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9/3/2021

Monday is Labor Day

September 3, 2021

Dear Companions on the Journey,

Monday is Labor Day. Support for workers’ right to organize for workplace justice has long been a pillar of Catholic social teaching. Indeed, Dorothy Day, in starting the Catholic Worker movement, had the rights of workers in mind. Her collaborator, Peter Maurin, wrote the following as one of his “Easy Essays”:

The world would be better off if people tried to become better,

and people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.

For when everyone tries to become better off, nobody is better off.

But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off.

Everybody would be rich if nobody tried to become richer.

And nobody would be poor if everybody tried to be the poorest.

And everybody would be what they ought to be if everybody tried to be what they want the other person to be.

What do you think?

 


We conclude with the prophet Micah 6:8:

Our Faithful God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

And let us pray for/with one another.

Michael
Michael McGarry, C.S.P.
Director, the Paulist Center