Holy Mass for Workers (31 May 1980)

On 31 May 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass for Workers in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Paris. In his homily, the Pope honored motherhood and the family on the Feast of the Visitation of Mary, the ideal of all motherhood.

1. “Blessed are you . . .”.

Allow me, dear brothers and sisters gathered in and around this venerable Basilica of Saint-Denis, which houses the tombs of the kings of France, to greet Mary mother of Christ with you.

You know the words of this greeting. Certainly you have said them more than once or have heard them pronounced by others:
"Blessed are you among women, / and blessed is the fruit of your womb" ( Lk 1:42).

This greeting is addressed to a woman carrying a man in her womb: the fruit of life is the beginning of life. This woman comes from afar, from Nazareth, and behold, she enters the house of her relatives of hers whom she has come to visit. From the threshold of the house she hears: "Blessed is she who believed in the fulfillment of the words of the Lord!" ( Lk 1, 45).

On the last day of the month of May, the Church remembers this visit and these words; it greets Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. It honors her motherhood at a time when it is still only a mystery in her womb and in her heart.

Above all, I want to honor motherhood and the faith in man that it implies. I also want to pay homage to man's work, this work for which man provides a living for his, for his family before anyone else - this family therefore has fundamental rights; this work with which man realizes his vocation to love, because the world of human work is built on moral strength, on love. Love must inspire justice and the struggle for justice.

2. Honoring motherhood means accepting man in his full truth and in his full dignity, from the very beginning of his existence. The beginning of man is in his mother's heart.

In this great assembly, in which workers participate above all, I would like to greet every man, every woman, by virtue of the great dignity that has belonged to him from the first moment of his existence in his mother's heart. All that we are finds its beginning there.

The first measure of human dignity, the first condition for respect for the inviolable rights of the human person, is the honor due to the mother. It is the cult of motherhood. We cannot detach man from his human beginning. Now that we have learned so much about the biological mechanisms which, in their respective spheres, determine this beginning, we must with all the more lively conscience and all the more ardent conviction proclaim the human-profoundly human-beginning of every man as the fundamental value and the basis of all his rights. The first right of man is the right to life. We must defend this right and this value. Otherwise the whole logic of faith in man, the whole program of truly human progress, would be shaken and would collapse.

On the threshold of Zechariah's house, Elizabeth said to Mary: Blessed are you who believed (cf. Lk 1:45).

We honor motherhood, because faith in man is expressed in it. I feel a further joy in doing this on this eve of the feast that all French families consecrate to mothers.

The leap of faith in man is the fact that his parents give him life. The mother carries him in her womb and she is ready to suffer all the pains of childbirth; with this she proclaims her faith in man with all her feminine self, with all her maternal self. She bears witness to the value that is in her and that at the same time surpasses her, to the constitutive value of the one who, still unknown, newly conceived, totally hidden in his mother's womb, must be born and manifest himself to the world as a child of his parents, as confirmation of their humanity, as the fruit of their love, as the future of the family: of the closest one and at the same time of the whole human family.

This child may be weak, unfit, even deficient. That sometimes happens. Motherhood is always a pain - the love for which you pay with your own suffering - and it happens that this love must be even greater than the pain of childbirth itself. This pain can extend throughout the child's life. The value of humanity is also confirmed by these children, by these men in whom humanity is retarded and sometimes undergoes a painful degradation.

It is one more element to say that it is not enough to define man according to all bio-physiological criteria and that one must believe in man right from the start.

Blessed are you Mary who believed! The one you carry in your heart, as the fruit of your bowels, will come into the world on the night of Bethlehem. Later he will announce the Gospel to men and will go up on the cross. Indeed, this is why he came into the world, to bear witness to the truth. The truth about man, the mystery of man, his ultimate and highest vocation, the vocation of every man, even of the man whose humanity will perhaps not reach a complete and normal development, will be manifested in him to the very top; of every man without exception, regardless of any consideration, qualification or degree of intelligence, sensitivity or physical performance, but by virtue of his humanity, of the fact that he is a man. Because thanks to this, precisely thanks to his humanity, he is the image and likeness of the infinite God.

