May 19, 2025 • 30 mins
It is important to be a Christian disciple in the workplace. As Catholics, we need to have the right mindset and approach to work. In this episode, I talk about the importance of having the correct approach to work and some of the challenges that we might face.
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(00:00):
Welcome to Catholic money talk,where we talk about all things
money and finance, and we try todo it through a lens of being
Catholic, where our ultimategoal is to one day be in Heaven
with the Lord. I am your host.
Paul Scarfone, thank you forbeing here today. You
(00:22):
foreign Welcome back to Catholicmoney talk. Today, I'd like to
talk about work and career, butbefore I do that, let's say a
prayer in the name of the Fatherand of the Son of the Holy
Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father.
We thank you for this day. Wethank you for all the ways that
you love and bless us, Lord, weknow that you have an awesome
plan that you love us so much.
(00:45):
Please allow us to yield to yourHoly Spirit. We ask this all in
Jesus name, amen, in the name ofthe Father and of the Son of the
Holy Spirit, Amen. So I got tothinking, and I was asked to
give a talk a couple weeks agoto a bunch of young men who are
trying to learn more about theirCatholic faith and how to be a
(01:08):
disciple on mission in theworkplace. And I was asked to
give them a talk on work andcareer. And as I was reflecting
on it, I thought it was some ofthe principles in there are very
good and appropriate for what wedo here on Catholic money talk,
and we'll talk a lot about howto behave with your money and
(01:31):
how to be a disciple with yourmoney, right? I'll say, Why did
God create us to know Him, loveHim and serve Him in this life,
so we could be happy with himforever in the next but how do
we know Him, love Him and serveHim with our finances, right,
with our money, and what are theappropriate behaviors for that?
What's the appropriate mindsetperspective? And I think the
same can be said about our workand our career. And so as we
(01:57):
talk about, how do we manage ourfinances, well, how do we pursue
our work? Which produces thefinances that we use to sustain
our life? And before we getstarted, I wanted to just talk
about a few areas ofterminology. So let's define
(02:21):
some terms. The first is work.
So as we talked about work, workisn't just money that you know,
things we do for money, work issomething we put effort in that
produces an economic result. Sofor a stay home parent. That is
work, because the economicresult that it produces is we
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don't have a child care expense,right? So things would include
like, and if you're a student,that would be like, your
studies, right? Your pursuit ofa degree. So raising kids,
housework, studies, those couldall be considered work. I would
even put in, like cutting thegrass, right? Those are things
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that are just work, that if wedidn't do it, we'd have to pay
someone to do a job. So thefirst definition was work. The
second one is Job. Job is goingto be work that is done for
money, right economicremuneration, right money. We
can have a job if we're trainedfor it, or maybe it's just a
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part time thing. Maybe we're inschool or between jobs and we're
waiting tables at night. Thatcould be looked at as a job and
that might not really feel likea career, the term occupation
that could be used for aparticular type of job that
maybe we have training for, itcould be what we've studied for.
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But, you know, jobs, we mighthop from job to job. We might
not hop from occupation tooccupation. We may kind of stay
in that particular field. Andthen lastly, career, right? So,
we've done work, we've done job,we've done occupation and
career. Let's say that a careeris something long term, right?
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And it doesn't have to be allworking at the same place. It
could be a particular field ofstudy, or maybe a particular
ladder that we're climbing,maybe a particular trajectory
we're on. And you could think ofcareer as, you know, in the same
sense, when people say, I have acareer change, right? I'm
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changing a trajectory. I'mchanging maybe a field of study,
all right, so those are kind ofour terms. Otherwise we could
say work and career, and youknow, that might all fall into
the same thing. So it just givesme a little opportunity to
define a couple terms here.
But work is goodfor us. Work provide.
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Provides you know, our job, ourwork, our career, working and
earning income is able toprovide for our our livelihood,
our family. We can pay our fourwalls, right food, shelter,
clothing, transportation towork. We can be generous when we
work and we earn money, and weshould all have something to do
(05:20):
right work is of great dignityto us. I was just thinking, we
have a new pope, right? I don'tthink I've mentioned that on the
podcast yet, because I took aweek off, but we have a new
pope, and Pope Leo the 14th. Andhe was discussing in one of his
initial um homilies about why hepicked Leo the 14th and he he
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referenced that Leo the 13th washere at the turn of the last
century, right? So from the1800s to the 1900s and there was
an industrial revolution goingon, and it was very important to
protect the dignity of the humanperson, and part of that is as
it relates to work. So we allneed something to do. We should
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all find something to do,whether it's work or a job. We
shouldn't be idle, right? Wedon't want to be idle. We don't
want to be lazy, even if you'reindependently wealthy or a
student living on off of otherpeople, maybe you're retired
unemployed, or maybe you havesome form of disability and you
feel like there's not much youcan do. We still need to find
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something to do, to buildourselves up, to build up the
people around us, to give uslife so that we're not idle. And
if we want to be a disciple ofthe Lord, right, if we want to
know love and serve Him ineverything we do, we have to do
that at work as well. And I knowone of the things I've struggled
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with my entire life, and earlyon, it was harder. I have gotten
better as I've matured in myChristian faith, but it's so
easy sometimes to wear differenthats, right? To wear our hat for
our workplace. Maybe it's ourhat for our faith community, our
church. Maybe it's a hat for ourfamily, our friends hat, our
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golfing hat, our fishing hat,and it just it's a different
person that shows up in thosesituations. And our goal is to,
in all those situations, to be aconsistent disciple of the Lord.
