The Catholic Church values both work and those who labor, emphasizing that there is a sacred link between faith and dignified work.
More than simply making a living, good work provides insight into who people are as human beings. Man’s work contributes to God’s work of creation and should be done for his glory.
At the very beginning of the Bible, God works to create Heaven and Earth. Created in the image and likeness of God, man then participates in God’s creative activity through his own work.
After the fall, sin allows man’s view of work to change, experiencing it as difficulty and suffering.
If work is misused it can become oppressive, but if used properly work can be offered to God, participating in the the redemptive suffering of Jesus and joined to the sacrifice of the Mass.
Throughout its history, the Church has held labor in high esteem, respecting the dignity of workers and defending their rights, including fair wages.
In the United States and Canada, Labor Day honors workers and is celebrated on the first Monday in September. Although it is a civic holiday, it is also a time for Catholics to reflect on how our work aligns with the work of God.
Work is an opportunity to save souls:
Using the talents that God has given for his glory:
The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.
Genesis 2: 15
God is a worker and created man for work also:
Unlike ancient cultures, Christians embraced work:
The sign of man’s familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives “to till it and keep it”. Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 378
Workers and their labor have value:
Workers have rights and should be treated with respect:
Labor, as our predecessor explained well in his encyclical, is not a mere commodity. On the contrary, the worker’s human dignity in it must be recognized. It therefore cannot be bought and sold like a commodity. Nevertheless, as the situation now stands, hiring and offering for hire in the so-called labor market separate men into two divisions, as into battle lines, and the contest between these divisions turns the labor market itself almost into a battlefield where, face to face, the opposing lines struggle bitterly. Everyone understands that this grave evil which is plunging all human society to destruction must be remedied as soon as possible. But complete cure will not come until this opposition has been abolished and well-ordered members of the social body – Industries and Professions – are constituted in which men may have their place, not according to the position each has in the labor market but according to the respective social functions which each performs. For under nature’s guidance it comes to pass that just as those who are joined together by nearness of habitation establish towns, so those who follow the same industry or profession – whether in the economic or other field – form guilds or associations, so that many are wont to consider these self-governing organizations, if not essential, at least natural to civil society.
Pope Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 15 May 1931
Man carries his cross daily in his work:
Work should be balanced with family and prayer:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
The miracle of Catholicism:
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