09/01/2025
Luke 4:16-30 Jesus came to
Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the
synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the
prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was
written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring
glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and
recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a
year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the
attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at
him. He said to them, "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your
hearing." And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious
words that came from his mouth.
Have you ever noticed the great
irony about Labor Day weekend? Even though we recognize the value of labor, or
work, we do so precisely by resting or taking a break from work. You would
think that if you were going to labor on any day of the year, it would be on
Labor Day. But strangely we honor labor by not laboring.
And that irony is as it should be
for us human beings who only ever labor intermittently and imperfectly in
imitation of God, whose labor of love, his real work, never ceases or shows any
defects. And what exactly is God’s work? What does God do all day? Put simply,
it is to create everything out of nothing, and then to eternally hold that
creation in existence.
Let me share with you my favorite
(and a phenomenal) sentence by Etienne Gilson that hits the nail on the head
regarding God’s work of creation: “This created universe, of which St.
Augustine said that it ceaselessly leans over towards the abyss of nothingness,
is saved at each moment from collapse into nothingness by the continuous giving
of a being which, of itself, it could neither give, not preserve” (The Spirit
of Medieval Philosophy, 70-71).
Think of an unborn baby in its
mother’s womb entirely dependent for its existence on its mother. What would
happen if the mother were to remove its life-giving apparatus called the womb
and thrust the baby out? It would die in very short order. Every abortion is the
polar opposite of the labor of love that God performs from the beginning and
does so continuously.
This world, then, in which we
“live and move and have our being” (Acts 7:28), is God’s womb. And God never
aborts his creation, no matter how inconvenient we might be (and we are often
inconvenient to him). But rather he lovingly holds us in existence. That
eternal sustaining of creation is God’s perennial and perfect work.
And that divine work or labor
gives us a clue to the real value of human work – in the office, at a factory,
in a classroom, driving a bus, delivering the mail, balancing the books, or
cooking and cleaning at home, etc. – we participate however temporarily in that
work of sustaining creation in existence and pushing it forward through time.
That is why we get out of bed in the morning.
Mother Teresa put our human
participation in divine labor memorably saying: “Christ has no body now but
yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which
he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks
to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.” In
other words, the true value of human labor is to share in a small way in the
divine labor called “creation.”
And this notion of human labor as
a sharing in God’s work sheds light to a superlative degree on what we priests
do. I often joke with people that priesthood is the best job in the world
because I only work one day a week: on Sunday! But sometimes I feel like I do
the work of six days in that one 24-hour period.
For example, yesterday I
celebrated the 7:30 a.m. English Mass, preached the homily at the 10 a.m.
English Mass. Then I celebrated the two Spanish Masses at 12 noon and 2 pm, and
after the 2 p.m. Mass blessed a quinceanera. A parishioner approached me to ask
that I visit a lady with cancer and give her the anointing of the sick at home.
Then I drove to Springdale and
celebrated a fourth Mass for my parents and brother and sister who was visiting
from Orlando. During dinner I got a call to anoint someone at Washington
Regional who would have surgery today. And driving home to Fort Smith I stopped
by Mercy Hospital to anoint a man who was on life-support. And then of course,
I had to walk Apollo.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not
complaining, I’m bragging! But in every instance of blessing, celebrating Mass,
anointing of the sick, etc., I do on a much smaller scale and sacramentally
what God the Father and God the Son do flawlessly and forever: sustain creation
in existence. Human labor’s true raison d’etre finds its deepest roots in
imitating divine labor.
Every morning I leave the rectory
at 5:17 a.m. to open the church. Incidentally, the gospel of John 5:17 reads:
“My Father is at work until now, and I am at work.” Our humble work of opening
the doors of the church every morning is a modest participation in God’s work
of sustaining and saving the world. And that is the meaning of Labor Day, and
why we rest.
Praised be Jesus
Christ!
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