So that's important, and we wantto have those great character
traits and Christian qualitieslike being diligent and being
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respectful and responsible andbeing people of integrity in the
workplace. So there are a couplechallenges that I do want to
highlight that we have,especially for us in the in the
US, where it's kind of an openenvironment to get jobs. There's
so many different opportunities.
So some of these challenges wehave, there's good and bad,
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right? The good is, there's somany different fields of studies
now, and different career fieldsand places to work or find, you
know, be trained for anoccupation or a particular
career. There's so manytechnology has created that you
can just think of, you know, 100years ago, your options were a
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blacksmith, a butcher, acarpenter, right? A doctor,
right? There, there was, there'sa handful of them. We could
probably list them all nowadays.
There's so many. There's somany. You could say, you know,
I'm in computer. Well, what partof it? There's so many different
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fields right now, which is,which is, which is pretty cool,
that can give us a greatopportunity. But the challenge
with all that is there's so manythings that are ever changing. I
was listening to a podcastprobably a few months ago, and
the person was saying, how manytimes, if you're going for a
four year degree in some fieldof technology, when you start to
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when you come out, the whatyou've learned has already been
outdated because it changes soquickly. So that's a challenge.
The other challenge is it'sharder to feel like maybe our
job will be relevant in thefuture. With AI and other things
that are coming out, we can feelthat those present some
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challenges, right? Our ouruseful skills and abilities,
will they be needed? So thoseare some challenges. But the in
particular way, I think there'sfour significant challenges that
we face. The first isconsumerism. We live in a
consumerist culture. Much of theinput from the world around us
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is designed to get us to consumemore and more, right? So
consumerism is this tendency toconsume companies. They spend
billions of money on billions ofdollars right on advertising to
get us to buy stuff, whether itbe good services or experiences.
And sometimes we can get lulledinto them. I'm thinking of some.
Subscriptions, right? A musicsubscription where you subscribe
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and all of a sudden, you know,maybe a year goes by and they
say, All right, well, we'reputting ads in now, unless you
want to pay us a little morethan you have been paying us to
have the ad free version, right?
And so they slowly lull us andbring us into things and
subscription to thesubscriptions do that, they
might create new hurdles for usto overcome, to enjoy the same
content the way we want onlineas for advertisements follow us
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around. You go to websites as,Hey, you want some cookies, and
we say, yes. Now they'rewatching what we do, and they're
and that's where, when we go doa you know, if you go to a
website. Let's say you had justbeen looking at girls at Home
Depot, and you go to a, youknow, ESPN, or something like
that, a sports website, all of asudden, in the margin on the
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left to the right, or maybefloating in the middle of the
screen, there's an advertisementfrom Home Depot for that same
girl you were just looking at.
They're following us around andsocial media, that's, you know,
for consumerism, that's anothertough one, because it's almost
like all of our friends onsocial media, or however we meet
these people, sometimes there'scomplete strangers, but they're
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advertising to us, and maybeit's their experiences that
we're seeing that we think weneed, or maybe we should be
chasing those same things, andMany times they're not bad
things. We just don't need them.
And maybe those things aren'tactually appropriate for people
that are trying to be disciplesof Jesus, right? People that are
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in pursuit of heaven, trying tobe saints, running after the
Lord. So we need to know whatour needs and wants are to avoid
consumerism, we also needcontentment, right? And I have a
whole episode on contentment.
And contentment is the oppositeof just thinking we'll need more
stuff to be happy, right?
Contentment is knowing that theLord loves us and that by
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itself, is enough, right? And hewill provide for us, and we need
to be content with that. Butadvertising is perhaps the most
obvious example. Few of us canavoid it, and all the
advertising is doing is tryingto get us to buy more, and it's
just constantly bombarding us.
So we need to restrict and andhave some restraint as it comes
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to spending and consuming. Andthe other thing that can creep
up in this area of consumption,and again, I have a couple
episodes on this, is lifestylecreep. Lifestyle creep is just
when our wants just completelyexpand and expand and expand as
our income does, and it justconsumes more and more and more
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of our income, and we have lessto put towards our goals and the
things we feel the Lord iscalling us to. So that's the
first challenge. Is consumerism.
The second one is careerism, andthat is getting to the top at
all costs, right? And the thingabout being, being in a career,
is we want to, we want to try togrow and get recognition from
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other people. And sometimes wereceive that one. We can receive
it through pay, right? You get abonus. You get some type of
achievement at work that has hasmoney assigned to it that can
feel like a great, greatrecognition, advancement, right?
And promotion can feel likegreat recognition as well, but
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the thing to remember is theactual like recognition. What we
actually want said to us is bythe Lord at the end of our life,
Welcome home, good and faithfulservant. That's the recognition
that we want, right? That'sthat's the that's what we're all
longing for. But sometimes alongthe way, these things can remind
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us of that, whether it bethrough pay or through
advancement or other people justrecognizing us for the job we
did, right? And so we want tojust have a healthy desire for
that, not one that we're justclimbing to the top at all
costs. And one of the thingsI've spoken about this on the
podcast, and this is really, Ithink, particularly for men, but
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women, women can feel with ittoo. I think sometimes women
might, they just view itslightly differently than men.
And what am I saying here? Somen tend to define themselves by
what they do. Women tend todefine themselves by what they
think other people think ofthem, right? And so women and
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men, they'll look at promotionmaybe a little differently,
right? There's spectrums, andthere's overlap, and they might
have some that look at itexactly the same way. But in
general, speaking, and welearned this from psychology and
sociology, that men definethemselves by what they do,
right? You ask a man say, Hey,tell me about yourself. Oh, I'm
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a plumber, I'm a financialcoach, I'm a lawyer, I'm a
doctor, right? That's what theydo.
