Spiritual Fitness

"Hey, Father Bill, come to the baseball game with us!"
     "Sorry, I have to work and finish writing this article. The Lugnuts will have to wait."
     Some of us have a hard time breaking away from work.  
     Work plays a serious and central role in the lives of most Americans. I once had a boss who hung a whip over his door. He was very blatant about being a slave driver. For the most part, he was joking. But I also think he was tapping into a mentality that is very present in our culture.  Work can enslave us. Our attitudes and beliefs about God and ourselves, about what we value, about who we are, all play a role in how we approach work. And since work is a major part of our daily lives, it is important for us to approach it well with a good attitude and Christian spirit. 
     Thank God, most Americans are able to work. There are jobs available. On the practical side, work allows us to feed our families and buy things. Trouble can begin when feeding our families and buying things becomes the sole reason for work. The value of work is judged by how much money we make or what work can give us materially. A person can get dissatisfied. Work can be drudgery. Greed can enter in and drive a person to competing with the Joneses for the best house, car and goods. And to compete, one has to work more to have more money to buy things and to pay the bills. Work becomes our master and we, its slave.
     Jesus said, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man."  The same could be said of work. Man was not made for work, but work is a gift from God to man. A second danger of work is when we become so united to work that our identity is completely caught up in it. If we lose our work, then, we lose ourselves.
     Related to this is the workaholic. They become addicted to work at the expense of their own health and well-being, or the well-being of their relationships. There is no balance between work, play, prayer and relations.
     Thank God for those who see work as one means among many to offer themselves and contribute to the good of society. They have a healthy sense of balance between work, rest and relations. It takes a good degree of discipline to achieve this balance but it can be done with the help of God. 
     I know of an unusual religious order that I visited a number of years ago. They were unusual because they took a fourth vow. Besides the traditional three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They took a fourth vow of "holy leisure." This vow was taken so that they would learn to live in God and be recreated by the grace of God, and not be driven on like beasts of burden. The Lord's day was and still is, extremely important to them. It is filled with prayer, rest and having fun and recreation with one another. The time I spent with them was wonderful and eye-opening. But why the fourth vow? They told me God was calling them to be a sign of balance to a world that was being driven to work, work, work! Many people have forgotten their value is in the gift of being made in God's image. Too many have reduced a person's value to what they can do. 
     I have not forgotten the whip over the door of my former boss and unfortunately, it seems that many Americans take the whip seriously. Americans work an average of 46 hours each week, but a large percentage work 50 hours or more each week, not including travel time to and from work. That is a lot of work! A recent study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation concluded that "Americans are sleep-deprived workaholics, with only about a third sleeping the recommended eight hours a night. Instead of working to live, they are living to work. A shift that has had a profound impact on their personal lives."
The phrase "living to work" struck me as I read the study. Work is important but it sure is not the end or goal of our lives as followers of Jesus Christ! So what is our approach to work? Since work takes up a major portion of our lives, how do we integrate our faith with our work?  What is God asking of us in it all? 
     There is no question that work is an important part of God's plan for us. The book of Genesis reminds us that even God worked! And since we were created in the Divine Image, our work flows from our very being. God worked, and so do we. 
     What was the point of God's work? 
     Love. In a wonderful way, God's work in creation has brought the many forces and creatures together in a system where one depends on the other. Creation works together. In its grandeur, beauty and balance we can see the hand of a loving Creator. So many people have experienced God through creation. Creation is a kind of primordial sacrament that helps us come to know God, and directs us to our true home with God.
     Our work can do this, too! It can become the means for us to offer ourselves and our love to the world. Our work can help us grow in self-knowledge as the demands of our work stretch us beyond ourselves. Our work moves us to consider in humility the importance of our roles in the larger picture of things. Our work can help order this world's resources for the good of all creatures. Our work can ultimately prepare us and others for meeting God. In this sense it is sacramental. 
