Labor Day 2023 - Hikikomori and Good Honest Work

 I was watching a documentary recently about the social group in Japan known as the Hikikomori. The Hikikomori have this extreme disinterest in going to work and engaging in society that they isolate, usually in the home of their parents, and spend the day playing video games or consuming media. These are abled bodied adults who could work, who could engage, but have chosen isolation, and as a result they are depressed and often develop other mental illnesses. 

When St. Paul was wrote his second letter to the Thessalonians, he was addressing a similar problem. There were Christians, who were able, but who were choosing not to work. Even though he had instructed them to imitate his example of remaining industrious until the coming of the Lord, these non-workers were taking advantage of the generosity of their brother Christians.

And so St. Paul gives this stark instruction “if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.” He called those unwilling to work, disordered, as well as those who were “too busy minding the business of others.” Unwillingness to work, like the Hikikomori, and many in our own culture, who could work, but who take advantage of the system or their parents and family or the generosity of charities, is a disorder, a disordered life.

The Catechism says that Working with God to bring the best out of creation is part of God’s original plan—we are Co-laborers with God—who himself is the original worker, the shaper of the universe, the bringer of life, a Gardner. Good holy work therefore honors God. Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. Good honest work is not only good for the soul, it is in imitation of the Divine--one might say, a participation and cooperation in divine life.

Labor Day, for much of the our society, is an extra day off, and many of us need it, because we do have to work very hard to meet our basic needs. I saw that in you compare the purchasing power of the dollar, we are worse off right now than in the Great Depression. Good honest laborers are working very hard for those basic necessities. And so we do need to be generous with those who are struggling to make ends meet like so many of the people we assist in our St. Vincent de Paul Society, as well as the mentally ill. 

But we also need to give encouragement to the discouraged, and lazy, to work to the extent they are able. We must also cultivate a much healthier attitude toward honest work in our young people. The addiction to the instant gratification of entertainment needs to be replaced with the lasting fulfillment that comes from honest hard-work and contribution to the common good. 

May this Labor Day be a source of true refreshment for laborers, for society, and the Church. God made us to imitate him in our work, may our work be rightly ordered to the glory of God and the salvation of souls.