RBWords

    It seems a little strange to take a holiday to honor work!  Nevertheless the practice exists around the globe.  Is it labor we honor?  Or is it the laborer?  Or both?  In our present national economic situation in which unemployment is very high, there are those who would give anything to be working today!  But today is a "legal holiday" - a kind of secular sabbath.  There are those of us in the U.S.A. who can remember when Sunday was considered to be both a sacred AND secular sabbath on which it was legally forbidden to have stores, restaurants, etc. open for business.  We Catholics of a certain generation remember the prohibition against "servile work" on Sunday, which was meant to be our obsrvance of the Third Commandment to keep holy the Lord's Day.  Today's gospel reading shows Jesus in direct confrontation with religious authorities over what may or may not be done on the sabbath!   The whole thing seems to go back to Genesis and to God resting after six days of labor.  After Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden, they are basically told that labor will be their lot from then on.  However, they were supposed to get the day off on the sabbath!

     Putting Labor Day (or any other "legal holiday") on the same level as the Sabbath may seem like comparing apples and oranges, but I find myself wondering on Labor Day what it is about labor that brings about the necessity to declare certain days off.  Human experience and health teach us the necessity of rest if we are to give our best efforts to labor.  So there is a secular economic basis for maintaining the human resource of labor. The philosopher, Karl Marx, saw this resource as being exploited by the economic system of capitalism and brought the world's attention to this exploitation.  It is not just the need for taking care of the individual worker that is involved, it is that worker's relationship to the work as well.  Labor is an important form of human expression.  The loss of a job is a damaging blow to human self-respect.  To Christians, being made in the image and likeness of God, means that all good human expression is a form of worship!  For Catholics, the great social encyclicals constantly proclaim the value of both the worker and the work.  Therefore, to take a day off means there must be a higher purpose:  on the Sabbath, to acknowledge God, whose "work" we are, and on Labor Day to honor all who labor, and to pray that decent opportunity be given to all of God's children to work in some way to make the world a better place.   AMEN