This weekend as a nation we celebrate Labor Day, the "unofficial end of summer". We use this day (or two or more) at the beach or BBQs as we commemorate labor, seemingly by trying to do as little of it as possible! 

Why do we have such a holiday? Why on Earth should we "celebrate" the fact that we have to work? How does the magisterium - the teaching office of the Church - respond?

To answer this we start with the writings of a saint: St. Pope John Paul II. On September 14, 1981 (he had intended to release it on May 15th but was delayed due to an assassination attempt on May 13th) the late Holy Father promulgated his first encyclical on social doctrine titled Laborem Exercens (Latin roughly translated as "On Human Work").Discussing the dignity of human labor and the proper definition of private ownership, he begins his letter by saying: "(W)ork means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. 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. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature."

Work was meant to be an integral part of human existence. It is through work that we participate in the creative work started by God. This conviction is found in the first pages of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." Man's dominion over the earth is achieved in and by means of work. ... The proper subject of work continues to be man," and the finality of work "is always man himself. It is a question of the objective and subjective meaning of work: although both are important, the second takes precedence: "there is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of its own, which clearly and directly remains linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person, a conscious and free subject, that is to say a subject that decides about himself."
Although technology fosters an increase in the things produced by work, sometimes it "can cease to be man's ally and become almost his enemy, as when the mechanization of work 'supplants' him, taking away all personal satisfaction and the incentive to creativity and responsibility, when it deprives many workers of their previous employment, or when, through exalting the machine, it reduces man to the status of its slave."
The Holy Father recalls that "in order to achieve social justice in the various parts of the world, in the various countries, and in the relationships between them, there is a need for ever new movements of solidarity of the workers and with the workers."
"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'."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church devotes an entire section on this topic during its discussion on the seventh Commandment - You shall not steal - with the universal destination and private ownership of human goods, the necessity for respect for the human person and their goods and the role of economic activity in social justice and love for the poor. It summarizes this succinctly in paragraph 2460 by saying: "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."

Although somewhat advanced from previous times in history, in many ways our modern world continues to lose sight of the true dignity of work because we continue to have difficulty in recognizing the dignity of the worker. In the industrial age, men and women were often reduced to simply being "cogs in a machine" - emphasizing productivity over the dignity of the person. The age of technology promised something different, but this still remains an elusive goal. Too often laborers are still viewed as instruments and objects instead of persons and gifts. Even the labors of Science, a servant of the human person meant to advance understanding of Creation and alleviate suffering, has often promote a view of the person as an object to be experimented on and disposed of at will. To grasp the truth that dignity of all human labor comes from the dignity of the human person who participates in it requires what St. Paul calls a "renewal of the mind" (c.f. Romans 12:2), St. John Paul reminds participants as a Catholic Action gathering that because human work "has been profaned by sin and contaminated by egoism", it is an activity that "needs to be redeemed".
The Pope reminds us that Jesus, the "Divine Worker of Nazareth" also reminds us that 'life is more than food' and that work is for man, not man for work. What makes a life great is not the entity of gain, nor the type of profession, or the level of the career. Man is worth infinitely more than the goods he produces or possesses."

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