The Dignity of Work

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

After God had created the earth, and enriched it with all manner of good things, He “took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, to till and keep it,” we’re told (Gen. 2:15); that is to say, to work in it.

God, who had made man “in his own image and likeness” (cf. Gen. 1:27), wanted him to share also in His creative activity. He wanted him to transform matter, to discover the treasures within it, and to mold beauty into the work of his hands.

Work was not in any way a punishment, but, on the contrary, as St. Josemaría has written, “dignity of life and a duty imposed by the Creator, because man was created that he might work. Work is a means by which man shares in the task of creation, and therefore, whatever it may consist of, it is not only something that dignifies man, but is an instrument by which he attains human—earthly—perfection, as well as supernatural perfection” (Josemaría Escrivá, Letter, May 31, 1954).

Venerable Fulton Sheen tells a story about way back in the 1960s when he was waiting at a bus stop in Rome to go to the Second Vatican Council. There was a street sweeper who was sweeping the street. It was fairly early in the morning, and he engaged the street sweeper in conversation:

“What time did you get up this morning?”

“Five o'clock.”

“How many hours will you work today?”

“Ten.”

“What is your philosophy of life?”

The street sweeper said, “Father, if I push this brush with more love of God than the love of God with which you're going to the Second Vatican Council, then God loves me more.”

Fulton Sheen said he was right because the value of a man's work comes not from the type of work that he’s done, but from the love with which it is done.

The divine command to work was already in existence before our first parents sinned. Original sin was the cause of work’s becoming something hard and tiring. “You will work by the sweat of your brow” (Gen. 3:19).

But in itself work continues to be something which ennobles man and gives him still greater dignity.

A famous philosopher priest in the Philippines, Father Joseph de Torre, used to say that the first phrase that children should be told from the Bible as soon as they begin to speak and understand is: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). Children need to learn to work from an early age.

One spiritual writer says, “Work is still a gift that God gives us, although it is also a task that has to be accomplished under difficult circumstances and conditions, in just the same way as the world continues to be God's world, although it is a world in which we are unable to perceive clearly God's voice” (Michael Schmaus, Dogmatic Theology).

It gives man great dignity because it is a participation in the creative power and activity of God, even though now, after original sin, “it is accompanied by hardship and suffering, by fruitfulness and weariness” (ibid.).

One of the encyclicals of St. John Paul II is called Exercising Work, Laborem Exercens. In it, he said, “Work is a blessing, something good, something that is in keeping with man's dignity and increases it.”

He said, “The Church finds in the very first pages of the Book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth.”

It's very good for people to have work; it’s very good for each human person to work.

With Christ, in His years of hidden life in Nazareth and in the three years of His public ministry, work acquired a redemptive value. When we offer our work in unison at the offering of Christ in the Mass, our work becomes redemptive.

With the Redemption, the difficult aspects of work assumed a sanctifying value for the person doing the work and for the whole of mankind.

Sweat and toil offered up with love can become treasures of holiness, for work done for the love of God is the way that men are allowed to share, not only in the work of Creation, but also in the work of Redemption.

That is true whether a person's professional work is a garbage collector, or a professional golfer, or a professional soccer player, or an open-heart surgeon.

All types of work can be done well and offered to God and be a means of holiness. We know from experience that all types of work, including children's homework, bring about a certain tiredness and stress. It can be offered to God in atonement for our offenses and for the offenses of other human beings.

Cardinal Wyszyński of Poland, now deceased, very famous for many decades, imprisoned for decades by the communist government there, said the humble acceptance of that exertion, which cannot be eliminated, however well organized our work may be, means that we can play our part in the purification of our intellect, of our will, and of our senses.

We could examine our conscience and see if at times we complain about our work—in the office, in the workshop, about the house, or when we study.

We could try to offer those complaints to Our Lord, and learn how to work happily and in silence, accepting the will of God as it comes to us, which includes periods of more intense work, periods when things go wrong, or there's a jam, or there's a problem that has to be solved, or also if it's the humdrum, ordinary things that we have to do each day.

We should consider in the presence of God whether we offer, for ends that are nobly ambitious, the tiredness brought about by our hard work. As we come to the final hours of the day, we could renew our Morning Offering, and show Our Lord that we are serious about that offering we made many hours ago.

We could check whether in those less attractive aspects that belong to any type of work, we discover that opportunity for offering up the Christian mortification that purifies us, and which we can offer up for others.