     I once received a vestment that was hand-stitched by some religious sisters. The sisters prayed as they sewed for the priest who would wear the vestment. It was made with love. I always am mindful of this when I put on the vestment for Mass. Their work was a labor of love a sacrifice that is associated with the one saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
     I had a friend who prepared a meal for me. My friend worked hard at the meal, and to be honest, it did not turn out all that well. However, it brought me great joy because there was love in its making.
     How many of us have benefitted from the order or neatness of a room, or the organizational skills of someone? So much of the labor of individuals is taken for granted but if we stopped to think about it, without their labors, we would be in a real mess. These are just a few examples of how our work can convey the love of God to people.
     Pope John Paul II has written some tremendous things about work. Our Holy Father points us to meditating on Jesus and his Life. Jesus spent 30 years working and praying in quiet.  St. Joseph, his foster father, was a carpenter and we can imagine Jesus helping his dad when he was old enough. 
     "The eloquence of the life of Christ is unequivocal: He belongs to the 'working world.' He has appreciation and respect for human work. It can indeed be said that he looks with love upon human work and the different forms that it takes, seeing in each one of these forms a particular facet of man's likeness with God, the Creator and Father." (Encyclical Laborem exercens, n. 26)
     For the laity in the working world, there is a mission "to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and ordering them according to the plan of God." (L.G. #31). And "through Baptism the lay faithful are made one body with Christ and are established among the people of God. They are, in their own way, made sharers in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ." (L.G. #31).
     Here is the essence of the spirituality of the workplace: integration of faith and work. That is difficult! But spiritual fitness requires us not to be schizophrenic in terms of our faith. We do not just practice our faith on the weekends! The pope encourages us by having us recall that Jesus worked and prayed in anonymity for 30 years. He was in the world working like everyone else. Yet we can be sure that the quality of our Lord's work reflected his love for people and God. Many of his teachings were related to his work as a carpenter or the work he witnessed around him fishermen, farmers, merchants so the Lord saw the mystery of work in the lives of people as pointing toward a greater reality, the Kingdom of God.
     Our faith tells us to make ourselves a sacrifice of praise to God. By offering ourselves well at work, embracing the virtues of honesty, integrity, generosity, and respect, we are uniting ourselves to Christ. Our "work, prayers and apostolic endeavors, (our) ordinary married and family life, (our) daily labor, (our) mental and physical relaxation, if carried on in the spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne. All of these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (L.G. #34). These sacrifices are brought to the Lord's table each week (or even daily for some!) at Mass. This is where integration occurs, when a person recognizes that their work is related to the Eucharist we celebrate.
     Work is not meant to enslave us, but to free us to offer ourselves for the good of others. 
     Our Holy Father, when he came to the United States, said to us: As lay men and women actively engaged in this temporal order, you are being called by Christ to sanctify the world and to transform it. This is true of all work, however exalted or humble, but it is especially urgent for those whom circumstances and special talent have placed in positions of leadership or influence, men and women in public service, education, business, science, social communications and the arts. As Catholic lay people, you have an important moral and cultural contribution of service to make to the life of your country. 'Much will be required of the person entrusted with much.' (Luke 12:48). These words of Christ apply not only to the sharing of material wealth or personal talents, but also to the sharing of one's faith." (JP II in America, p. 254).
     Work is to be integrated into our life's mission of spreading the good news! I started out by talking about baseball and the Lord gave me an idea. If you cannot go to the baseball game because of work, play baseball while you work by making RBIs for God's Kingdom.
    Remember the value of the work you do. Its value is related to the inestimable value of your own being!
     Balance work with prayer, leisure, recreation and relations.
     Integrate your faith with your work through virtuous behavior and recognize the self-offering of work is united to the self-offering of Christ in the Eucharist.
         

By: Fr. Bill Ashbaugh is pastor of St. Joseph Parish, Howell
Originally Published: July/August 2001