A Labor Day Reflection Honoring Work Through Love and Service
For many Americans, Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer—a final long weekend for travel, family gatherings, barbecues and time away from our usual routines. But beneath the traditions of the holiday, there is an important opportunity for some reflection this Labor Day to focus on something we experience almost every day: the meaning and dignity of work.
This year, just two days before Labor Day, on September 5, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of St. Teresa of Calcutta, better known throughout her lifetime as Mother Teresa.
At first, an American holiday honoring workers and the feast day of a Catholic saint may seem unrelated. Yet together, they offer a beautiful reminder that work is about much more than what we produce, how much we earn or the titles we hold.
Our work can also be a way to serve one another.
Whether we are teaching children, caring for a parent, welcoming a guest, raising a family, volunteering in our community, working in an office or performing a job that few people ever notice, St. Teresa’s example reminds us of the extraordinary value that can be found in ordinary acts of service.
Why Do We Celebrate Labor Day?
Labor Day has been celebrated in the United States for more than 140 years. The first Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on September 5, 1882, organized by the Central Labor Union. The idea spread across the country, and in 1894, Congress made the first Monday of September a national holiday.
The holiday grew out of the American labor movement and was created to recognize the social and economic contributions of American workers. It was also intended to give workers and their families something important: a day of recreation and rest.
More than a century later, Labor Day is often associated with the end of summer. But its original meaning remains relevant.
Behind the businesses we visit, schools our children attend, meals we enjoy, hospitals that care for us, hotels that welcome us and communities we call home are people whose work makes everyday life possible.
Labor Day invites us to recognize them.
For Catholics, it can also invite a deeper question: What gives our work meaning?
What Does the Catholic Church Teach About the Dignity of Work?
The dignity of work is an important principle of Catholic social teaching.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops explains that work is more than simply a way to earn a living. Through work, people participate in God’s creation. Catholic teaching therefore calls not only for respect for work itself, but also for the rights and dignity of the people performing it.
St. John Paul II explored this idea extensively in his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens (On Human Work). He taught that the fundamental value of work comes not primarily from the kind of work being performed, but from the fact that the person doing the work has inherent dignity.
This distinction is important.
Our culture often assigns greater value to certain professions, salaries, accomplishments or positions. Catholic teaching asks us to look at work differently. A person’s dignity does not rise or fall according to a job title.
The executive and the housekeeper, the physician and the hospital aide, the professor and the school custodian all possess the same fundamental human dignity.
And work encompasses much more than paid employment.
There is dignity in the work of the parent who spends the evening helping a child with homework. There is dignity in caring for an relative, preparing a meal for a neighbor, coaching a children’s team, volunteering at a food pantry or quietly doing something that makes another person’s day a little easier.
This understanding of work gives us a natural bridge from Labor Day to a woman whose life became one of the world’s most recognizable examples of service.
September 5: The Feast Day of St. Teresa of Calcutta
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Mother Teresa left home at age 18 to enter religious life. She eventually traveled to India, where she taught at a girls’ school in Calcutta—now Kolkata—from 1931 until 1948.
But the poverty and suffering she witnessed beyond the walls of the convent profoundly affected her.
In 1948, she received permission to leave the convent school and devote herself to serving people experiencing extreme poverty in Calcutta. She began with little money, starting an open-air school for children. Others eventually joined her, and in 1950 the Missionaries of Charity was established.
Her life’s work eventually became known around the world. In 1979, she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her service to people experiencing poverty, illness, abandonment and suffering.
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, and Pope Francis canonized her as St. Teresa of Calcutta in 2016. In 2025, Pope Francis added her September 5 celebration to the General Roman Calendar as an optional memorial for the universal Church.
Yet perhaps the most important part of her legacy cannot be summarized by awards or accomplishments.
It was her conviction that love should lead to service.
St. Teresa expressed the relationship simply:
“The fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service.”
Those words, recalled by St. John Paul II after her beatification, help us see Labor Day through a different lens.
What Can Mother Teresa Teach Us About Work and Labor Day?
Most of us will never be called to live the life St. Teresa lived. But that does not mean her example is beyond our reach.
Her life challenges us to reconsider what makes work important in the first place.
1. No Work Done With Love Is Insignificant
It is easy to think that meaningful work has to be impressive.
St. Teresa’s life suggests something different. Much of her ministry involved basic acts of human care: feeding someone, washing someone, listening, teaching, comforting or simply being present.
Our own lives are filled with similarly ordinary tasks.
A hospitality worker carefully preparing a room for a guest may never know what brought that traveler to New York. A teacher may not see the impact of an encouraging word until years later. A parent may prepare the thousandth lunch without anyone noticing.
The action may be ordinary. The love behind it does not have to be.
2. The Person in Front of Us Matters
St. Teresa’s ministry reached people whom much of society had stopped seeing.
She believed deeply in recognizing the person behind the poverty, illness or circumstance. When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, she spoke about the importance of treating people experiencing poverty with understanding, respect and dignity.
That principle can transform the way we think about our own work.
A customer is a person. A patient is a person. A student is a person. A coworker having a difficult day is a person.
Our work becomes more human when we remember the humanity of the people it serves.
