“Co-Creators With God”

A Labor Day weekend Homily by CLN Spiritual Moderator Fr. Sinclair Oubre

Yes, everyone here knows that on Monday, our nation celebrates the day after the twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. We will gather with our family, fire up the grill, and possibly, hand crank some ice cream, and say: “Thank God, the Pharisees challenged Jesus’ disciples about not washing their hands before eating!”

No, its Labor Day Weekend, and we all know that for most of us, we will get a paid-Monday off, and we will use that time to catch up on some chores, gather with the family for a cookout, maybe catch a sports game on the TV, or go to Houston and watch the Astros beat the Diamondbacks.

What we won’t be doing is remembering the great Irish Catholic Peter McGuire, and his great work in founding the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and the organizer of the first Labor Day Parade in New York City on September 5, 1882. (My grandfather and father were members of the Carpenters Union.)

Very few of us will give much thought to the importance of the common working man or woman, and how their work is both absolutely necessary for the quality of life that we enjoy here and in every land. Nor will we give much thought on how our work and the work of our neighbors, no matter how society considers the work humble or replaceable, is a participation in God’s ongoing creation and the building up of his Kingdom.

Since 1969, our United States Bishops have issued a Labor Day Statement. I have posted it to our Facebook page so that you can read it, and reflect on its teachings.

This year’s statement begins with these words:

“This Labor Day, let us recommit ourselves to building together a society that honors the human dignity of all who labor. Through the treasure of Catholic social teaching, we have a long history of proclaiming the essential role labor plays in helping people to live out their human dignity.”

Unless the work is abhorrent, obscene or repugnant, we not only create wealth for the needs of our families, assist in expanding the common good, but we also fulfill God’s will when he created man and woman on the sixth day.

“Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.

“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.

“God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened.”

This dominion is not permission to exploit and despoil, but it is a call to be a good steward of the treasure that God has entrusted to us.

We must ask ourselves the question, “How can we take these treasures that God has given us, and use them to give God glory and improve the lives of our brothers and sisters?”

Jesus gives us a model of what this work is that we do. When Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth, and teaches at the synagogue, the people wonder at his words, and remark about his past in the town.

St. Mark records that Jesus’ neighbors remark:

“They said, “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands! Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?”

Jesus was not just the son of a carpenter, but he was a carpenter himself. The work of the carpenter is to take items found in God’s creation, and shape them to lift up men and women.

Jesus the carpenter took wood drawn from a tree, shapes the wood to be a chair or a table, thereby lifting his neighbors from having to sit on the ground and eating off the ground. Jesus the carpenter took wood drawn from a tree, and formed it into a bed so that his mother and his neighbors would not have to sleep on the ground. Jesus the carpenter took wood drawn from a tree, and built a dwelling, and with the craftsmen of their skills provided safety and security from the hardship of weather and the dangers of evil persons.

By making the chair, the table and the house, in so little of a way, Jesus participated in the creation that his Father began in the first chapter of Genesis.

Jesus the carpenter also become the precursor of Jesus the Savior. By building the table, he anticipates the place where the bread of life will become manifest. By building the chairs, he anticipates the time when he will be raised on the cross, and thereby raise us up from the dust of sin and death.

The priests and the deacons often preach how we should imitate Our Lord Jesus. We should imitate his prayerfulness. We should imitate his courage to speak the truth. We should imitate his love of the week and the poor. We should imitate his abandonment of his will for the will of the Father. But on this Labor Day weekend, we also should imitate his work in lifting up his mother Mary and his neighbors. We should imitate his work in protecting and guarding his neighbors.

Now Satan, the deceiver, continues to roam this world, and just as at the time of Adam and Eve, he continues to try to deceive us. When in Genesis 3:1ff, he twists God’s command, which leads Eve and Adam to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The twisted lies of Satan continue in our own day. He whispers the lie that “we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.” He whispers that we are only happy when we make as much money as we can. He whispers that we don’t have to look where and how things are made, just that we must spend as little as possible so that we have has much as possible.

If we follow Satan’s whispers, we will be like Charles Dickens’ Unconverted Scrooge.

As we fire up the grill, prepare the hot dogs and hamburgers, make the potato salad, and look forward to the Blue Bell, please remember why we have this Holiday:

To celebrate the work that you do at the service of your family and neighbors;
And to join ourselves evermore closely to our Heavenly Father in his ongoing creation in this world and the world to come.