Opening Reflection
If you like to use music in prayer, listen to Michael Joncas’ We Come to Your Feast, which offers a beautiful reminder that our charisms are uniquely gifted to us and that they have been given to share; an invitation to participate in God’s own creative and generous Spirit.
Prayer
Author of Creation, You lovingly spoke the world into existence. By your example we can appreciate the life-giving power of creativity, shared. We are humbled by your invitation into the most holy work of making use of the gifts You have given each of us specifically, to share in a way that might be life-giving and nourishing to those around us. Would that we be inspired in large and small ways to see our responsibilities as workers to serve You well.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Video overview
Dignity of Work
For when people work, they not only alter things and society, they develop themselves as well. They learn much, they cultivate their resources, they go outside of themselves and beyond themselves. Rightly understood, this kind of growth is of greater value than any external riches which can be garnered. People are more precious for what they are than for what they have. Similarly, all that people do to obtain greater justice, wider brotherhood, a more humane ordering of social relationships has greater worth than technical advances. For these advances can supply the material for human progress, but of themselves alone they can never actually bring it about.
Gaudium et Spes (“The Church in the Modern World”), Vatican II, 1965, #35.
I am excited to be digging into this aspect of Catholic Social Teaching because very often I think its breadth is not understood, because it is understood apart from human dignity. Particularly in our current cultural setting where we have been duped into using people like things, and things as disposable. We truly have evolved a warped sense of work. Instead of the good that it was intended to be, work is dubbed strictly a punishment that we endure until we die.
We see the outline of this relationship to labor all the way back in Genesis when God gives the garden to Adam and Eve to be stewards over. It isn’t until after the fall that God tells them that this work is going to become burdensome. What had been gifted to Adam and Eve as a way to participate in the creative work, reflective of our Creator, would become a task in a setting that was no longer perfect.
As I have had occasion to say, “work is of fundamental importance to the fulfillment of the human being and to the development of society. Thus, it must always be organized and carried out with full respect for human dignity and must always serve the common good. At the same time, it is indispensable that people not allow themselves to be enslaved by work or to idolize it, claiming to find in it the ultimate and definitive meaning of life.” It is on the day consecrated to God that men and women come to understand the meaning of their lives and also of their work.
Sacramentum Caritatis (“Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist”), Pope Benedict XVI, 2007, #74.
Despite the changing circumstances, this call to work, to contribute the efforts of our minds and hands, is intended as a means of offering a sense of dignity in the ways that each person can contribute their particular gifts, whatever they may be. Over time, and because of our brokenness, work has come to be seen strictly as a means to an end.
At its best
At its best, the work that we are called to provides for our own needs, those of our family, and often, the broader community. Sometimes we are lucky enough for the work of our hands to be edifying for our minds and hearts, other jobs may simply be a way to provide for our basic needs. However, whether we are serving as a wood-worker, a first responder, a trash collector, daycare provider, or call center operator, we each have unique gifts to bring to those circumstances and the people served by them. One is not better than another. Each affords us the opportunity to honor the human dignity that we encounter in those with whom we work.
God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened. -Genesis 1:28-30
At its worst
At its worst, work becomes us. We identify as the work we perform. That is why, culturally, things like temp work, entry level jobs, leaving the workplace for retirement or to care for children can hit people so hard–because it may cease to be about making a contribution to our families or society, but rather, serves as a barometer of self-worth. To cease to contribute in a defined way, is (culturally) to cease to have a tangible identity, or so it might seem. *Ask people in Europe, for instance, what they do, and likely they’ll tell you they like to hike, to swim, to draw, etc. There is an entirely separate category of (healthier) answers to this question which seem to pertain a lot more specifically to the things that bring one life.
One’s worth is not determined by an abundance of possessions.
At its worst, people work themselves to death out of stress, competition or desire to ‘have it all.’ At the risk of sharing the wealth, folks might be inclined to support human trafficking through unjust labor practices. People who have bought into this line of thinking, can put a price on their own bodies and the bodies of others to be utilized as a serviceable item, rather than a man or woman made in the image and likeness of God.
To the man he said: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You shall not eat from it, Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life.Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
-Genesis 3:17-19
The labor of the working class – the exercise of their skill, and the employment of their strength, in the cultivation of the land, and in the workshops of trade – is especially responsible and quite indispensable. Indeed, their co-operation is in this respect so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labor of working men that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create-that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs.
Rerum Novarum (“On the Condition of Labor and the Working Classes”), Pope Leo XIII, 1891, #34.
To observe religious practices, but oppress your workers is false worship. —Isaiah 58:3-7
What does ‘right relationship’ with work, look like?
Bearing in mind this aim for recognizing the dignity of those we serve, as well as those who serve us, we have to put ourselves (and our resources) where our mouths are. Being in ‘right relationship’ might mean researching the companies we hire, learning about the ethics of the investments we make. Often, being in right relationship with work (and workers) requires us to pay more than the minimum for a good/service/food to allow for its producer to be justly compensated. Frequently being in right relationship with work, our own or that of another, looks like acquiring less.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, right relationship with work looks like opportunity for rest. I do not mean to conjure up the image of feet up on a desk, relaxing with nothing to do , but true opportunity for rejuvenation. Right relationship with work means knowing when the workday ceases: For ourselves, for our employees, or for those whose services we employ.
For the longest time I understood humanity as the pinnacle of the creation story. However, it is only recently that I was challenged to see the crescendo of God’s masterpiece as the stepping away from work–work stoppage. How vastly different from our productivity-driven approach to work (and therefore workers) is this?
Reflection Questions:
- How does this interpretation of work sit with me?
- What experiences have shaped my own understanding of work/labor? Are they positive? Negative? Neutral?
- What particular gifts do I most enjoy sharing for the good of others?
- What might seeing rest as the pinnacle of Creation mean in my own life?
- What might God be inviting me to consider?
- What practical changes would I be able to make to distinguish between work and work stoppage?
Closing Prayer
Loving God, in Your care, even our responsibility to work is itself a gift that can nourish. Guide us as we wrestle with the meaning of this, and the ways we are continually invited to be collaborators with You in our opportunities to share what we have been given. Bless the work of our hands and lead us to a sense of our worth as image bearers, apart from the tasks we perform. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.