It's the first things out of ourmouth. Women tend to define
themselves both. Think otherpeople's think of them. So for a
woman to receive a promotionthat's very up building to them,
right? That that lifts theiresteem, and that tells them
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that, hey, other people view meas whatever fill in the words,
capable, responsible, smart,right? All those types of
things. Men, when they get apromotion, they might tend to
feel like they're doing betteron the scoreboard, right, like
it's more of a competition. Andso there's just, you know, and
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again, we do those aren't goodthings, right? We want to
identify ourselves by sons anddaughters of God, not by what
other people think of us or bywhat we do, right? And a great
quote that I I've been I heard acouple weeks ago for a
reflection on a by a friend. Hewas giving us just a reflection
going into prayer. And thisreally stuck with me, and I've
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been taking this into prayerevery day. This is a quote from
Saint John Paul the Second, weare not the sum of our
weaknesses and failures. We arethe sum of the Father's love for
us and our real capacity becomethe image of His Son. Jesus,
wow, I'm gonna say that again.
St John Paul the second. We arenot the sum of our weaknesses
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and failures. We are the sum ofthe Father's love for us and our
real capacity to become theimage of His Son, Jesus. And so
in one sense, it doesn't matterif we're the top of our field or
kicking butt in the workplace.
And, you know, advancement hereand there and if we try and fail
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at something, it's okay, like weare not the sum of those
weaknesses and failures. We'realso not the sum of our
successes and failures either,right? We are the sum of the
Father's love for us in our realcapacity to become the image of
His Son, Jesus. So we want to beconfident in who we are, and
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that'll help us in our career,right? And so careerism, we
don't want a career to take overour lives, right? Sometimes, in
order to advance careers, peoplemight sacrifice their families,
their personal welfare and maybeeven their Christian commitment.
They might be expected to workon reasonable hours, move to
different cities or just livefor their jobs. And in fact, we
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we don't want a life to supportour career. We want a career
that supports our life, ourChristian our Catholic life.
That's what we're looking for.
So we want to be aware ofcareerism. The third thing is
insecurity, right? Insecuritythat's just being uncertain or
anxious, and we live in anunstable economic situation. You
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know, years ago, Gone is theday, right, when we were
expected to work at the samebusiness or company for all of
our lives, right? Like we could,like back in the day, you could
expect to work at one place, andit would keep on providing for
us until we died or retired, andthey'd have a pension attached,
and you were just done, right?
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And you they would take care ofyou your whole life. That
doesn't happen anymore, right?
We've talked about that,right? Even if we're self
employed,we think, Oh, I'm self employed.
Um, you know, my own boss, like,I'm never gonna fire me. I'm
self employed. I'm trying tofigure out, you know, what kind
of clients I have next month soI can continue to keep going
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right my wife's business. Everyevery month, things change, and
we have a reasonable expectationof maybe what our next month's
income will be, but we we don'thave a guarantee. It's not like
we have a salary right, that ourboss is just every two weeks
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we're getting paid. No, neither.
You know, most people are onself employed don't necessarily
have that right, but thisinsecurity one root cause could
be some of the changes intechnology I mentioned that
earlier, right? Everything'schanging, and part of that is
the way the work gets done. Theinsecurity of the work situation
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might make us approachoccupational career matters in a
highly anxious way, andsometimes we might not make
great decisions because of thatinsecurity. I was speaking to a
friend recently who was reallystruggling in their job, and
things have changed so much, andone thing that they had been
doing kind of got eliminatedfrom their plate, because AI can
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do it now, and they were talkingabout drastically going to do
something different, startingfrom, from, you know, the first
rung, so basically, competingwith 20 year olds for a job, and
they're almost 50, and that job,even if they get it, it's, it's
not going to be. To provide fortheir family, just the pay rate
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is too low. It's for people thatare just coming out of college
and just starting out, and theyprobably don't have the level of
financial responsibility that hehas. But it's just there's,
there's a fear that can get tous when we feel like we're not
having success, or we're worriedabout the future. So insecurity
can be a very, very bigchallenge for us. And then the
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fourth challenge is, let's callit the black hole effect. What
does that mean? It just meansthat there's sometimes jobs,
occupations, careers, thatpeople might get sucked into and
then we never see them again,right? And again. Black holes
something from physics, butsometimes it can be applied to a
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work situation. You accept acertain job, and then you're
just you're gone, right? Itabsorbs all of your time and
energy and radically reshapesyour entire life. And we want to
be very careful of those. Wewant to be able to set
appropriate boundaries. Andsometimes we can see it coming,
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and sometimes we can't, and wewe just experience it. One ways
I see this happen sometimes ispeople that work in some type of
ministry, right? It could be ayouth youth ministry. Maybe it's
for a church. Maybe it's forsome other very worthy non
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profit that's out spreading thegospel. And the demands of the
job can sometimes overtake theother areas of their life, not
because someone's demanding itof them, but because there's
stuff to do all right. And wecan all look at the work that's
in front of us, at our jobs, andsay, Wow, we can always right.
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We can always keep cleaning ourhouse. We can always keep making
sales calls. We can always keepdoing nothing's ever done. And
it's easy for some of us, if wehave a nine to five to be able
to, like, leave work at work andgo home, but sometimes, when
we're out serving others andbeing passionate about spreading
the gospel, sometimes that canovertake all the areas of our
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life, because we're doing, I'mdoing air quotes with my
fingers. We're doing God's work,right? But there still has to be
an appropriate boundary for ourfamily and our life and our
Christian community and ourschedule. We need to be able to
spend personal time in prayer,right? Some of the foundational
building blocks of our lifecannot be jeopardized because of
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a job, and that's hard to do,especially if you're working in
ministry. This black hole effectcan be really a tricky one
there. It's a little moreobvious when it's a secular job,
right? And I know this. We liveclose to New York City. I've had
friends that work in New YorkCity, and they might get on a
train at 530 in the morning andnot get home till 830 at night,
because just the demands and thetravel. And you know, there's
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many times where they have tothink long and hard, like, how
is this affecting my life?
