Labor Day: rest from the grind of work
By Most Rev. James D. Conley.

Monday is Labor Day, the symbolic end of the summer holidays in the United States. Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday of September since the 1880s and grew out of the labor movement as a way to honor the contributions workers have made to the prosperity and well-being of our country. Labor Day is a sort of national day of rest from the grind of the workaday world.

While some might contend that we already have too many holidays and that our quest for leisure has become somewhat of a fetish, do we really understand the meaning of leisure? Or are we just as distracted and, in the end, exhausted from our pursuit of what we think is leisure, as we are in our daily professions? Are we really comfortable with simply being at rest and enjoying the simplicity of true leisure?
In his classic work “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” (recently republished by Ignatius Press), Joseph Pieper, the German born Thomistic philosopher, argues that our culture does not suffer from the overabundance of leisure but, rather, its scarcity.

He claims that because we are so driven by the pragmatic view of reality, we find it very difficult simply to enjoy the more contemplative pleasures of life, like reading, going for long walks or looking up at the stars in wonder. We seem to think that we always have to be “doing” something and we feel guilty when we are not engaged in some useful activity. Pieper writes that “man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.” If something is difficult or hard to achieve, then it must be good. He quotes St. Thomas Aquinas: “The essence of virtue consists in the good rather than the difficult.”

True leisure is more of an attitude of mind or condition of soul, and not the inevitable result of spare time, a day off, a weekend or a vacation. There is an awareness in leisure which is “an attitude of non-activity, of inward calm, of silence; it means not being busy, but letting things happen.”

Pieper is quick to make a clear distinction between leisure and mere idleness. The former refers to the contemplative side of the human person; the ability to passively receive knowledge and wisdom. The same sort of passivity which is required to receive God’s grace. The latter is simply laziness and leads to the vice of sloth and indolence.

I don’t think anyone would argue the fact that we live in a very busy world. It has always struck me as ironic that today we probably have more time-saving gadgets and labor saving devices than at anytime in history. Therefore, it would make sense to presume that we should have much more leisure time on our hands than ever before. I am afraid the opposite is true. With all the extra time we have saved, we are now able to get even that much more done and have become busier than ever before. 

We also live in a very noisy world. Some people have to have something “on” all the time or they become nervous and uncomfortable. Whether it be the television, the radio, or their iPod, there always has to be noise in the background. Whereas true leisure is a form of silence, a kind of quieting of the soul which is a prerequisite for the apprehension of reality. True leisure is an attitude of receptivity and a capacity for wonder.

If you are looking for a good book to read on Labor Day, may I suggest “Leisure: the Basis of Culture”? Josef Pieper’s book, barely 100 pages long, is more significant, even more crucial, today than it was when it first appeared more than 50 years ago. In his defense of the idea of true leisure, Pieper concludes that prayer and divine worship provide the deepest springs by which leisure is fed and continues to be vital, but ultimately leisure “embraces everything which, without being merely useful, is an essential part of a full human existence.”