Labor Day, which we celebrate this year on Sept. 1, was founded over 120 years ago by New York area labor unions to honor workers, especially those in manufacturing and construction trades. Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894 and has been celebrated ever since by parades, picnics and activities for workers and their families.
Nowadays, Labor Day honors all working men and women, whether they work with computers or with their hands, on construction sites or in offices.
We humans seem to be hard-wired for work. Although many of us say we yearn for a life of leisure, the truth is that we would be bored and restless without the rigors and rewards of work.
Our Judeo-Christian tradition views the necessity of work as the consequence of humanity's fall from grace. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and its delights and condemned to bringing forth sustenance "by the sweat of your brow." (Gen. 3:19)
Yet work is much more than a punishment for disobedience. According to our faith, the human affinity for work is directly related to the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God. After creating the heavens and the earth, God then "blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation." (Gen. 2:1)
"Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another. Hence work is a duty," says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. (2427)
The work we do to bring order out of chaos, to wrest abundance from the earth and to construct objects of permanence and beauty represents our contribution to the ongoing creation of God.
Work is a necessity if we are to be happy as creatures of God. There is no one who cannot contribute the fruits of labor to the betterment of family, community and world. Even the frailest and most helpless among us can offer prayers for the good of others.
Since the very beginnings of the church, the importance of productive work - both to the person and to the community - has been stressed.
"We hear that some of you are unruly, not keeping busy but acting like busybodies," St. Paul said to the Thessalonians in a remarkably modern-sounding conversation. ‘We enjoin all such ... to earn the food they eat by working quietly." (2Thes 3:11)
"Anyone who would not work should not eat," he said.
Another saint, Benedict, wrote his great rule for monastic life in the sixth century, which can be summarized quite simply as "Work and pray."
A later saint, Ignatius Loyola who founded the Jesuits in 1534, is said to have admonished his followers, "Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you."
This Labor Day, we rest, even as God rested, so that we too can return to our labors refreshed and renewed.