Right? Is, does my family seeme? Do they even know who I am?
And sometimes this black holeeffect with jobs and careers can
very easily tear families apart,break up marriages and cause
other problems. So we want to bevery, very careful of that. So
those are, those were the fourchallenges. I'll say them again.
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It was consumerism, careerism,insecurity and the black hole
effect. And then just lastly. Sowhat should our Christian what
should our Catholic approach towork be? I right work, first of
all, and I'm going to give youabout four, I'm going to give
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you four points of this. Firstof all, work is part of God's
plan for the human race. It isif we look back in Genesis, the
Lord God took the man and puthim in the garden of even of
Eden to till it and keep it.
That's from Genesis two, verse15. So in other words, the first
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thing that the Lord gave hisnewly created son right Adam,
was to work. So we've beenhaving to work from the
beginning. Second, we shouldmake an economic contribution to
the people we live with. So as ahusband or a wife, we should be
able to make an economiccontribution to the people we
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live with. That might be leavingthe house and working and, you
know, bringing home the bacon,right, making money to pay for
home expenses, or it could beserving our family by being at
home, raising kids, food,shopping, house cleaning, being
the, you know, the chef, andrunning to and from the store,
and couponing and all thosetypes of things that all adds
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economic contribution to thepeople we live with, to our
household. So that's two sofirst. God's work was part of
God's plan for us. Two, weshould make an economic
contribution to our household.
Third, we need to be able toprovide for our families, and
this is a joint responsibilityfor the husband and wife. Right?
Years ago, maybe the husband wasthe only one working and
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providing for the family, butnowadays, sometimes just the
economic situation demands thatboth spouses work, right?
Especially if you're having abig Catholic family, this is
going to be a challenge. There'sgoing to be lots of expenses,
and I would, I would encourageif, if a spouse could stay home
to raise the kids, that'sawesome, right? That is just
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such a great blessing. If one ofthe spouses earns enough money
where the other can can kind ofstay home to be present to the
kids. But sometimes we need tohave some part time work, right?
One spouse might need a fulltime job, the other one has a
part time job. Ideally, if youcan do it from home, it's great,
but our goal as parents andspouses is to provide for our
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family, right? And and then itdoesn't stop with our family,
but also the needy, right? So toprovide for our family, the
needy, and to provide for thework of the Lord, we do that
through our tithe and throughother generous donations, right?
And Saint Paul, in hisexhortation to the community in
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Thessalonian, he says, but weexhort you, brethren, to aspire
to live quietly, to mind yourown affairs and to work with
your hands as we charged you, sothat you may command the
respective outsiders and bedependent on nobody, right? So,
work is a good thing. It's agood thing. So that was the
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third thing. Fourth is it'shelpful to have a job that we
enjoy. It's so helpful to have ajob we enjoy. It's not the
highest consideration, right? Itdoesn't have to be our favorite
thing to do. It should be ableto provide for us. And so here's
kind of my little list of thework that we should do. One do
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we enjoy it? And sometimes itmight not be the work itself,
but it could be the people thatwe're working with. I mean, I am
a big fan of people, and yougive me the right group of
people, right? I'll say like,you know, with the right group
of guys, I'm happy to doanything right, from, you know,
brain surgery, if I was skilledto do it, to, you know, weeding
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a garden bed, right? I you know,to, you know, raking garbage,
you know, throw whatever youcould think of the jobs you most
likely would like and leastlikely like. For me, it's
typically about the people I getto work with about less than
what I'm doing, right? Myfavorite thing is to like go
fishing. Maybe I love fishing,but I'm not going pro there. So
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that's I'm not able to do that.
And that's the second point,right after do we enjoy it? The
second one is, can it providefor us?
Right? We might love to dosomething, but it just doesn't
have enough. You know, it's justnot going to produce the dollars
we needed to do. And then thelast one, does it fit our life
of being a disciple of the Lord,right? So those are my three
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questions. Do you enjoy itagain? It doesn't have to be the
actual work. It could be thepeople we're working with do you
enjoy going there, doing thatevery day? Does it provide for
you, and does it fit our life ofbeing a disciple? So those were
a couple tips on our Christianapproach to work, right? The
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first one, work was part ofGod's plan for the human race
from the beginning. Second, weshould all make an economic
contribution to the people welive with. Third, it is our duty
to provide for our families, theneedy and the work of the Lord.
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And fourth, it is helpful. Ifour job is enjoyable, and my
three little questions forenjoyable work, do we enjoy it
again? Can it provide for us,and does it fit our life of
being a disciple? So if you'relistening to this, you probably
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work. There's probably work youdo. You probably have a job.
Maybe it's an occupation. Maybeyou're trying to figure out a
career right now. So hopefullythis was helpful to you on your
journey towards heaven andtrying to be a faithful disciple
of the Lord. Thank you forjoining us today. God bless.
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Thank you for listening toCatholic money talk. I hope you
join us again next time, pleaseclick Subscribe in your podcast
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have a great day. You.
Welcome to Catholic money talk,where we talk about all things
money and finance, and we try todo it through a lens of being
Catholic, where our ultimategoal is to one day be in Heaven
with the Lord. I am your host.
Paul Scarfone, thank you forbeing here today. You
(00:22):
foreign Welcome back to Catholicmoney talk. Today, I'd like to
talk about work and career, butbefore I do that, let's say a
prayer in the name of the Fatherand of the Son of the Holy
Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father.
