Today while we celebrate the workers across the world, it is necessary that we understand what May De 1st is all about.
First, we will bring to mind the Haymarket affair which took place in Chicago, Illinois on May 4, 1886, where a bomb exploded during a labor demonstration on Haymarket Square. The purpose of the riot was for better conditions and rewards for the working population which resulted in a massacre.
The Haymarket affair is generally considered significant as the origin of international May Day observances for workers. (Wikipedia), which also happens to be a day commemorated to St Joseph the Worker by the Catholic Church. St
Joseph is the husband of Mary and foster father of Jesus. He is known and regarded to have been a just and pious man. And therefore stands as a model to husbands and fathers across the earth.
Joseph is the husband of Mary and foster father of Jesus. He is known and regarded to have been a just and pious man. And therefore stands as a model to husbands and fathers across the earth.
There are so many principles as regards the dignity of human labor but the two vital ones I'd like to advocate more on are the will to work and professional satisfaction.
In this day and age whereby civil labor is treated with less esteem and value especially in our country Nigeria. It goes a long way in contributing to the low standards of health, education and economic management of our society.
We live in an age that has lost sight of the true dignity ofwork - because we have lost sight of the dignity of the worker. This loss is one more bad fruit of the rupture
We live in an age that has lost sight of the true dignity ofwork - because we have lost sight of the dignity of the worker. This loss is one more bad fruit of the rupture
which was wrought by sin. In the industrial age, men and women were often reduced to mere instruments in a society that emphasized "productivity" over the dignity of the human person, the worker. The technological age promised something different, but it has failed to deliver on that promise. Too often, men and women are still viewed as instruments and objects rather than persons and gifts. This erases the satisfaction the worker is meant tfeel during and in the completion of a task.
To grasp the truth that dignity of all human labor derives from the dignity of the human person who engages in it requires what St Paul rightly called a "renewal of the mind" (See, Romans 12:2). Blessed John Paul told the participants at that Catholic Action gathering that because work "has been profaned by sin and contaminated by egoism," it is an activity that "needs to be redeemed." His words are critical in this hour.
The Holy Father puts it thus:
"Dear friends, it is certainly necessary to give bread to the hungry – this is an act of justice. But there is also a deeper hunger, the hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy, the hunger for dignity. There is neither real promotion of the common good nor real human
development when there is ignorance of the fundamental pillars that govern a nation, its non-material goods: life, which is a gift of God, a value always to be protected and promoted; the family, the foundation of coexistence and a remedy against social fragmentation; integral education, which cannot be reduced to the mere transmission of information for purposes of generating profit; health, which must seek the integral well-being of the person, including the spiritual dimension, essential for human balance and healthy coexistence; security, in the conviction that violence can be overcome only by changing human hearts."
Pope Francis
Blessed John Paul was correct when he said; there is a "Gospel of work". Remember, the word "gospel" means Good news. Let us renew our minds and live this gospel of work in the
way in which we engage in all human labor. In His Ascension, Jesus did not leave us orphans. Rather, He lives in us and we now live in Him, through the Holy Spirit.
Hence, from me, I advocate that we live in accordance and differently by the Grace and decorum poured out through the Holy Spirit and umpired on us especially in the Sacraments of the Church. We are invited to live this "Gospel of Work" in an age which desperately needs a new living witness of the dignity, meaning and true value of human work- one rooted in a rediscovery of the dignity of the human person - Deacon Keith Fournier
Quotes on the Dignity of Human Labor
At stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator"
Saint John Paul II, Solicitude Rei Socialis
"For, by his Incarnation, he, the son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man"
Vatican II
“Catholic social teaching believes that human beings, created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27), have by their very existence an inherent value, worth, and distinction”.
Daniel Groody “Globalization, Spirituality and Justice”
“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion.”
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium
Happy Labor Day.
1 comments:
nice one mma...only a few write abt such topics dz dazz, thanks for sharing ur light with us. kip up d gud work.
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