In an address to the Christian Association of Catholic workers in May 1955, Pope Pius XII established the feast of St Joseph the Worker, to be celebrated annually on the first day of May. The date is not incidental, as it coincides with International Workers’ Day, which had been celebrated on 1 May in many countries since the mid-to-late 1890s. The strategic placement of the Feast of St Joseph was meant to accomplish the dual purpose of affirming the dignity of labour but rejecting the Marxist tinge of International Workers’ Day. By claiming 1 May, Pius instituted the Feast of St Joseph to celebrate the worker but discard the ideology.
The designation of 1 May as International Workers’ Day, or Labour Day, varies from country to country, celebrated by other names in some or not at all in others. But 1 May as the Feast of St Joseph the Worker endures as a significant day in the Catholic liturgical calendar. It suggests that we think about the entire month of May, not just the first day, as an affirmation of the dignity and nobility of work. It is also an opportunity to revisit the purpose and nature of work, especially as work contributes – or not – to the moral flourishing of the human person. This includes a consideration of work as natural to the human person, the dignity of work, and the purpose of work as a means toward a higher end.
Work is instituted in the very fabric of creation, as described in the second creation account in Genesis. After creating man and woman as a natural community, he instructed them to tend the garden to which they had been placed. If we see the Eden story as a metaphor for our own lives, we deduce from God’s instruction that the duty to care for and cultivate creation applies as surely to us descendants of our primordial parents as to them. God invites us not merely to be custodians of his creation, but rather to participate in that creation, developing and extending its goodness across space and time. Cultivation implies sequence and duration; our work as of abiding importance in the development of a flourishing and fulfilling moral life.
Moreover, the command to cultivate the garden implies the necessary rational nature of human work, closely associated with the human capacity to reason, reflect and choose among competing goods. Work is not random drudgery. Rather, it is ordered toward the care and cultivation of all human goods, requiring a vision beyond the work itself. Thus, work is not an end, even though work may inculcate salutary habits and practices that become the virtues by which we live fruitful and satisfying lives.
As natural to the human person, work possesses a certain dignity. This dignity can be manifest in at least two ways. First, work may be personally fulfilling to the person who performs it. It is perfectly legitimate to develop a sense of satisfaction and pleasure in the action of work or in the goods or service it produces. Just as God looked at His creation and saw that it was very good, so we too can receive psychological, spiritual and moral satisfaction both in the practice and product of work.
But a second aspect of the dignity of work is not in the work itself, but rather in the good that it does for the other person. Work finds its dignity in providing for the comfort and moral flourishing of others. Clearly implicit in this aspect is that work must be consistent with the dignity of the person it purports to serve. Work that does not contribute to the common good of the community is work that is misdirected – or even sinful – and is devoid of work’s natural dignity. Additionally, work as service to others shows us the dignity even of work that doesn’t seem to be very dignified. Labour can be difficult, dangerous and even enervating. Its dignity is still served, however, by the labourer’s understanding that he is serving his fellow man by the labour he suffers through. This makes it incumbent upon those of us who benefit from the drudgery of difficult work to celebrate and affirm the dignity even of work that seems to be less dignified in itself.
Finally, even for the most satisfying and noble work, it is not an end in itself. When God finished creation in the first account in Genesis 1, he rested so that he could gaze upon it. This is the paradigm by which we should understand that the end of work is leisure. Put another way, the end of work is not to work. Rather, the purpose of work is to create the conditions according to which we may participate in moral, spiritual and religious practices that make our lives full and fruitful. By having a proper understanding that work serves a purpose beyond itself – not to work – we can celebrate 1 May and the rest of the month by affirming the goodness of work for the good of the human person.
<em>Kenneth Craycraft is professor of theology at Mount St Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology in the US, and the author of Citizens Yet Strangers: Living Authentically Catholic in a Divided America</em>.
<em>(Photo: Manuel Asturias, SJ)</em>
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