TEXT: Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 1, 2024
September 1, 2024 Father De Celles Homily
22nd Sunday Ordinary Time
September 1, 2024
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
This weekend our nation celebrates Labor Day,
a day celebrating the hard work of so many Americans
that has made our nation so successful in so many ways.
As Catholics, we have an even greater reason to celebrate this day,
as “work” is one of the original gifts given to man by God.
Scripture begins in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 by talking about
how God created the whole physical universe.
At the end of that story it says,
“The seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing;
so on the seventh day He rested from…
all the work of creating that He had done.”
So we come to understand that God’s “work” is creating and creative.
Right before that passage, Scripture tells us that God made man, male and female,
in His own image and likeness.
And then it says that God commanded Adam and Eve to do two things:
First, “Be fruitful and multiply,”
and then, “Fill the earth and subdue it.”
In other words, the Creator created man to be creative.
That creativity is most profoundly displayed in two ways:
The fruitfulness of co-creating children with God in marriage
and the fruitfulness of subduing the earth by work.
So, man shares in God’s creative work by his labor.
And when he works in ways consistent with God’s will,
he grows in holiness.
Think about this: By human work, if it is consistent with God’s will,
we take God’s work, His creation,
and work with it to make it something more, something new.
So, by God’s gift and grace, we continue God’s own work,
and our creativity builds on and cooperates with God’s creativity.
Such is the dignity of human labor.
Often, however, we don’t work in ways consistent with God’s will.
Too often we work motivated by envy or greed.
Sometimes we deceive or cheat
our customers, co-workers, employers or employees.
Sometimes we don’t give an honest day’s work for our wages,
or we don’t pay just wages to our workers.
Sometimes we work too much and neglect our family and God,
and sometimes we force our employees to do that.
Some neglect work to engage in criminal activities
or simple dependence on governments.
Of course, some are retired after years of hard work,
and some can’t work for good reasons.
God bless them.
But they also, in large ways and small, can often continue their creative labors
as they do volunteer work, assist friends, or even do minor house work.
All this is a participation in God’s creative work!
___
The Church has a long history of defending the dignity of work and workers,
but with the rise of Marxism in the 19th century,
including Socialism, Communism, and to some extent Fascism,
the Popes began to speak vociferously against these
inherently unjust ideologies.
All this came to a head in 1891
when Pope Leo XIII issued his monumental encyclical,
Rerum Novarum (“Of the New Things”),
which is the foundation of modern Catholic teaching on “social justice.”
Sadly, many Catholics misunderstand this teaching.
Some Catholics even believe that socialism is the way to social justice.
But as Pope Pius XI wrote in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno:
“Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms;
no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”
One of the errors of Marxism and it’s related “isms”
is the promotion of class warfare:
to pit different groups in society against each other.
How is this consistent with the Christian command to
“love your neighbor as yourself”?
Or Christ’s prayer, “That they may be one”?
So the Church particularly condemns this aspect of Marxism,
whether it manifests in the supposed struggle between
the “proletariat” vs. the “bourgeoisie,” capitalists vs. labor,
rich vs. poor, male vs. female,
or black or brown or “yellow” vs. white…
Yet there is a movement in our country that embraces
this Marxist class warfare approach in its often violent struggle
to reshape our country’s values.
Many Catholics have fallen into the snares of this movement,
even though it is directly contrary to basic Catholic principles.
Socialists, even in America, also attack the basic economic system
that has led to so much freedom and creativity throughout the world,
the system commonly called “Capitalism”.
I wish we would stop using that term because the word “capitalism”
was originally coined as a pejorative, a derogatory term,
in the lexicon of the earliest Marxists,
particularly Karl Marx himself, in his seminal work “Das Kapital” (1867).
But the great Pope St. John Paul II, who lived under the repressive evil
of a Marxist regime for over 33 years in Poland
and was a crucial force in the fall of Soviet-Communism,
had a different view about this economic system commonly called “capitalism”.
In his 1991 classic encyclical, Centesimus Annus, John Paul wrote:
“Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism,
capitalism is the victorious social system,
and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries
now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society?
Is this the model which ought to be proposed
to the countries of the Third World
which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?”
And then he made a powerful distinction and gave us a critical definition:
“If by ‘Capitalism’ is meant an economic system
which recognizes the fundamental and positive role
of business, the market, private property
and the resulting responsibility for the means of production,
as well as free human creativity in the economic sector,
then the answer is certainly in the affirmative,
even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of
a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.
In short, Catholic social teaching condemns Socialism
and defends creative and free economies.
This “free human creativity” is the basis of
the American economy, government and culture,
not the oppressive chains of Marxism, Communism and Socialism.
The worker is creative as he works in cooperation with his Creator;
not a slave as he works according to the will of the state.
But, as I said earlier,
there is a movement in our country that embraces the Marxist model.
It is true that we should help those who are truly
unable to help themselves.
But that is not Marxism, especially in the socialism on the rise today in America.
The reality is that socialism doesn’t just take care
of those who can’t take care of themselves.
Socialism derives it’s political and cultural power, and sustains itself,
by setting people against each other,
including pitting those
who simply reject productive and creative work
against those who embrace productive and creative work.
This leads to punishing people for creativity in their work
by robbing them of the fruit of their work
and rewarding others for their sloth or for wasting their God-given talents
And in all this, you attack and undermine the very humanity and dignity of both.
Some even trying to conflate socialism with Christian charity.
The vice-presidential candidate of the Democrat Party,
where socialism has now found a new home and embraced this evil system,
has said: “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”
But it is not “neighborliness” or charity
if what you give to your neighbor isn’t yours to give,
but rather something you’ve taken by force from another person
who has earned it as the fruit of their hard work.
How can it be charity, love, to forcibly take something a person’s worked hard for?
How can charity thrive on promoting envy…and theft?
On the other hand, consider the true charity of promoting human creativity
by encouraging hard work,
work that builds up businesses
and creates jobs and opportunities for employees and other business
to work creatively.
It does not take from one to give to another,
but allows creativity to promote the common good.
Now, that assumes that the business is justly conducted
according to God’s will and love for God and neighbor,
but still in freedom and creativity.
___
In today’s gospel, Jesus says,
“’This people honors Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me;
in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines [merely] human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
It is a divine commandment to work
and to do so consistently with God’s creative will
and His commandments to love God and our neighbor.
But it is a human precept to think that others owe you a living,
so you don’t have to work or work so hard.
It is a human tradition, rooted in the human tradition of sin,
to take the freedom from the creative worker
to give the fruit of his godly labor to the idle, slothful and envious.
That is not to say that it is God’s will that the rich should not help the poor.
Of course not.
Those who have should give to those who can’t provide for themselves.
But charity freely given is blessed, while forced charity is not charity at all.
That being said, one of the ways we respect the dignity of the worker
is allowing him time to rest from his labors.
It’s good to take a day off to rest from work.
“On the seventh day God…rested…
from all His work that He had done.”
So enjoy this “last day of summer”.
Rest and recreate as God also created you to do.
But remember the true dignity of all the work you have done
and the dignity of the work of every man and woman
who works in accordance with God’s will and love
and is created in the image of God the Creator, the Worker.