We thank you for this day. Wethank you for all the ways that
you love and bless us, Lord, weknow that you have an awesome
plan that you love us so much.
(00:45):
Please allow us to yield to yourHoly Spirit. We ask this all in
Jesus name, amen, in the name ofthe Father and of the Son of the
Holy Spirit, Amen. So I got tothinking, and I was asked to
give a talk a couple weeks agoto a bunch of young men who are
trying to learn more about theirCatholic faith and how to be a
(01:08):
disciple on mission in theworkplace. And I was asked to
give them a talk on work andcareer. And as I was reflecting
on it, I thought it was some ofthe principles in there are very
good and appropriate for what wedo here on Catholic money talk,
and we'll talk a lot about howto behave with your money and
(01:31):
how to be a disciple with yourmoney, right? I'll say, Why did
God create us to know Him, loveHim and serve Him in this life,
so we could be happy with himforever in the next but how do
we know Him, love Him and serveHim with our finances, right,
with our money, and what are theappropriate behaviors for that?
What's the appropriate mindsetperspective? And I think the
same can be said about our workand our career. And so as we
(01:57):
talk about, how do we manage ourfinances, well, how do we pursue
our work? Which produces thefinances that we use to sustain
our life? And before we getstarted, I wanted to just talk
about a few areas ofterminology. So let's define
(02:21):
some terms. The first is work.
So as we talked about work, workisn't just money that you know,
things we do for money, work issomething we put effort in that
produces an economic result. Sofor a stay home parent. That is
work, because the economicresult that it produces is we
(02:43):
don't have a child care expense,right? So things would include
like, and if you're a student,that would be like, your
studies, right? Your pursuit ofa degree. So raising kids,
housework, studies, those couldall be considered work. I would
even put in, like cutting thegrass, right? Those are things
(03:06):
that are just work, that if wedidn't do it, we'd have to pay
someone to do a job. So thefirst definition was work. The
second one is Job. Job is goingto be work that is done for
money, right economicremuneration, right money. We
can have a job if we're trainedfor it, or maybe it's just a
(03:30):
part time thing. Maybe we're inschool or between jobs and we're
waiting tables at night. Thatcould be looked at as a job and
that might not really feel likea career, the term occupation
that could be used for aparticular type of job that
maybe we have training for, itcould be what we've studied for.
(03:54):
But, you know, jobs, we mighthop from job to job. We might
not hop from occupation tooccupation. We may kind of stay
in that particular field. Andthen lastly, career, right? So,
we've done work, we've done job,we've done occupation and
career. Let's say that a careeris something long term, right?
(04:16):
And it doesn't have to be allworking at the same place. It
could be a particular field ofstudy, or maybe a particular
ladder that we're climbing,maybe a particular trajectory
we're on. And you could think ofcareer as, you know, in the same
sense, when people say, I have acareer change, right? I'm
(04:38):
changing a trajectory. I'mchanging maybe a field of study,
all right, so those are kind ofour terms. Otherwise we could
say work and career, and youknow, that might all fall into
the same thing. So it just givesme a little opportunity to
define a couple terms here.
But work is goodfor us. Work provide.
(05:00):
Provides you know, our job, ourwork, our career, working and
earning income is able toprovide for our our livelihood,
our family. We can pay our fourwalls, right food, shelter,
clothing, transportation towork. We can be generous when we
work and we earn money, and weshould all have something to do
(05:20):
right work is of great dignityto us. I was just thinking, we
have a new pope, right? I don'tthink I've mentioned that on the
podcast yet, because I took aweek off, but we have a new
pope, and Pope Leo the 14th. Andhe was discussing in one of his
initial um homilies about why hepicked Leo the 14th and he he
(05:42):
referenced that Leo the 13th washere at the turn of the last
century, right? So from the1800s to the 1900s and there was
an industrial revolution goingon, and it was very important to
protect the dignity of the humanperson, and part of that is as
it relates to work. So we allneed something to do. We should
(06:06):
all find something to do,whether it's work or a job. We
shouldn't be idle, right? Wedon't want to be idle. We don't
want to be lazy, even if you'reindependently wealthy or a
student living on off of otherpeople, maybe you're retired
unemployed, or maybe you havesome form of disability and you
feel like there's not much youcan do. We still need to find
(06:26):
something to do, to buildourselves up, to build up the
people around us, to give uslife so that we're not idle. And
if we want to be a disciple ofthe Lord, right, if we want to
know love and serve Him ineverything we do, we have to do
that at work as well. And I knowone of the things I've struggled
(06:49):
with my entire life, and earlyon, it was harder. I have gotten
better as I've matured in myChristian faith, but it's so
easy sometimes to wear differenthats, right? To wear our hat for
our workplace. Maybe it's ourhat for our faith community, our
church. Maybe it's a hat for ourfamily, our friends hat, our
(07:10):
golfing hat, our fishing hat,and it just it's a different
person that shows up in thosesituations. And our goal is to,
in all those situations, to be aconsistent disciple of the Lord.
So that's important, and we wantto have those great character
traits and Christian qualitieslike being diligent and being
(07:35):
respectful and responsible andbeing people of integrity in the
workplace. So there are a couplechallenges that I do want to
highlight that we have,especially for us in the in the
US, where it's kind of an openenvironment to get jobs. There's
so many different opportunities.
So some of these challenges wehave, there's good and bad,
(07:57):
right? The good is, there's somany different fields of studies
now, and different career fieldsand places to work or find, you
know, be trained for anoccupation or a particular
career. There's so manytechnology has created that you
can just think of, you know, 100years ago, your options were a
(08:18):
blacksmith, a butcher, acarpenter, right? A doctor,
right? There, there was, there'sa handful of them. We could
probably list them all nowadays.
