Father Cipolla Labor Day Sermon

Sermon by Fr. Richard Cipolla given on Sept. 5, 2022

Today is the feast of St. Lawrence Justinian, the first patriarch of Venice, whose
life was marked by working for the reform of the clergy of his day in the
monastery of the Augustinian Canons near Venice of which he was a member.
Notice I said he worked for reform, worked. And today we celebrate Labor Day in
this country, which is a celebration of all the workers in this country whose
contributions in their jobs helped make this country great and prosperous.
But what is the origin of work according to the book of Genesis? It is the fall of
man. When God drives Adam and Even out of the Garden of Eden he tells Adam:
To the man he said: Because you listened to your wife
and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
You shall not eat from it.
Cursed is the ground *  because of you!
In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life. h
Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you,
and you shall eat the grass of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you shall eat bread,
Until you return to the ground,
from which you were taken;
For you are dust,
and to dust you shall return. i
Not a good beginning for work. And yet God in his infinite mercy and love saw to
it that even the curse of work became transformed into something good and
positive in human life. It is true that for many people throughout human history
work has been toil and struggle that was a negative load on their humanity. But
when the concept of work is included and thereby transformed when St. Benedict,
the founder of monasticism in the West, conceived of the monastic life as ora et
labora: pray and work, the very idea and practice of work as human toil is
transformed and enriched. It is within the monastic movement that the very
concept of work is transformed from the punishment of Adam and Eve to the
possibility that work combined with prayer could be a vehicle for the
transformation of society, where the fruits of work could become a vehicle to show
the glory and love of God in the world.
It is no accident that there was a remarkable flourishing of art and music in the
centuries that followed the flourishing of the monastic movement. How wonderful
is it that the toil and thistles of Adam’s punishment becomes the deep beauty of
religious painting that spread throughout the Christian world and was taken even to

the New World where it flourished within the bosom of the Church and her faith?
And the same for the art of music whose roots are in the chant of the Mass. How
blest are we to hear this music at this Mass played and sung by volunteers who
take on this work for the glory of God?
We Catholics have much to be thankful for on this Labor Day. We know that work
will always bear some of the sheer toil that afflicted Adam. But we also know
from our own experience how our work in this life can be a source of great
happiness and beauty.
Our processional hymn we sang a short while ago, “Come, labor on, who dares
stand idle on the harvest plain”, tells us that when work is done in behalf of the
coming of the kingdom of God and when work is joined to the saving work of
Christ on the Cross it can be even a source of real joy. Take the printout of that
hymn home with you and ponder its words. Then you may understand how when
ora is joined with labora, even work becomes a source of joy and beauty.