3. I know that in this assembly I am mostly listened to by workers. This neighborhood, around its Basilica steeped in history, has now transformed into one of the busiest neighborhoods in the Parisian suburbs and I know that many French and foreign workers live and work here in often precarious conditions of housing, wages and employment. I am also thinking of the French overseas population. An important number of her children work here in Paris: they represent her among us. I think in particular of those who have come from afar, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Turkey, North Africa, Mali, Senegal, South-East Asia. Despite the efforts made for them and the welcome given to them in this country, therefore, an uprooting all the more painful as the family is sometimes broken up, divided between the country of origin and the country of work, necessarily adds to the harsh working-class condition. There is also the suffering of anonymity which can cause nostalgia for the emotional warmth of the native city or village. Yes, this current urban life makes human relationships difficult in the rush of a never-ending race between work, home and shopping.

The integration of children, young people and the elderly often poses acute problems. Consequently the calls to work together to create ever more human living conditions for all. The presence of migrants is, moreover, a source of fruitful exchanges for both.

Above all, I wish to encourage the Christian apostolate which is carried out in genuine concern for evangelization by priests, religious, lay people, young people and adults especially devoted to the world of workers.
And now I want to address a demanding reflection on human work and on justice: that all those whose lives I have just mentioned know well that I have a living spirit of their situation, their efforts and that I wish to express all my affection for them and their families.

4. There is a close link, a particular link between human work and the fundamental environment of human love which bears the family name.

Man has been working since the beginning to subdue the earth and dominate it. We derive this definition of work from the first chapters of the book of Genesis. The man works to ensure his and his family's subsistence. We take this definition of work from the Gospel, from the life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and also from daily experience. These are the fundamental definitions of human work. Both are authentic, that is, fully humanistic, and the second carries in itself a particular fullness of evangelical content.

It is necessary to follow these fundamental contents in order to ensure man an adequate place in the whole of the economic order. Indeed it is easy to miss this place. It is lost when work is considered above all as an element of production, as a "commodity" or an "instrument", the name of the systems on which this position is based does not matter: if man is subjected to production, if he becomes only its instrument, then work, human work, is deprived of its dignity and specific meaning. It is nice to recall here the famous words of Cardinal Cardijn: "A young worker is worth more than all the gold in the world".

For this reason, among the various measures that allow us to evaluate the work of man, the measure of the family must be placed in the foreground. When man works to ensure the subsistence of his family, this means that he puts all the daily effort of love into his work. In fact, it is love that gives birth to the family, that is its constant expression, its stable environment. Man can also love work for work's sake, because this allows him to participate in the great work of dominating the earth, a work willed by the Creator. And this sure love corresponds to the dignity of man. But the love that man puts into his work does not find the full measure of him if it does not connect him, it unites him to men themselves, above all to those who are flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. Work cannot therefore destroy the family; on the contrary, it must unite it, help it to deepen its cohesion. The rights of the family must be deeply inscribed in the very foundations of every labor code which has man as its subject and not just production and profit. For example, how can we find a satisfactory solution to the problem - similar in many countries - of the woman who works in the factory at a stressful pace and who maintains constant care of her being present to her children and her husband?

I am mentioning here a vast program which could be the object of numerous and specialized studies in order to exhaust its content. I limit myself to a few aspects that seem to me of capital importance. Throughout my life I have had the good fortune, the grace of God, to be able to discover these fundamental truths about human work by virtue of my personal experience of manual work. As long as I live I will remember the men to whom the same work site has linked me, in the stone quarry or in the workshop. I will not forget the human benevolence that my workmates have shown me, I will not forget the exchange of ideas we had in our spare moments on the fundamental problems of the workers' existence and life. I know what value they had for these men, who were at the same time fathers of families, their home, the future of their children, the respect due to their wives, their mothers. From this experience, which lasted a few years, I gained the conviction and certainty that man is expressed in work as a subject capable of loving, oriented towards fundamental human values, ready for solidarity with all men.

