Work is an exercise in love. Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, once wrote, “The sole purpose of life is
to serve humanity.”
It is what I have cared for that I grow to care about. People who tell you they love you but never do a
thing for you, people who say they value the family but never join the family on any event, people who
say they care about the planet but never do a thing to make the planet a more human place to live, all
fail to see that life is a venture in human development and that work is the key.
Work makes time worthwhile. Time is all we have to make our lives bright-colored, warm, and rich. Time
spent on an artificial high is time doomed to failure. Time spent amassing what I cannot possibly use is
time wasted. Time spent in gray, dry aimlessness is a prison of the thickest walls.
But good work that leaves the world softer and fuller and better than ever before is the stuff of which
human satisfaction and spiritual values are made.
The implications of a spirituality of work in a world such as ours are clear.
1. Work is my gift to the world. It is my social fruitfulness. It ties me to my neighbor and binds me to the
future. Work is the way I am saved from total self-centeredness. It gives me a reason to exist that is
larger than myself, it makes me part of possibility. It gives me hope. The poet wrote: “If I knew that the
world would end tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today.”
2. Work gives me a place in salvation. It helps redeem the world from sin. It enables creation to go on
creating. It brings us all one step closer to what the kingdom is meant to be.
3. Work is meant to build community. When we work for others, we give ourselves; and we can give alms
as well. We never work, in other words, for our own good alone.
4. Work leads to self-fulfillment. It uses the gifts and talents we know we have, and it calls on gifts of
which we are unaware.
5. Work is its own asceticism. When we face the work at hand, with all its difficulties and all its rigors
and all its repetition and all its irritations and then accept it, we do not need to traffic in symbolic
penances. What today’s work brings is what is really due from us to God.
6. Finally, work is the way we really live in solidarity with the poor of the world. Work is our
commitment not to live off others, not to sponge, not to shirk, not to cheat. Giving less than a day’s
work for a day’s pay, shunting work off onto underlings, doing one coat of paint where we promised to
do two, are not what was meant by “tilling the garden and keeping it.”
Work is our gift to the future. It is our sign that God goes on working in the world through us. It is the
very stuff of divine ambition. And it will never be over. The philosopher wrote, “Do you want a test to
know if your work in life is over? If you are still alive, it isn’t.” God needs us to complete God’s work.
Now.
– from “Work: A Pathway To Something Deeper” by Joan Chittister,Liguorian, September 1993.
to serve humanity.”
It is what I have cared for that I grow to care about. People who tell you they love you but never do a
thing for you, people who say they value the family but never join the family on any event, people who
say they care about the planet but never do a thing to make the planet a more human place to live, all
fail to see that life is a venture in human development and that work is the key.
Work makes time worthwhile. Time is all we have to make our lives bright-colored, warm, and rich. Time
spent on an artificial high is time doomed to failure. Time spent amassing what I cannot possibly use is
time wasted. Time spent in gray, dry aimlessness is a prison of the thickest walls.
But good work that leaves the world softer and fuller and better than ever before is the stuff of which
human satisfaction and spiritual values are made.
The implications of a spirituality of work in a world such as ours are clear.
1. Work is my gift to the world. It is my social fruitfulness. It ties me to my neighbor and binds me to the
future. Work is the way I am saved from total self-centeredness. It gives me a reason to exist that is
larger than myself, it makes me part of possibility. It gives me hope. The poet wrote: “If I knew that the
world would end tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today.”
2. Work gives me a place in salvation. It helps redeem the world from sin. It enables creation to go on
creating. It brings us all one step closer to what the kingdom is meant to be.
3. Work is meant to build community. When we work for others, we give ourselves; and we can give alms
as well. We never work, in other words, for our own good alone.
4. Work leads to self-fulfillment. It uses the gifts and talents we know we have, and it calls on gifts of
which we are unaware.
5. Work is its own asceticism. When we face the work at hand, with all its difficulties and all its rigors
and all its repetition and all its irritations and then accept it, we do not need to traffic in symbolic
penances. What today’s work brings is what is really due from us to God.
6. Finally, work is the way we really live in solidarity with the poor of the world. Work is our
commitment not to live off others, not to sponge, not to shirk, not to cheat. Giving less than a day’s
work for a day’s pay, shunting work off onto underlings, doing one coat of paint where we promised to
do two, are not what was meant by “tilling the garden and keeping it.”
Work is our gift to the future. It is our sign that God goes on working in the world through us. It is the
very stuff of divine ambition. And it will never be over. The philosopher wrote, “Do you want a test to
know if your work in life is over? If you are still alive, it isn’t.” God needs us to complete God’s work.
Now.
– from “Work: A Pathway To Something Deeper” by Joan Chittister,Liguorian, September 1993.
WHY CELEBRATE LABOR DAY?
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