As you get up and get ready each day, do you take time to think about how the work you’re about to do is holy?
I think many of us forget that in the hustle and bustle of life. As we celebrate Labor Day, it’s a good time to remember that we can sanctify all that we do, from the mundane to the magnificent.
Labor Day may be a secular holiday, but it reminds me of the dignity and sanctity of work. Congress passed a law in 1894 making the first Monday of September “Labor’s Holiday.” That was three years after Pope Leo XIII’s famous encyclical Rerum Novarum.
While the two were not connected, they came at a time when the Industrial Revolution was changing the nature of work; workers' rights and needs were becoming a matter of public concern. Tensions between workers and employers were growing.
The change was dramatic. Between 1870 and 1900, the number of Americans working in manufacturing more than doubled, from about 2.8 million to more than 6 million. More workers left farms and entered the rapidly expanding industrial economy.
As often happens with change, there were abuses. Wages were not always fair, particularly for women and children. Working conditions were often poor. People struggled to get by.
Pope Leo’s encyclical helped establish what became the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching. It emphasized the dignity of the worker and the rights and responsibilities of both workers and employers. Having a good job and being treated fairly in that job are part of the dignity God wants for us.
Every year at this time, I think especially of and pray for those without work. I saw many people who had no job during my time at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington. Our priorities were to help them find work and a place to live. When those two essentials were going in the right direction, people began to rediscover their God-given dignity and a renewed sense of purpose and accomplishment. They were doing good things for themselves and their families.
Work is obviously a big part of our lives. We spend a huge portion of our days working, and that doesn’t count all the other work we do, from making our beds to taking care of children and grandchildren. What a gift it is to sanctify that work and offer it to God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that work can even become part of our participation in Christ’s work of salvation:
“Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. It can also be redemptive. By enduring the hardship of work in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, man collaborates in a certain fashion with the Son of God in his redemptive work. He shows himself to be a disciple of Christ by carrying the cross, daily, in the work he is called to accomplish. Work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ.” (CCC, paragraph 2427)
The priesthood is a blessing for many reasons, one of which is my enjoyment in getting up every day – well, almost every day – to do the work of ministry. It can mean caring for people in need, responding to calls, working at St. John’s College High School in Washington as chaplain, helping lead parishes, administering the sacraments, and many other forms of service.
All of this has been and continues to be fulfilling and enjoyable, even as I start to cut back on some of the things I do. You’ve probably heard the saying that you never “work” a day in your life when you love what you do. That sums up 53 years of priesthood for me.
As many of us head back to school and back to work, I am back as chaplain at St. John’s, where my “work” is spending time with young people. Believe me, it’s more joy than labor. They have struggles and issues that burden them, but mostly it’s a blessing and a pleasure to journey with them toward adulthood.
I’ve pretty much decided to retire from St. John’s at the end of the school year and help out where I can in the future. I love what I do, but I will be 80 next summer, and I think it's time.
I don’t expect to stop doing funerals, weddings, and Baptisms. I don’t expect to stop serving the poor in ways that make sense. I plan to remain part of St. Bartholomew’s Parish in Bethesda, where I’m in residence. I still feel called to minister in those ways, and I remain grateful for the opportunities.
What is your work right now? Does it bring you fulfillment? Make you happy? Draw you closer to God?
Whatever it is, work is a gift from God. How we do it is our gift back to God.
May God bless you as we begin another school and work year, and may we bring God more fully into our work this year. The morning offering, which I remember learning as a kid, lets us offer God our “prayers, works, joys, and sufferings.”
Uniting our works to God helps us better love and serve the Lord and our neighbor, which is the ultimate purpose of work. “It is love that gives value to all our works,” wrote St. Francis de Sales. “It is not by the greatness or multiplicity of our works that we please God, but by the love with which we do them.”
(Msgr. John Enzler serves as the mission advocate of Catholic Charities of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and is a chaplain at his alma mater, St. John’s College High School in Washington. He writes the Faith in Action column for the archdiocese’s Catholic Standard and Spanish-language El Pregonero newspapers and websites.)
