Year of Saint Joseph
Year of the Family "Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love"
Readings of the Day
RB: Prologue 39-44
Mass: Col 1:24-2:3; Resp Ps 62; Lk 6:6-11
From God comes my hope.
WHATEVER YOU DO IN WORD OR DEED, DO EVERTHING IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, GIVING THANKS TO GOD THE FATHER THROUGH HIM.
(Communion Antiphon, Mass)
Welcome to the celebration of Labor Day, when many gather for the last time to enjoy food and fellowship during the summer months. A time when summer is considered over, and even though school has already begun in most places, kind of an unofficial start to a new school year. May it be a day of rest and relaxation. If you do find yourself working, it seems one could turn to today's Gospel and see Jesus reaching out to, or rather the man with the withered out reaching out to Jesus. Jesus' question: Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than evil, to save life rather than to destroy it? (Lk 6:9). All considered, may whatever we find ourselves doing, be done so that in all things God is glorified (1 Pet 4:11/RB 57:9).
Through work man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.
(Pope Saint John Paul II, Laborem Exercens on Human Work, September 14, 1981)
Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the sisters should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading.
(Rule of Saint Benedict, 48:1)
SAINT JOSEPH,
PRAY FOR US.
Today's photo: More from Luscher Farms in West Linn, OR.
© Gertrude Feick 2021
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