This Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, when we reflect on Christ as our Good Shepherd, and how Christ continues to call young men to a life of dedicated service. In the coming week we also celebrate two
secular feast days, Freedom Day and Workers Day. While it is a happy coincidence it is also a serendipitous reminder that the human vocation is to live a life of dignity, where the equality of all people are respected, and
that one of the ways in which we imitate God is through our work or labour.
The book of Genesis paints a picture of a God who labours in his creating. In Christian theology, human freedom and human work meet in the truth that we are created in the image of God: free not as isolated individuals who do whatever we please, but as persons capable of willing the good and giving ourselves in love. Work, then, is not merely a way to survive; it is a participation in God’s own providence, a sharing in the task of cultivating and ordering creation, and a daily school of responsibility and service.
When labour respects the dignity of the worker, it becomes a place where freedom takes flesh—where we choose faithfulness over ease, solidarity over self-interest, and meaning over mere productivity. But when labour becomes exploitation, or when people are treated as tools rather than persons, it contradicts the Creator’s intention and wounds both freedom and society.
Human freedom and work overlap because work is one of the main ways freedom becomes real in the world—not just an inner idea, but a lived capacity to choose, commit, create, and serve. That sounds like a pretty
good description of what happens in those individuals who hear the call to become shepherds, labourers in the vineyard of the Lord. They choose to say yes to the invitation to serve, they commit their lives to something greater that themselves – Christ and His Church, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit create the conditions for people to encounter Christ and to fall in love with him.
