A reflection of Luigino Bruni on the earthquake, work and feast day: topics that deal with family in his opening address at the VII World Day of the Families that begins today in Milan
Comments - Those four deaths, our life
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire on 26/05/2012
Four of those who died in the Reggio Emilia Region earthquake were working. They were working at four in the morning on a Sunday. There is something different about dying while working. In these times of crisis and suffering for lack of jobs, the death of these workers tell us many things, they send us many messages. First of all, through tragedy, they tell us that in our age, all centered on consumerism and money, places of work still exist, as well as that shift work and shift – workers, whom the present crisis has made harder and embittered; shifts of citizens and businesses which, through their work efforts, keep our country afloat, and who offer serious reasons to hope that we will make it. Those workers died at four o'clock on a Sunday morning. They died while working on a Sunday, at night, instead of compromising or demeaning the value and the meaning of Sunday, the day of the Lord, while paradoxically elevating and ennobling it.
We would have had other words and felt other emotions , always tragic but different, if these workers, both Italian and foreigners, had died underneath the rubble while having fun dancing in a club or shopping in a 24/7 mall. Someone might have added "if" and others "but" to those hypothetical deaths; but to die while working on a Sunday night has caused greater pain and increased the value of those lives, of those deaths, of that night, even of that Sunday.
In our society it isn't human work or the effort put in it which are the enemies of the feast day and of Sundays; they never have been. Their real adversaries are lifestyles founded more on consumerism and on seeking income and profits, which then enslave the workers from whom is stolen the Sunday as the day for restful enjoyment. He who lives and loves his job, lives and loves the day of rest and the times of feasting (enjoying). The very word ‘feast’ comes in fact from fesia which is the root of feria as well, that is, a work day. A society which offers too few jobs and makes work too precarious, ends by negating Sundays as the day of rest. Let's not forget that the first thief of Sundays is unemployment, not work, because when you are not employed or under-employed, you are not only robbed of work, but also of the feast day: a feast day without work is never a real and full feast. And vice versa.
If you work but don't observe the day of rest, you no longer work, but you experience instead the state of slavery, even when you are well paid. It is becoming ever more a normality when the great capitalistic businesses hire youth, give them high salaries, luxury cars and future rapid career growth, but at a price (invisible yet very real) that's too high, having to renounce feast days, and eventually, life. If feast days are gone, and therefore those for family life, perhaps leaving only enough time for some entertainment and distractions, in these workers there is a progressive drying up of the wells from which you draw working energy, only to find oneself burnt-out and exhausted after only a few years, as a worker and as a person.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