There's so many. There's somany. You could say, you know,
I'm in computer. Well, what partof it? There's so many different
(08:39):
fields right now, which is,which is, which is pretty cool,
that can give us a greatopportunity. But the challenge
with all that is there's so manythings that are ever changing. I
was listening to a podcastprobably a few months ago, and
the person was saying, how manytimes, if you're going for a
four year degree in some fieldof technology, when you start to
(08:59):
when you come out, the whatyou've learned has already been
outdated because it changes soquickly. So that's a challenge.
The other challenge is it'sharder to feel like maybe our
job will be relevant in thefuture. With AI and other things
that are coming out, we can feelthat those present some
(09:20):
challenges, right? Our ouruseful skills and abilities,
will they be needed? So thoseare some challenges. But the in
particular way, I think there'sfour significant challenges that
we face. The first isconsumerism. We live in a
consumerist culture. Much of theinput from the world around us
(09:40):
is designed to get us to consumemore and more, right? So
consumerism is this tendency toconsume companies. They spend
billions of money on billions ofdollars right on advertising to
get us to buy stuff, whether itbe good services or experiences.
And sometimes we can get lulledinto them. I'm thinking of some.
Subscriptions, right? A musicsubscription where you subscribe
(10:03):
and all of a sudden, you know,maybe a year goes by and they
say, All right, well, we'reputting ads in now, unless you
want to pay us a little morethan you have been paying us to
have the ad free version, right?
And so they slowly lull us andbring us into things and
subscription to thesubscriptions do that, they
might create new hurdles for usto overcome, to enjoy the same
content the way we want onlineas for advertisements follow us
(10:27):
around. You go to websites as,Hey, you want some cookies, and
we say, yes. Now they'rewatching what we do, and they're
and that's where, when we go doa you know, if you go to a
website. Let's say you had justbeen looking at girls at Home
Depot, and you go to a, youknow, ESPN, or something like
that, a sports website, all of asudden, in the margin on the
(10:49):
left to the right, or maybefloating in the middle of the
screen, there's an advertisementfrom Home Depot for that same
girl you were just looking at.
They're following us around andsocial media, that's, you know,
for consumerism, that's anothertough one, because it's almost
like all of our friends onsocial media, or however we meet
these people, sometimes there'scomplete strangers, but they're
(11:11):
advertising to us, and maybeit's their experiences that
we're seeing that we think weneed, or maybe we should be
chasing those same things, andMany times they're not bad
things. We just don't need them.
And maybe those things aren'tactually appropriate for people
that are trying to be disciplesof Jesus, right? People that are
(11:32):
in pursuit of heaven, trying tobe saints, running after the
Lord. So we need to know whatour needs and wants are to avoid
consumerism, we also needcontentment, right? And I have a
whole episode on contentment.
And contentment is the oppositeof just thinking we'll need more
stuff to be happy, right?
Contentment is knowing that theLord loves us and that by
(11:54):
itself, is enough, right? And hewill provide for us, and we need
to be content with that. Butadvertising is perhaps the most
obvious example. Few of us canavoid it, and all the
advertising is doing is tryingto get us to buy more, and it's
just constantly bombarding us.
So we need to restrict and andhave some restraint as it comes
(12:16):
to spending and consuming. Andthe other thing that can creep
up in this area of consumption,and again, I have a couple
episodes on this, is lifestylecreep. Lifestyle creep is just
when our wants just completelyexpand and expand and expand as
our income does, and it justconsumes more and more and more
(12:38):
of our income, and we have lessto put towards our goals and the
things we feel the Lord iscalling us to. So that's the
first challenge. Is consumerism.
The second one is careerism, andthat is getting to the top at
all costs, right? And the thingabout being, being in a career,
is we want to, we want to try togrow and get recognition from
(13:02):
other people. And sometimes wereceive that one. We can receive
it through pay, right? You get abonus. You get some type of
achievement at work that has hasmoney assigned to it that can
feel like a great, greatrecognition, advancement, right?
And promotion can feel likegreat recognition as well, but
(13:24):
the thing to remember is theactual like recognition. What we
actually want said to us is bythe Lord at the end of our life,
Welcome home, good and faithfulservant. That's the recognition
that we want, right? That'sthat's the that's what we're all
longing for. But sometimes alongthe way, these things can remind
(13:45):
us of that, whether it bethrough pay or through
advancement or other people justrecognizing us for the job we
did, right? And so we want tojust have a healthy desire for
that, not one that we're justclimbing to the top at all
costs. And one of the thingsI've spoken about this on the
podcast, and this is really, Ithink, particularly for men, but
(14:06):
women, women can feel with ittoo. I think sometimes women
might, they just view itslightly differently than men.
And what am I saying here? Somen tend to define themselves by
what they do. Women tend todefine themselves by what they
think other people think ofthem, right? And so women and
(14:28):
men, they'll look at promotionmaybe a little differently,
right? There's spectrums, andthere's overlap, and they might
have some that look at itexactly the same way. But in
general, speaking, and welearned this from psychology and
sociology, that men definethemselves by what they do,
right? You ask a man say, Hey,tell me about yourself. Oh, I'm
(14:48):
a plumber, I'm a financialcoach, I'm a lawyer, I'm a
doctor, right? That's what theydo.
