Saint Maron Parish in Cleveland

Tomorrow is Labor Day. For us it marks the wistful end of the summer, typically the last long-weekend before school starts and the fall work season sets in. Ironically, we have come to associate this holiday with a day off of work, this holiday that was established to honor workers and give us all a so-called “workingmen’s holiday.” By design, initiated in the late 1880’s by the Carpenter and Joiners unions in New York, the American Federation of Labor, and some say the International Association of Machinists too, this day, in the words of the US Department of Labor, was intended “to constitute a yearly tribute to the social and economic contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.” Labor Day was supposed to give workers and their families a day full of celebration, with recreation and amusement, a parade, often speeches by prominent citizens. Samuel Gompers, founder and long-time President of the Federation, pointed out that Labor Day is unique as a national holiday: “all other holidays” he said, “are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.” This holiday, recognizing the vital importance of work, is devoted to all workers, to a community of workers. For us, this sounds in harmony with our democratic principles, our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all, and our awareness of an interdependent web of purpose and contribution supporting our culture.

“The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth. The inward work always includes in itself all size, all breadth and all length.” —Meister Eckhart

“A person becomes a flowering orchard. The person that does good work is indeed this orchard beading good fruit…. Whatever humanity does with its deeds in the right or left hand permeate the universe.” —Hildegard of Bingen