In my life experience, I have understood what a worker is and I carry this in my heart. I know that work is also a necessity, sometimes a harsh necessity; and yet man wishes to transform it to the extent of his dignity and his love for him. Therein lies his greatness. Living conditions often force men to leave their homeland to go and find work, as is the case with many of you. We must hope that every society is able to give enough work to its citizens! However, if emigration for reasons of work becomes a need or a necessity, I wish all the more all those who find themselves in this situation, to know how to transform this necessity to the extent of the love that binds them to their neighbors: to their families and to their native country. It is wrong to say that the worker has no country. In fact he is the representative of his people in a particular way, he is the man of his house. The law of love, the need for love, the order of love are inscribed in human work.

Today's liturgy speaks expressly of it using the words of the Apostle Paul who, as we know, lived on the work of his hands: “Flee from evil with horror, cling to good; love one another with brotherly affection . . . rejoice in hope, be strong in tribulation, persevere in prayer. . . thoughtful in hospitality. . . rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who mourn. Have the same feelings towards one another" ( Rom 12:9-16).

5. The world of human work must therefore above all be a world built on moral strength: it must be the world of love and not the world of hate. It is the world of construction and not that of destruction. The rights of man, of the family, of the nation and of humanity are deeply inscribed in human work. The future of the world depends on their respect.

Does this perhaps mean that the fundamental problem of the world of work today is not at all justice and the struggle for social justice? Far from it: this means that there is no means of detaching the reality of human work from this justice and this noble struggle.

Doesn't today's liturgy, on the feast of the Visitation of Mary, also speak like this in a certain sense?

Does not the truth about God's justice resound at the same time as the adoration of God, whose mercy is for all generations, in the words that the evangelist St. Luke placed on the lips of the Virgin who carries the son of God in her womb? “He has spread the might of his arm, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart, he has overthrown the mighty from their thrones, he has exalted the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, he has sent the rich away empty ”( Lk 1, 51-53).

These words say that the world willed by God is a world of justice. That the order that must govern relationships between men is based on justice. That this order must be continuously created in the world and also that it must be created anew every day, in relation to the growth and development of social situations and systems, in relation to new economic conditions and possibilities, to new technical and production possibilities and at the same time to new possibilities and needs for the distribution of goods.

These words from Mary's "Magnificat" are pronounced with a splendid impulse of gratitude towards God who - as Mary proclaims - has done great things in her. They say that the world willed by God cannot be a world in which some, few in number, accumulate excessive goods in their hands, and the others - in a much higher number - suffer from indigence, poverty and die of hunger. Who are the first? And who are the others? Is it just two social classes opposed to each other? Here we must not close ourselves in schemes that are too narrow. Today, in fact, we are dealing with entire societies, with entire areas of the world, already defined in various ways. We speak, for example, of developed societies and underdeveloped societies. But we must also talk about consumer societies and those in which men are literally dying of hunger. Today we need to have a very broad, universal vision of the problem as a whole. Closed schemes are not enough. On the contrary, these narrow schemes can sometimes obstruct the way rather than open it, for example when it is a matter of the victory of a system or of a party rather than of the real needs of man.

However, these needs exist not only in economic matters, in the area of ​​the distribution of material goods. There are other authentic human needs, there are also other human rights that suffer violence. And not only human rights, but equally the rights of families and the rights of nations. “Man does not live by bread alone . . .” ( Mt4, 4). There is not only hunger for bread. Sometimes man is even more hungry for truth; he hungers for freedom when certain of his fundamental rights are violated, such as freedom of conscience and religious freedom. to the education of children in conformity with the faith and convictions of parents and families and to education according to ability and not, for example, according to a political conjuncture or a conception of the world imposed by force.

