“In Heaven, volunteers will be seated on couches, and others will cater to their wants and desires while the volunteers relax and enjoy themselves.”

Years ago, in the kitchen of a local church, I saw a poster that said something like that. Whoever wrote that didn’t understand volunteers! Volunteer work isn’t always a means to an end– more often, it’s an end in itself.

People want to be useful. People want to use their talents, skills, and resources effectively. We want our enthusiasm and good intentions channeled constructively.

“Enter through the narrow door,” Jesus said. I think He was referring to the small, simple door used by servants who are in a place to work there. Family and guests have the nice door. The servant just needs to get inside and get busy.

Not everybody wants to use that door. Not everybody wants to be defined by their actions, but if someone honestly endeavors to do his best, he has the consolation of knowing he’s done what has been so often encouraged by Therese of Lisieux, John a Kempis, and countless others of all walks of life.

The Feast of St. Joseph The Worker is still new to the Catholic Church. A Catholic is long used to hearing how Christmas and Easter are versions of pagan holidays, so to see the church conspicuously take that exact approach to May Day is heartwarming.

St. Joseph was a carpenter, and a family man. When angels appeared in his dreams and told him what was really happening with Mary, he accepted it and worked with it. He took a clear look at the circumstances of his life and accepted them as the tools he would work with: a wife, pregnant with a baby he did not father. That they were his responsibility was the demanding work of his life. He had to get his family to Bethlehem for the census. When the life of the child Jesus was threatened, he kept them safe. That was the work of his life, along with carpentry.

Most every type of social cause is welcome at a May Day parade. People understand that labor is work, and every type of constructive social and political activity is work. Social justice is ongoing hard work.

“Labor” is toil. The unfortunate get sentenced to years of hard labor. “Work” is the constructive use of one’s time.

Much of life can be labor. One can work at a job he has no love for, that he must have to obtain the necessary means of shelter and sustenance. In that everyday struggle, one has the opportunity to work at one’s character.

Pope Francis recently described the “concrete, humble, lowly service” of St. Joseph. I read that as a splash of cold water in the face, because so much of my workplace work is of a concrete, humble, lowly nature. In the context of the economy and the workplace, it’s often nothing more than toil.

But life is complicated, and the story of how I wound up doing what I’ve so long done is a long story.

Life includes the option that one can make of one’s life what he will. My job in this work, with my jobs, with all my activities, is to somehow interpret all the circumstances and responsibilities in the most enlightened manner possible, so that I see the drudgery of life not as mere drudgery, but as opportunities to put my highest values– compassion, honesty, empathy, justice, fair play– uniquely and creatively into practice, and so transform the drudgery into positive, rewarding work.

We all come into this world through that narrow door, and in all the labor and work we do, we continually work on being better people and building a better world, even if it has to be one menial, otherwise pointless, task at a time.