It's the first things out of ourmouth. Women tend to define
themselves both. Think otherpeople's think of them. So for a
woman to receive a promotionthat's very up building to them,
right? That that lifts theiresteem, and that tells them
(15:10):
that, hey, other people view meas whatever fill in the words,
capable, responsible, smart,right? All those types of
things. Men, when they get apromotion, they might tend to
feel like they're doing betteron the scoreboard, right, like
it's more of a competition. Andso there's just, you know, and
(15:32):
again, we do those aren't goodthings, right? We want to
identify ourselves by sons anddaughters of God, not by what
other people think of us or bywhat we do, right? And a great
quote that I I've been I heard acouple weeks ago for a
reflection on a by a friend. Hewas giving us just a reflection
going into prayer. And thisreally stuck with me, and I've
(15:55):
been taking this into prayerevery day. This is a quote from
Saint John Paul the Second, weare not the sum of our
weaknesses and failures. We arethe sum of the Father's love for
us and our real capacity becomethe image of His Son. Jesus,
wow, I'm gonna say that again.
St John Paul the second. We arenot the sum of our weaknesses
(16:18):
and failures. We are the sum ofthe Father's love for us and our
real capacity to become theimage of His Son, Jesus. And so
in one sense, it doesn't matterif we're the top of our field or
kicking butt in the workplace.
And, you know, advancement hereand there and if we try and fail
(16:42):
at something, it's okay, like weare not the sum of those
weaknesses and failures. We'realso not the sum of our
successes and failures either,right? We are the sum of the
Father's love for us in our realcapacity to become the image of
His Son, Jesus. So we want to beconfident in who we are, and
(17:02):
that'll help us in our career,right? And so careerism, we
don't want a career to take overour lives, right? Sometimes, in
order to advance careers, peoplemight sacrifice their families,
their personal welfare and maybeeven their Christian commitment.
They might be expected to workon reasonable hours, move to
different cities or just livefor their jobs. And in fact, we
(17:26):
we don't want a life to supportour career. We want a career
that supports our life, ourChristian our Catholic life.
That's what we're looking for.
So we want to be aware ofcareerism. The third thing is
insecurity, right? Insecuritythat's just being uncertain or
anxious, and we live in anunstable economic situation. You
(17:48):
know, years ago, Gone is theday, right, when we were
expected to work at the samebusiness or company for all of
our lives, right? Like we could,like back in the day, you could
expect to work at one place, andit would keep on providing for
us until we died or retired, andthey'd have a pension attached,
and you were just done, right?
(18:09):
And you they would take care ofyou your whole life. That
doesn't happen anymore, right?
We've talked about that,right? Even if we're self
employed,we think, Oh, I'm self employed.
Um, you know, my own boss, like,I'm never gonna fire me. I'm
self employed. I'm trying tofigure out, you know, what kind
of clients I have next month soI can continue to keep going
(18:31):
right my wife's business. Everyevery month, things change, and
we have a reasonable expectationof maybe what our next month's
income will be, but we we don'thave a guarantee. It's not like
we have a salary right, that ourboss is just every two weeks
(18:52):
we're getting paid. No, neither.
You know, most people are onself employed don't necessarily
have that right, but thisinsecurity one root cause could
be some of the changes intechnology I mentioned that
earlier, right? Everything'schanging, and part of that is
the way the work gets done. Theinsecurity of the work situation
(19:15):
might make us approachoccupational career matters in a
highly anxious way, andsometimes we might not make
great decisions because of thatinsecurity. I was speaking to a
friend recently who was reallystruggling in their job, and
things have changed so much, andone thing that they had been
doing kind of got eliminatedfrom their plate, because AI can
(19:40):
do it now, and they were talkingabout drastically going to do
something different, startingfrom, from, you know, the first
rung, so basically, competingwith 20 year olds for a job, and
they're almost 50, and that job,even if they get it, it's, it's
not going to be. To provide fortheir family, just the pay rate
(20:02):
is too low. It's for people thatare just coming out of college
and just starting out, and theyprobably don't have the level of
financial responsibility that hehas. But it's just there's,
there's a fear that can get tous when we feel like we're not
having success, or we're worriedabout the future. So insecurity
can be a very, very bigchallenge for us. And then the
(20:25):
fourth challenge is, let's callit the black hole effect. What
does that mean? It just meansthat there's sometimes jobs,
occupations, careers, thatpeople might get sucked into and
then we never see them again,right? And again. Black holes
something from physics, butsometimes it can be applied to a
(20:49):
work situation. You accept acertain job, and then you're
just you're gone, right? Itabsorbs all of your time and
energy and radically reshapesyour entire life. And we want to
be very careful of those. Wewant to be able to set
appropriate boundaries. Andsometimes we can see it coming,
(21:09):
and sometimes we can't, and wewe just experience it. One ways
I see this happen sometimes ispeople that work in some type of
ministry, right? It could be ayouth youth ministry. Maybe it's
for a church. Maybe it's forsome other very worthy non
(21:30):
profit that's out spreading thegospel. And the demands of the
job can sometimes overtake theother areas of their life, not
because someone's demanding itof them, but because there's
stuff to do all right. And wecan all look at the work that's
in front of us, at our jobs, andsay, Wow, we can always right.
(21:50):
We can always keep cleaning ourhouse. We can always keep making
sales calls. We can always keepdoing nothing's ever done. And
it's easy for some of us, if wehave a nine to five to be able
to, like, leave work at work andgo home, but sometimes, when
we're out serving others andbeing passionate about spreading
the gospel, sometimes that canovertake all the areas of our
(22:14):
life, because we're doing, I'mdoing air quotes with my
fingers. We're doing God's work,right? But there still has to be
an appropriate boundary for ourfamily and our life and our
Christian community and ourschedule. We need to be able to
spend personal time in prayer,right? Some of the foundational
building blocks of our lifecannot be jeopardized because of
(22:36):
a job, and that's hard to do,especially if you're working in
ministry. This black hole effectcan be really a tricky one
there. It's a little moreobvious when it's a secular job,
right? And I know this. We liveclose to New York City. I've had
friends that work in New YorkCity, and they might get on a
train at 530 in the morning andnot get home till 830 at night,
because just the demands and thetravel. And you know, there's
(23:00):
many times where they have tothink long and hard, like, how
is this affecting my life?