Work is a talent that man receives to make it produce fruit. In Christ Is Passing By, St. Josemaría says, “Work bears witness to the dignity of man, to his dominion over creation. It provides an opportunity to develop one's personality. It is a bond of solidarity with other men, and it is the way to support one's family. It is a means of contributing to the improvement of the society in which we live and in aiding the progress of all humanity.”

For a Christian, work that is well done is the means of our entering into a personal encounter with Jesus Christ as well as being a way of enabling all the realities of this world to be shaped by the spirit of the Gospel.

If the role of the ordinary layman in the middle of the world is to sanctify the temporal realities, it's clear that our professional work has a very important role to play.

St. John Paul II says that “man can be more a man” through work; so that work may become a means, an opportunity for any person to love Christ and bring others to know Him, it's necessary that a whole series of human conditions be fulfilled—diligence, constancy, punctuality...professional prestige, and competence.

We can't all be geniuses. God has not given us that capacity. But we can all be competent, learning how to do a good job.

The Book of Proverbs says, “Show me a man who does a good job, and I will show you someone worthy of the company of kings” (Prov. 22:29).

And all the time in our professional life as it grows, we have to try and improve that competence, so that we become better and better at whatever it is that we do; we give better service.

On the other hand, a lack of interest in what we're doing, or incompetence, or frequent absenteeism from work...all these are incompatible with the really Christian meaning of life. The worker who is negligent or who lacks interest, whatever his job or position in society, offends first of all against his own dignity, and then against those who receive the product of that badly done work.

He offends against the society in which he lives, because in some way all the evil and all the good done by individuals have repercussions on human society. Work that is done badly or carelessly, or is not properly finished, is not only a fault or even a sin against the virtue of justice, but also charity, because of the bad example that it gives and because of its consequences.

The great enemy of work is laziness, which can have many manifestations. The lazy person is not only the one who wastes time by doing nothing, but also the person who does many things but refuses to see his specific task through to completion.

He chooses his occupations according to the whim of the moment, puts no effort into them, and abandons the task at the slightest difficulty. The lazy workman is a friend of ‘beginning’, but he is put off by the sacrifice that constancy and perseverance in work demand of him, and this prevents him from putting ‘the last stones’ in place, and from ever completing what he has started.

St. Josemaría liked to comment that often you drive around a city and may see a lot of unfinished buildings. People who began to build but could not finish.

He talked about how there is a blessing in the Book of Blessings in the Catholic Church, to bless the first stone.

On a building that he built in Rome for the formation of many hundreds and thousands of young people, instead of putting a foundation stone there, he decided to put a finishing stone. And he looked for a blessing for a finishing stone, found there was none in the official Book of Blessings, and so he had to make one up (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 55).

But the message was there: we bless the final stone.

We could ask Our Lady and St. Joseph to help us to bless the final stones in our work each day, to finish things well.

If we want to imitate Christ, we need to make an effort to acquire the right training for our chosen profession or job. Then we have to try and follow that up throughout our working lives.

The mother who dedicates herself to looking after the children needs to know how to run a home, how to be a good administrator of the money and equipment at her disposal. She should make sure that the house is pleasant, and arranged with taste rather than luxury, so that the whole family can feel at home.

She needs to understand the character of her children and her husband and to know, if needed, how to go about getting them to improve in matters relating to their behavior. She needs to be firm and at the same time gentle and uncomplicated.

She will need to carry out her tasks as efficiently and thoroughly as she would have to do if she went out to work. She should keep to a predetermined timetable and shouldn't waste time in endless conversations. She should avoid switching on the TV at any random time.

If a student wants to be a good Christian, he has to be a good student—one who studies. He needs to attend classes. He must keep up with his assignments, keep his notes in order, and learn to allocate his time to the various subjects. The architect, the secretary, the dressmaker, the entrepreneur—they all have to be equally competent in their field.

The Second Vatican Council says, “The Christian who shirks his temporal duties shirks his duties towards his neighbor, neglects God himself, and endangers his eternal salvation” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, Point 43, December 7, 1965).

Such a person has mistaken the road he should take in a matter of fundamental importance. If he doesn't change, it will be impossible for him to find God.

We could look at Our Lord as He does His work in Joseph's workshop and we ask ourselves today whether we are known by the people around us as people who do a good job, people who work well.

Professional prestige is earned, day by day, by work that is normally silent, finished off down to the last detail, and done conscientiously in God's presence without too much concern about whether people notice it or not.

