Labor Day Weekend!

I pray you have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend. I love this weekend's civil holiday, because each and everyone of us works. Work is a blessing because we share in the work of God who worked first in His work of creation. Enjoy the breather from your work. I will try to do the same.

In the not so distant past (2006), I wrote one of my last papers in seminary on the Spirituality of Work in my Catholic Social Ethics class. I had as the cover page a beautiful picture of "The Altar of Work" (Der Altar Der Arbeit) by Jed Gibbons. The picture helped to introduce my paper. The explanation of this artwork included these comments:

"Jed Gibbons

(courtesy of John N. and Laura E. Bradford)

page 31

Source: Pontifical College Josephinum, Prayers of St. Joseph, (Columbus: Pontifical College Josephinum, 2006) 31, 37-38.

“The voice of the Lord rends the oak tree” (Ps 29:9)

“If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labor.” (Ps 127:1)

John Paul II kneels at his desk, which is his “Altar of Work,” and writes the encyclical, “Laborem Exercens.” As he mediates on the New Testament’s gospel of work, he places himself in the workshop in Nazareth, where Joseph the carpenter is busy at his altar of work, the workbench. Beneath the workbench, among the scraps and wood shavings, are two golden retrievers. Work “is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activities for sustaining their lives cannot be called work,” says the Pope.

Joseph and the child Jesus are completing the magnificent oak structure they have crafted from a single oak tree. “The oak is a Christian symbol of longevity, enduring relationships and firmness and faith in God.” Oak foliage flourishes at the top of the structure and from that comes the fruit of the oak, the acorn. The acorn is a symbol of Christ, as “the shell represents His flesh, the cap of the wood represents the cross, and the inner kernel represents His hidden divinity.”

The elaborate oak structure frames the scene of St. Francis before the cross of San Damiano. He is holding a staff made of oak with three gilded oak leaves. In the scene there are two other altars of work: the pulpit of the cross from which Christ continues His saving work in the Church and the actual physical ruins of the church, which St. Francis repairs. Christ commands St. Francis to “rebuild my Church, which you see, is in ruins.” The fallen chalice and the absence of the tabernacle represent the state of spiritual disrepair in the Church today.

On the right side of the oak structure, between the spirals, is an acorn nestles in a heart-shaped lattice surrounded by the tall spirals. This represents the city of God in the third millennium, in which God and man coexist and all places of work can become altars of work."


If you have free time and would like to read the paper "Spirituality of Work," please click here. 


God bless you and Happy Labor Day!


Fr. Joshua