Right? Is, does my family seeme? Do they even know who I am?
And sometimes this black holeeffect with jobs and careers can
very easily tear families apart,break up marriages and cause
other problems. So we want to bevery, very careful of that. So
those are, those were the fourchallenges. I'll say them again.
(23:23):
It was consumerism, careerism,insecurity and the black hole
effect. And then just lastly. Sowhat should our Christian what
should our Catholic approach towork be? I right work, first of
all, and I'm going to give youabout four, I'm going to give
(23:49):
you four points of this. Firstof all, work is part of God's
plan for the human race. It isif we look back in Genesis, the
Lord God took the man and puthim in the garden of even of
Eden to till it and keep it.
That's from Genesis two, verse15. So in other words, the first
(24:12):
thing that the Lord gave hisnewly created son right Adam,
was to work. So we've beenhaving to work from the
beginning. Second, we shouldmake an economic contribution to
the people we live with. So as ahusband or a wife, we should be
able to make an economiccontribution to the people we
(24:32):
live with. That might be leavingthe house and working and, you
know, bringing home the bacon,right, making money to pay for
home expenses, or it could beserving our family by being at
home, raising kids, food,shopping, house cleaning, being
the, you know, the chef, andrunning to and from the store,
and couponing and all thosetypes of things that all adds
(24:54):
economic contribution to thepeople we live with, to our
household. So that's two sofirst. God's work was part of
God's plan for us. Two, weshould make an economic
contribution to our household.
Third, we need to be able toprovide for our families, and
this is a joint responsibilityfor the husband and wife. Right?
Years ago, maybe the husband wasthe only one working and
(25:19):
providing for the family, butnowadays, sometimes just the
economic situation demands thatboth spouses work, right?
Especially if you're having abig Catholic family, this is
going to be a challenge. There'sgoing to be lots of expenses,
and I would, I would encourageif, if a spouse could stay home
to raise the kids, that'sawesome, right? That is just
(25:40):
such a great blessing. If one ofthe spouses earns enough money
where the other can can kind ofstay home to be present to the
kids. But sometimes we need tohave some part time work, right?
One spouse might need a fulltime job, the other one has a
part time job. Ideally, if youcan do it from home, it's great,
but our goal as parents andspouses is to provide for our
(26:01):
family, right? And and then itdoesn't stop with our family,
but also the needy, right? So toprovide for our family, the
needy, and to provide for thework of the Lord, we do that
through our tithe and throughother generous donations, right?
And Saint Paul, in hisexhortation to the community in
(26:21):
Thessalonian, he says, but weexhort you, brethren, to aspire
to live quietly, to mind yourown affairs and to work with
your hands as we charged you, sothat you may command the
respective outsiders and bedependent on nobody, right? So,
work is a good thing. It's agood thing. So that was the
(26:42):
third thing. Fourth is it'shelpful to have a job that we
enjoy. It's so helpful to have ajob we enjoy. It's not the
highest consideration, right? Itdoesn't have to be our favorite
thing to do. It should be ableto provide for us. And so here's
kind of my little list of thework that we should do. One do
(27:07):
we enjoy it? And sometimes itmight not be the work itself,
but it could be the people thatwe're working with. I mean, I am
a big fan of people, and yougive me the right group of
people, right? I'll say like,you know, with the right group
of guys, I'm happy to doanything right, from, you know,
brain surgery, if I was skilledto do it, to, you know, weeding
(27:29):
a garden bed, right? I you know,to, you know, raking garbage,
you know, throw whatever youcould think of the jobs you most
likely would like and leastlikely like. For me, it's
typically about the people I getto work with about less than
what I'm doing, right? Myfavorite thing is to like go
fishing. Maybe I love fishing,but I'm not going pro there. So
(27:52):
that's I'm not able to do that.
And that's the second point,right after do we enjoy it? The
second one is, can it providefor us?
Right? We might love to dosomething, but it just doesn't
have enough. You know, it's justnot going to produce the dollars
we needed to do. And then thelast one, does it fit our life
of being a disciple of the Lord,right? So those are my three
(28:15):
questions. Do you enjoy itagain? It doesn't have to be the
actual work. It could be thepeople we're working with do you
enjoy going there, doing thatevery day? Does it provide for
you, and does it fit our life ofbeing a disciple? So those were
a couple tips on our Christianapproach to work, right? The
(28:35):
first one, work was part ofGod's plan for the human race
from the beginning. Second, weshould all make an economic
contribution to the people welive with. Third, it is our duty
to provide for our families, theneedy and the work of the Lord.
(28:57):
And fourth, it is helpful. Ifour job is enjoyable, and my
three little questions forenjoyable work, do we enjoy it
again? Can it provide for us,and does it fit our life of
being a disciple? So if you'relistening to this, you probably
(29:20):
work. There's probably work youdo. You probably have a job.
Maybe it's an occupation. Maybeyou're trying to figure out a
career right now. So hopefullythis was helpful to you on your
journey towards heaven andtrying to be a faithful disciple
of the Lord. Thank you forjoining us today. God bless.
(29:50):
Thank you for listening toCatholic money talk. I hope you
join us again next time, pleaseclick Subscribe in your podcast
app to get notified of newepisodes. God Bless. You and
have a great day. You.
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