Labor Day 2026
A LETTER TO THE FAITHFUL ON LABOR DAY
The Dignity and Spirituality of Human Work
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
As our Nation celebrates Labor Day, I invite you to pause amid the beginning of another school year and the changing rhythms of our communities to give thanks for the gift of work. For generations, Labor Day has been an occasion to honor the American worker. It is a day to recognize the dignity of those who labor with their minds and hands, those who build our homes and roads, teach our children, care for the sick, serve our communities, cultivate our fields, operate our businesses, and perform the countless tasks that sustain our common life.
This year, however, Labor Day invites us to consider a critical question: What happens to our understanding of work when artificial intelligence can increasingly perform tasks once performed by human beings? Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, has given us an important point of reference in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Signed on 15 May 2026—the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum—the encyclical places the technological revolution of our own day within the long tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.
Pope Leo does not reject technology. Indeed, he recognizes that technological innovation can be a genuine expression of human creativity and can relieve people of arduous, repetitive, or dangerous tasks. The question is not whether technology is good or bad in itself. The question is whether technology remains at the service of the human person, or whether the human person gradually becomes subordinate to technology. This distinction has a direct bearing on the matter of work. When Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum during the Industrial Revolution, the concern was that man would become a machine. Now, Leo XIV addresses the issue of artificial intelligence, when the concern is that machine would become a man.
The Church has consistently taught that work possesses a dignity that cannot be measured simply by a paycheck, a production quota, or an economic statistic. Pope Leo reminds us that work is a fundamental good for the human person. Through our work, we exercise freedom and creativity, cooperate with others, support our families, contribute to society, develop our abilities, and grow in maturity. We participate, in a modest but real way, in God's own creative work.
This is why the Christian understanding of work is ultimately spiritual. The Book of Genesis tells us that we have been created in the image and likeness of God. The God who creates also calls us to create, cultivate, build, repair, teach, serve, and care. Work, therefore, can become an expression of our vocation.
Saint Benedict captured this beautifully in the simple Christian rhythm of "ora et labora"—"pray and work." Pope Leo recalls this Benedictine insight in Magnifica Humanitas, noting that daily activity can be part of our human response to God's call. This means that our work can become a place of sanctification. A carpenter who carefully builds a table, a nurse who patiently cares for a patient, a teacher who prepares a lesson, a student who studies diligently, a farmer who tends the soil, a parent who works to provide for a family, a business owner who creates dignified employment, a priest who accompanies his people, a Religious who humbly serves, and a homemaker who cares for a household—all can offer their work to God. Work can form character and teach patience, responsibility, cooperation, and perseverance.
One of the great challenges of our time will be not simply learning how to use artificial intelligence, but learning how not to lose our humanity while using it. Artificial intelligence can assist us. It can organize information, analyze data, perform calculations, help us communicate, and relieve us of certain repetitive tasks. There is much good that can come from responsible technological development.
But we must resist the temptation to delegate to artificial intelligence everything that requires human judgment, human responsibility, human creativity, human relationship, and human presence. There are things a machine can do, but there are also things a machine cannot do. It cannot be a mother or father; it cannot be a friend; it cannot pray; it cannot repent; it cannot forgive from the depths of a human heart; it cannot assume moral responsibility before God; it cannot experience the wisdom that comes from years of fidelity, suffering, failure, perseverance, and love.
Pope Leo reminds us that artificial intelligence does not possess the human experience of relationships, responsibility, love, work, and spiritual growth. It can imitate aspects of human intelligence, but it does not possess the conscience and freedom through which the human person grows in wisdom. Therefore, we must never confuse efficiency with wisdom, information with knowledge, or productivity with human flourishing. And we must never allow the desire to save time to rob us of the very experiences through which we become more fully human.
Perhaps this is one of the most valuable messages we should take from Magnifica Humanitas this Labor Day: We need a spirituality of work. We need to remember that work is not merely something we do so that we can eventually stop working. Work is part of the human vocation. It gives structure to our days, creates opportunities for relationships, teaches perseverance, gives us the satisfaction of accomplishing something through our own effort, and enables us to serve others and contribute to the common good.
For young people especially, work can be a school of life. It can teach them responsibility, initiative, patience, and cooperation. It can help them discover their gifts and discern their vocation. For families, work provides not only material support but also an opportunity to teach children the dignity of responsibility and service. For our society, work creates bonds of participation and belonging.
Consequently, Pope Leo warns that a society in which technological efficiency leaves large numbers of people without meaningful work could experience a paradox: material progress accompanied by human and cultural impoverishment. That is something we must take seriously. Technology should help us work better; it should not make us forget why human beings work. Technology should free human beings from unnecessary burdens; it should not convince us that human beings themselves are unnecessary. Technology should serve the worker; the worker should not become merely an instrument serving the machine.
There is also a profound social dimension to this question. Pope Leo reminds us that the dignity of work requires that economic decisions be measured not solely by efficiency and profit but by their impact upon the human person, the family, and the common good. He specifically calls for employment, retraining and meaningful participation to be protected as technology transforms the workplace.
This requires wisdom from employers, workers, educators, government leaders, labor organizations and technology developers. Businesses should ask not only, "How much can this technology produce?" but also, "How will this technology affect the people entrusted to us?" Workers should not be afraid of every technological advance, but neither should they be expected simply to surrender their human capacities to it. Educators must teach young people not merely how to operate new technologies but how to think, discern, create, communicate, and relate to others. And all of us must remember the principle of subsidiarity: decisions affecting people should remain as close as reasonably possible to the people and communities affected by them.
On this Labor Day, therefore, I offer a word of gratitude. Thank you to those who work long hours so that others may live with dignity. Thank you to those whose work is seen and to those whose work is rarely noticed. Thank you to parents who sacrifice for their children. Thank you to teachers, healthcare workers, first responders, farmers, tradesmen and tradeswomen, business owners, public servants, laborers and professionals. Thank you to those who work with their hands and those who work with their minds. And thank you especially to those whose work involves caring for another human being, because such work reminds us that the human person can never be reduced to a task to be completed.
On Labor Day, let us recover something that our increasingly technological society desperately needs: the joy and dignity of doing something ourselves, of learning something through effort, of serving another person face to face, and of offering the work of our hands and hearts to God. Let us use artificial intelligence wisely, but let us never surrender our human intelligence, our conscience, our creativity, our responsibility, or our relationships to it. Let us welcome technology when it serves the human person, but let us have the courage to say no when efficiency comes at the expense of human dignity.
And let us remember that our ultimate worth does not come from how productive we are. Our human dignity comes from the fact that we have been created by God, redeemed by Jesus Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, and called to eternal communion with the Holy Trinity.
May Saint Joseph the Worker, who knew the dignity of labor and who placed his work at the service of the Holy Family, intercede for all who work. And may the Blessed Virgin Mary, who offered her entire life in God's service, teach us to place both our work and our rest into the hands of Divine Providence.
On this Labor Day, may we give thanks for the gift of work, protect the dignity of every worker, and enter the future with confidence—not as servants of machines, but as men and women created in the image and likeness of God.
With prayerful best wishes, I remain
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+ Most Reverend Alfred A. Schlert
Bishop of Allentown
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