This prestige in our profession of trade, our students, and their study, has immediate repercussions on one's colleagues and friends: our words with which we try to lead them to God carry a proportionate weight and authority.

We must give examples of competent work that helps other people to improve their work. That might mean occasionally demanding certain circumstances or sending certain things back to the person who did that particular job because it could be better.

Our Lord wants our profession to become a pedestal for Christ so that He can be seen even by those who are far away.

As well as professional prestige, God also asks us for other virtues: for a spirit of service, which is both pleasant and demanding on ourselves; for simplicity and humility, so that we teach without giving ourselves too much importance; for serenity, so that intense activity does not turn into mere activism.

We need to know how to leave our worries and work to one side when the time comes to stop to pray or to look after the various members of the family. We don't need to make an excuse when the time comes to listen to our wives, or to our husbands, our spouses, our children, our parents, and our small babies.

Work should not take up so much time of our day that it occupies the time that should be dedicated to God, to the family, to our friends. If this should happen it would be a clear sign that we’re not sanctifying ourselves through our work, but rather we’re simply seeking self-satisfaction in it.

It would be another form of corruption of that divine gift. This deformation is perhaps more dangerous in our day because of the false reasons for which many people work.

We, ordinary simple Christians in the middle of the world, should never forget that we have to find Christ each day in and through our occupation, whatever it may be.

Work well done is work done with love. To have a proper regard for the task we are engaged in is probably the first step in ennobling it and raising it to the level of the supernatural. We have to put our heart into the things we do, and not just do them mechanically, automatically, ‘because we don't have any option.’

One writer says, “My son, do you remember that man who came to see me this morning, the one with the brown jacket? He's not an honest man. He works as a cartoonist for an illustrated magazine. It gives him enough to live on and keeps him busy.

“But he always talks disparagingly about his work and tells me: ‘If only I could be a painter! But I have to draw these stupidities to eat. Don't pay any attention to him, old chap, don't even look at them! It's just pure commercialism!’

“In other words, he's only in it for the money. And he has let his spirit get separated from what his hands are doing because he has very little regard for his work.

“But let me say this, my son. If my friend finds his task so repulsive, if his drawings can be said to be rubbish, the reason is precisely because he hasn't put his heart into them. When the spirit is present, no job doesn't become noble and holy. This is as true of a cartoonist as it is of a carpenter or a dustbin man.

“There's a way of drawing cartoons, or of working with wood, or of emptying bins…which shows that love has been placed there, as well as attention to detail and proportion, and a little spark of something personal—what artists call individual style—and there is no human undertaking or task in which such a personal ingredient cannot flourish.

“That's the way things have to be done. The other way, that of loathing one's work and despising it, instead of redeeming it and secretly transforming it, is wrong and immoral. The visitor in the brown jacket is, therefore, an immoral person, because he doesn't love his work” (Eugenio d’Ors, Learning and Heroism).

St. Joseph teaches us to love the occupation in which we spend so much of our life: looking after the home, working in the laboratory, at the plow or the computer, delivering parcels, or being a receptionist.

The status of a job depends on its capacity to perfect us in a human way and supernaturally as well, on the opportunities it offers to provide for our family and collaborate in good works on behalf of mankind, and on the social contribution that we can make in the world through its means.

St. Joseph had Jesus beside him while he worked. At times he would have asked Him to hold a piece of wood while he saw it, and at others, he would have shown Him how to use a chisel or a plane.

Whenever he got tired he would have been able to look at his Son, who was the Son of God, and his work would thereby acquire a new value because he would realize that through it he was collaborating mysteriously in the enterprise of salvation.

We can ask St. Joseph today to teach us the awareness of the presence of God which he had while he was engrossed in his work.

Let us not forget, either, Our Mother the Blessed Virgin, as we ask her to help us to sanctify our work and the ordinary things of each day. We shouldn't forget to offer something to her each day, a particular hour of work or study, with each day better than the previous one, and more perfectly done.

Let us turn to St. Joseph and ask him to teach us the basic virtues that we must live in the exercise of our profession. St. Josemaría says: “I am sure Joseph knew how to lend a hand in many difficulties, with his work well done. His skilled work was carried out in the service of others, to brighten by its perfection the lives of other families in their neighborhood; and with a smile, a friendly word, a casual remark, he would restore faith and happiness to those in danger of losing them.”

Close to Jesus, we would find Mary, ready to teach us all the little ways and tricks to improve the quality of our work as we grow along the pilgrimage of our vocation.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

NJF