3. Service Doesn’t Have to Be Extraordinary to Make a Difference
We often associate service with major sacrifices: missionary work, charitable organizations or traveling somewhere far away to help people in need.
St. Teresa repeatedly encouraged people to begin closer to home. In her Nobel lecture, she urged her listeners to recognize need within their own homes, families and countries.
That makes service accessible to all of us.
It may mean checking on your neighbors. Volunteering for an afternoon. Bringing dinner to someone going through a difficult time. Being patient with a customer. Helping a coworker without being asked. Giving a child our full attention.
Sometimes the opportunity to serve is simply the person who is already standing in front of us.
4. Caring for Others Is Real Work
Labor Day naturally makes us think about employment, but some of society’s most important work never appears on a paycheck.
Parents raise children. Family members care for aging parents. Friends sit beside hospital beds. Volunteers stock food pantries, coach teams, visit people who are lonely and support countless organizations in their communities.
This work can be exhausting, repetitive and largely unseen.
It still matters.
Catholic teaching reminds us that human work is connected to family, community and the common good—not simply economic production.
This Labor Day, we can remember not only people going to jobs, but also the millions of people whose unpaid work quietly holds families and communities together.
5. Every Worker Deserves Dignity
One of the strongest connections between Labor Day and Catholic social teaching is the belief that workers themselves matter.
Catholic teaching maintains that economic life should serve people rather than treating people merely as tools of the economy. It therefore connects the dignity of work with fair wages, productive employment, decent working conditions and workers’ rights.
St. Teresa approached human dignity from another direction, but arrived at a similar truth: no person’s circumstances erase his or her worth.
Labor Day gives us an opportunity to notice workers whose contributions are easily overlooked and to treat them with genuine gratitude and respect.
A sincere thank-you may be a small gesture.
But small gestures matter.
6. Our Work Can Become an Act of Love
There is a difference between completing a task and caring about the person affected by it.
A nurse can administer medication—or comfort a frightened patient while doing so.
A teacher can explain a lesson—or notice the student who feels discouraged.
A hotel employee can check in a guest—or make someone arriving alone in an unfamiliar city feel genuinely welcome.
A parent can prepare dinner—or use the meal to create a moment when the family reconnects.
The task may be exactly the same. What changes is the spirit in which it is performed.
For St. Teresa, service flowed from love. And that idea gives even the most routine work the possibility of deeper meaning.
7. Meaningful Work Still Requires Rest
There is another lesson worth remembering on Labor Day: we are more than our productivity.
Rest is not contrary to the dignity of work.
Scripture gives us a rhythm of both work and rest, and St. John Paul II wrote that human work must leave room for the rest that people need.
That makes Labor Day’s tradition of stepping away from work particularly meaningful.
Rest can give us time to be present with family, enjoy God’s creation, pray, travel, share a meal or simply appreciate the life that exists beyond our daily responsibilities.
Sometimes stepping away from work helps us return to it with a clearer understanding of why we do it.
A Labor Day Weekend of Rest, Gratitude and Reflection
If you’re traveling over Labor Day weekend, consider allowing part of your trip to be truly restful to provide time for reflection.
Take a walk without rushing to your next destination. Attend Mass. Sit in a park. Have a long meal with someone you love. Call someone who has helped you. Thank a person whose work you might ordinarily overlook.
And on September 5, the Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta, consider one additional question:
Who can I serve today?
It doesn’t necessarily require a grand gesture.
Mother Teresa’s example reminds us to begin with the people around us.
A Labor Day Reflection for Workers
Heavenly Father,
On this Labor Day, we give thanks for the gift of work and for all those whose labor serves our families, our communities and our world.
Bless those who work with their hands and those who work with their minds. Bless teachers and caregivers, healthcare workers and hospitality workers, first responders and laborers, business owners and employees, parents and volunteers.
Remember especially those whose work is difficult, dangerous or unnoticed; those who are overworked or underpaid; those searching for employment; and those who cannot work.
Give us the wisdom to recognize the dignity of every worker and the grace to approach our own responsibilities with patience, generosity and love.
Inspired by St. Teresa of Calcutta, help us to recognize opportunities to serve in the ordinary moments of our lives and to see the dignity of every person we encounter.
And when our work is finished, teach us also to rest—with gratitude for what has been accomplished and trust in the work still to come.
Amen.
Finding Meaning in the Work We Do
Labor Day began as a celebration of workers and their contributions to American life. More than 140 years later, it can also be an invitation to think about what our work contributes to the lives of others.
St. Teresa of Calcutta offers us a powerful example.
Few of us will accomplish what she did. But perhaps that isn’t the lesson we’re meant to take from her life.
We can welcome a stranger. Teach a child. Care for someone who needs us. Prepare a meal. Encourage a coworker. Volunteer an afternoon. Perform an unnoticed task with care.
We can recognize the dignity of the person doing the work—and the person being served by it.
And we can remember that some of life’s most meaningful work happens quietly, one person at a time.
If your Labor Day weekend brings you to New York City, we invite you to find time amid the excitement of the city for rest, reflection and gratitude. At The Leo House in Chelsea, our Catholic tradition of hospitality reminds us that welcoming and serving others can itself be meaningful work—and we are grateful for the opportunity to welcome travelers from around the world.
