Americans first celebrated Labor Day in the 1880s during the height of the Industrial Revolution in America when immigrants were coming to America to fill the growing number of low-paying jobs in factories in American cities. The founders of Labor Day were Irish Catholics who were seeking better working conditions for the millions of American workers. Whole families, including children, worked long hours in unsafe and dismal factories for extremely low wages. Many of the immigrants arriving to America after the Civil War were Roman Catholics from all parts of Europe. Although their jobs were often the worst of the worst, they knew that work was nevertheless a blessing from God and therefore should be honored. President Grover Cleveland in 1894 made Labor Day an official holiday so that all Americans could celebrate work and workers.

American Catholic workers from the nineteenth to the twentieth century looking for validity in their jobs and commensurate recognition, mostly in terms of job security and good wages, joined labor unions and other organizations to promote the cause of American workers. One such promoter of Catholic work was Dorothy Day, a convert to Catholicism, who in 1933 helped to establish a movement and newspaper, The Catholic Worker, to fight for the recognition and the rights of the American worker.

There is Biblical and ecclesiastical support for the recognition of the worker, the value of work, and the rights of workers. In the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, issued under Pope John Paul II, the necessity and value of work is justified according to Biblical and Catholic doctrine. God’s work, human work, God’s Creation, and humans as creatures who work according to God’s will: these are important themes in the Bible. Adam and Eve were ordained to work, but as obedient creatures working according to God’s will rather than as creators of their own world in the absence of God. God made humans the stewards of the creation working within the guidelines, the will, of God.

There is no better source of wisdom for the value of work and no better model for the worker than the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who learned the trade of a carpenter, and practiced this trade during his life. He often commented on his role working to bring about the Kingdom of God. His life was therefore one of working with God’s creation to fulfill its potential, and working to bring awareness of God’ love for all creatures: these tasks are still considered worthy and holy by His disciples.

The Holy Family is a model of a working family. As Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church proclaims, “the family constitutes one of the most important terms of reference for shaping the social and ethical order of human work”. Work is the core that holds the family together both in terms of self-esteem of the different family members and the ability of the family to provide a successful and healthy standard of living. By extension, just as Joseph taught Jesus a trade so must all parents impart to their children the realization of the importance of work in human social and cultural existence and in God’s plan for His creation. “Idleness is harmful to man’s being, whereas activity is good for his body and soul.” Work in the family is for the stability of the family’s domestic economy of order, cleanliness, and health, as well as for the material basis to maintain an adequate standard of living to promote self-respect and family pride. For this to occur, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states, adequate wages must be provided for substantial quality work. The modern industrial age has often seen exploitation of the poor by means of the wealthy; the Bible and the Church teach that it is incumbent upon those participating in our modern economy to treat workers, no matter their status, with dignity, rewarding their toil with adequate wages, and honoring their work as akin to God’s plan.

Jesus also taught, based on the Scriptures, that work is required for the fulfillment of God’s plan for Creation. Humans, as stewards of the creation, through work care for, protect, manage, and show love for the creation. This Care for Our Common Home has been a frequent theme in the writings of Pope Francis. Through work, he writes in the Encyclical Laudato Si, “each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.”

Work is therefore not only a way to seek fulfillment in life, but work is also required by God to fulfill His benevolent plan for His creation.

A version of this essay appeared in Catholic Exchange