Redeeming our work

WE need to be more aware of this responsibility. Our work,
whatever it is, needs redemption, and we have a big role to play in
that task. Yes, it’s God’s responsibility, first of all, but it is
also ours.

            The way it is understood and done nowadays, our work needs
redemption because it has strayed from the proper path it is supposed
to tread. We need to put it back to where it belongs in our life.

            In the first place, our work is part of our human nature.
As such, we are meant to work. Work is not a punishment or merely a
heavy activity that we should try to avoid as such. Escaping work is
definitely against our humanity.

            And so we need to correct the attitude, regrettably
rampant these days, that considers work as something that has to be
avoided as much as possible, or that regards it as an unavoidable evil
that simply has to be tolerated.

            Our work, in fact, perfects us, since it actualizes what
our potencies are. It is what brings us toward our proper development
and fulfillment, individually and socially.

            In the second place, our work, even if humanly speaking is
deemed insignificant, will always be part of the abiding providence of
God over all his creation.    It is what relates us to God and to
others, what enables us to attain the ultimate goal of our life—full
communion with God and with others.

            We need to understand then that our work is a vital part
of God’s abiding providence over all his creation, especially over us.
Since God’s providence now involves itself in the salvation of man,
after we have alienated ourselves from him through sin, both the
original and personal, we have to understand that our work ought to be
involved too in our own salvation

            It therefore has an eminently redemptive character. It
just cannot be stuck with purely worldly objectives, no matter how
valuable, recommendable and legitimate these worldly objectives are.
It just cannot be pursued simply following personal or worldly
purposes.

            This is where we have to feel the duty to redeem our work
from its merely worldly context. We need to realize more deeply this
distinctive character of our human work. It just cannot be wasted on
brilliant technicalities, or on some advantageous, profitable and most
tempting and irresistible earthly motives and worldly pursuits.

            We have to be more aware of the ultimate value and purpose
of our work, no matter how small and humanly insignificant it may
look. We need to sanctify it, offering it to God and doing our best in
carrying it out, and always trying to see how our work at the moment
plays in the over-all plan of divine providence.

            But beyond that, we need to continually discern what God
wants of us in a given moment, what work we are supposed to be doing
at that time. Yes, we are already given some general indications of
this by the duties and responsibilities attached to our state in life.
But we always need to more sharply figure out what God wants us to do
in a given moment.

            For this, we need to learn the skill of turning our work,
both big and small, into prayer and an abiding conversation with God.
If we are to be consistent to our faith that our life is supposed to
be a life with God, then we have to know how to make our daily affairs
an occasion for keeping a living relationship with God.

            There should be a streaming awareness that we are with God
even when we are doing the most mundane activities. This is the goal
that we should try to reach, overcoming what separates our life from
the life of God. While it’s true that there is distinction between the
two, we have to realize that there’s supposed to be unity between
them.

            Since work is a daily activity for us, one major part of
becoming contemplatives is to turn our work into prayer. This can
happen if we develop the habit of doing mental prayer everyday,
studying the doctrine of Christ and of the Church, especially about
how work is vital link we have with God.

            Mental prayer allows us to create the proper mind frame we
need to sustain our effort to become contemplatives all throughout the
day. In a manner of speaking, that’s where we see the relevant
principles and helpful theories we need to put our desire into
practice.

            This realization is basic to why there is need to redeem
our work to conform it to God’s providence.