully presented this Christian vision of the dignity and meaning of human work. We live in an age that has all but lost this Christian vision of the meaning of work. This is not a new problem. It is a part of a larger social and individual malady, a bad fruit of the rupture of human integrity and solidarity wrought by sin.
- Full article here.
- Teaching by Vinny, February 15, 2008 - Take This Job and Shove It! - Catholic Teachings on Work
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