I think we all recognize that the incarnation—God becoming man—is God’s free choice. He decides to do that. Nothing compelled him or coerced him. But I do not think we always appreciate some of the consequences of that choice. Not only does he freely choose to become man; he also chooses of whom he becomes man.
He chooses the Blessed Virgin Mary. He did not have to. And in choosing her, he chooses the situation in which she lives. God could have chosen to be born among the royalty of the world. He could have been born the son of a king and lived that life. He could have been born into the leisure classes, among those who do not have to work.
But instead, he chooses to be born to the wife, the betrothed, of a carpenter. He voluntarily chooses to enter a life of labor. And in doing so, he affirms the goodness and the dignity of labor. That is an important point for us to understand and to meditate on.
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph—specifically, Joseph the Worker. This feast was instituted by Pope Pius XII as a counterbalance to the rise of communism at the time. The communists had a celebration on May 1 for workers, because they saw how workers were being mistreated. They saw that workers were underpaid. They saw that they worked in bad conditions, and that the world was not being just toward them.
But they exploited that fact in order to push a false ideology: to push out God, to push out all hierarchy, to push out many good things, and to use the desperate situation of workers to draw them into their vision.
And so Pius XII instituted this feast as a reminder to Christians—not simply as a warning against communism, but as a call to remember the goodness and value of labor.
If there were people working for a living, trying to provide for their families, and they could not do so, it should not have been the communists who were there speaking up on their behalf. It should have been Christians. We are the ones who know that labor is good, that it is instituted by God, and that through it we can participate in the very plan of salvation. We should have been there defending them. We should have been there promoting the vision of Christ: what labor is meant to be, and its role in human flourishing.
But we were not—or at least, at that point in history, not in the way we should have been. And so the Church instituted this feast to call us back to that vision.
It had some measure of success. There is no doubt about that. Much of that communist influence diminished. Working conditions have improved in many places. But there is more to do.
Now there is a new vision coming onto the scene, fairly recent and often promoted by tech billionaires: a vision of a world that is post-labor. They promote a utopian idea that there will be no more labor in the future, that with artificial intelligence and technology they can free us from all of those things. And they want to tell us how wonderful that idea is.
But if we take seriously that God freely chose to be born as the son of a carpenter, and to work with his hands, then we must reject that vision too. We must recognize that it is not in accord with human nature.
No, we do not want every moment of our lives to be drudgery and burden. Yes, we can use tools to make labor easier. But we do not want a world in which the average person does not work. That will not lead to our flourishing. It will lead to a nightmare.
And if you do not believe that, just think about what people do in their free time, and imagine if everyone had limitless amounts of it throughout the day.
So we have to oppose that vision just as much as we oppose the vision of communism. But we cannot do it merely by denouncing it. We have to promote a positive vision of what labor is: how it brings about good for humanity, and how it should be protected.
We must actually stand with people who work, promoting reasonable pay for them, reasonable protections for them, and the ability for them truly to express who they are through the work they do in this world.
Right now, there is a temptation to sacrifice everything at the altar of the invisible hand of the market, and we have to reject that. The way we value labor should not be merely its economic impact. It should be how Christ himself sees it, and how he sees the good of what we are doing.
That is our vision, and that is what we must promote. Because if we do not, then just as communism would have taken us to ruin, this new vision will take us there as well.
The simple truth is that the world has near-limitless creativity when it comes to violating human dignity. It will find new ways the very moment we push back against one. And so we always have to be on our guard. We always have to be promoting the vision of Christ, actively working to establish his kingdom and his reign in the world.
That starts, first and foremost, not by protesting against the world, but by looking within our own hearts.
Do we appreciate human labor? Do we appreciate the dignity of work and recognize it? Or do we look down on people because of the kind of work they do? Do we fail to recognize that dignity in others? Do we see every act of work we have to engage in as nothing but drudgery and punishment, rather than as an expression of our own nature, a participation in the creative work of God, and ultimately in the plan of salvation?
We have to purify our hearts first, so that we see the world correctly, so that we see it as Christ does. And from there, we can promote his kingdom and his vision, drawing all people into a better world: an authentic utopia rooted in the grace of Christ, who can achieve every good.