As we approach this Labor Day, it is important for us to understand that in the Catholic tradition, work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continued participation in God's creative action. Work is a partnership with God — our share in a divine human collaboration in creation.
Catholic Social Teaching reminds us that if the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected — the right to productive work, and to decent and fair wages.
Pope John Paul II's encyclical Laborem Exercens promulgated on Sept. 14, 1981, begins with this blessing, which in part says: "THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work 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. ... 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."