DO WE STILL NEED LABOR DAY?

Yesterday we celebrated work and the people that accomplish it. Consider several historical observations about this human endeavor.

In the 13th century, Clare of Assisi, later St. Clare, composed the Rule to be followed by her order of sequestered nuns, the Poor Clares and, in it, devoted a chapter to work

“Chapter VII
The Manner of Working

The Sisters to whom the Lord has given the grace of working should labor faithfully and devotedly after the hour of Terce (about 8 a.m.) at work which contributes to integrity and the common good; and this in such a way that idleness, the enemy of the soul, being banished …

And the Abbess of her Vicaress is bound to assign to each one … in the presence of all, those things to be done by the work of her hands.”

Your first assignment, reader, is to deduce the importance of work to this Saint, whose paradigm of service to God had cornerstones of celibacy, obedience, poverty, and enclosure and devoted one of her few, defining chapters to the necessity of physical labor. Work was a GRACE from the Lord!

Next, examine these lines of Father Bede Jarrett (d. 1934), a Dominican priest in England.

“Life is incompatible with inactivity, for if we stagnate, we die. … every known power of man is subject to the same law of development – namely, to preserve a faculty, it must be exercised.”

“Labor, therefore, is the origin of all true greatness and dignity, the badge of intelligence.”

“The development, then, of the faculties is essential to their preservation, is a condition of life, since life itself must be always dynamic.”

In the U.S. today the value of work and the necessity of work to a healthy, dynamic, developing society appear to be losing recognition. More and more people are content to live by public welfare, a large contingent of the population has sunk to expect, even demand, it, and another huge subset have generations-long histories of never having attempted to work and merely subsist as indolent, detrimental slugs.

This is becoming a nation of panhandlers. Has it any justification – aside from an official day of no work – for a Labor Day?