Will Artificial Intelligence and Robots replace humans in the workplace? Will people no longer be slaves to their jobs but instead have unlimited leisure time? Won’t that be wonderful?

These are important questions that the world and the Church face today. And the answer that Scripture and Church documents provide is “NO!” While leisure and rest are important, they are not the ultimate human goal. Work is. Why?

In the first pages of the Bible we read that human beings are made in “the image of God” and are given a command to “have dominion” over the earth and its creatures (Genesis 1: 27-28). In other words, we are to be co-creators with God and are set over creation to protect it and foster its development. And that requires work. Work is part of what makes us like God.

The Second Vatican Council Document, “Gaudium et Spes” #34 said: “For man, created to God’s image, received a mandate…. They can justly consider that by their labor they are unfolding the Creator’s work….”

More recently, in his encyclical “Laudato Si” #128, Pope Francis wrote: “We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replaces human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment.”

Our work, done for love of God and neighbor, is one of the ways that we grow in holiness because it makes us more like our Creator.

St. Joseph, who worked with his hands as a carpenter, knew this. He worked hard to care for Jesus and Mary.

A saint of the Twentieth Century, Jose Maria Escriva, also knew and emphasized this in his writings: “Work is man’s original vocation. It is a blessing from God, and those who consider it a punishment are sadly mistaken. The Lord, who is the best of fathers, placed the first man in Paradise so that he would work. Any job, no matter how hidden, no matter how insignificant, when offered to the Lord, is charged with the strength of God’s life!”

One practical way to imitate these two saints is to begin every day with a Morning Offering Prayer in which we declare that we want all the work, all the tasks of the day no matter how boring and mundane, to be done as an act of love for God and neighbor.

As St. Paul told the Corinthians in his first letter to them: “whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (10: 31).