6. The world of human work, the great society of workers, has built itself resolutely on moral strength - and so it should be! -, must therefore remain sensitive to all those dimensions of injustice that have developed in the contemporary world. They must be able to fight nobly for every form of justice: for the true good of man, for all the rights of the person, of the family, of the nation, of humanity. This justice is the condition of peace, as John XXIII expressed with acute intuition in his encyclical " Pacem in Terris”. The willingness to undertake such a noble struggle, a struggle for the true good of man and in all its dimensions derives from the words Mary pronounces carrying Christ in her heart, spoken with a reference to the living God when she says: “He has spread out the might of his arm, / He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart
; / she has overthrown the mighty from their thrones, / she has exalted the lowly; / he has filled the hungry with good things, / he has sent the rich away empty ”( Lk 1, 51-53).

Christ will say one day: "Blessed are those who thirst and hunger for righteousness for they will be satisfied" ( Mt5, 6). However, this hunger for justice, this eagerness to fight for truth and for the moral order of the world are not and cannot be either hatred or a source of hatred in the world. They cannot be transformed into a program of struggle against man solely because he is, so to speak, "in the other camp". This struggle cannot become a program of destruction of the adversary, it cannot create social and political mechanisms in which ever greater collective selfishness, powerful and destructive selfishness is manifested, selfishness which sometimes destroys its own society, its own nation, which also destroys others without scruple: the weakest nations and societies from the point of view of human, economic and civilizational potential, depriving them of their independence and effective sovereignty and exploiting their resources.

Our contemporary world sees the terrible threat of the destruction of one another by means of an increase, especially with the accumulation of nuclear means. The cost of these means and the climate of threat they cause have meant that millions of individuals and entire peoples have already seen their chances of bread and freedom reduced. Under these conditions, the great society of workers, precisely in the name of the moral strength that is found therein, must categorically and clearly ask: where, in what ambit, why was the boundary of the noble struggle for justice, of the struggle for the good of man, especially the most marginalized and most needy, violated?

Where, in what context, why has this moral and creative force been transformed into a destructive force, hatred, in the new forms of collective selfishness, which reveals the threat of the possibility of a struggle of all against all and a monstrous self-destruction?

Our age demands that we ask ourselves such a question, such a fundamental question. It is a categorical imperative of consciences: of every man, of entire societies and in particular of those which bear the main responsibility for today and for the future of the world. This question reveals the moral strength represented by the worker, by the world of work and by all men at the same time.

We still have to ask ourselves: in the name of what right was this moral strength, this willingness to fight for the truth, this hunger and thirst for justice systematically - and even programmatically - detached from the words of the Mother who venerates God with all her soul as she carries the Son of God in her heart? In what sense has the struggle for world justice been linked to the program of a radical denial of God? To the organized program of atheistic impregnation of men and societies?

It must be asked, if not for other reasons, at least in the name of the integral truth about man. In the name of her inner freedom and his dignity. And also in the name of the whole story about him. Here is a question that must be asked. In any case, Christians cannot and do not want to prepare this world of truth and justice in hatred, but only in the dynamics of love.

And to conclude, let us keep in mind the words of today's liturgy: “Let charity be fictional: flee from evil with horror, cling to good; love one another with fraternal affection, compete in mutual esteem. Do not be lazy in zeal; instead be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope” ( Rom 12:9-12).

To the dear Portuguese-speaking emigrants, with an affectionate greeting and my best wishes, I address the exhortation to be equally faithful to the authentic values ​​of the family as God asks, and to honorable work. And this even if they find themselves in difficult living conditions: I ask this of their Christian vocation and of the noble traditions they bear even outside their beloved homeland. And may the holy Virgin be light and example for all to follow and, as Mother of our trust, give them assistance, comfort and God's grace!

I would now like to address a particularly cordial greeting in their own language to the Spanish emigrants who are taking part in this ceremony. I am well aware of the problems and difficulties you have to face in your life, in a foreign environment and in a situation that is often truly isolated. Give proof of mutual solidarity, helping each other to maintain and promote your dignity as men and as children of God. And do not forget the Christian values ​​which you have received from your ancestors.

With my respect, with my affectionate esteem for you, your children and your families, I ask the Lord to bless you always.

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