Episode 151: Dr. Mary Kloska Speaks About the Holiness of Human Work (March 23, 2025)

In this episode of The Heart of Fiat Crucified Love, Dr. Mary Kloska speaks about the importance and holiness of God's gift of work to humanity. She draws from Papal Encyclicals, Scriptures and the writings of the saints to show God's purpose for entrusting work to humanity. She also explains how to make one's work a powerful sacrificial prayer of love that glorifies God.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So listening to WCAT radio, your home for authentic Catholic programming.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the heart of fat crucified Love.
It's been a while, my friends. This week, in this episode,
I am going to do a podcast on something that
I have wanted to share with you for probably a
year and a half to two years, and I just

(00:27):
never put it all together until the Lord helped me
this weekend. And it's on the holiness of work. Of work.
It's just a lot to share. So let's start with
a prayer and we'll do amazing grace. This is what
I just pulled out, and we'll talk in the name

(00:52):
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen, Come,
Holy Spirit, fill the heart of your faithful enkindle in
us the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit,
and we will be recreated. And thou shalt renew the
face of the earth. Sweet Jesus, during Lent, we ask

(01:16):
you to open up your wounded heart and to pour
upon us the fiery love that comes through your blood,
to wash over us, to recreate us, to open our
minds to your truth, to open up our hearts to
your love, to give us strength to work and toil

(01:40):
this side of eternity, alongside you on the cross and
in the ordinary, so that we can gain heaven with you.
We ask the intercession of our lady, who lived the
ordinary life, who sanctified everything she did, even the most

(02:05):
menial tasks, simply through her love and her prayer that
imbue everything. And we ask the intercession of dear Saint Joseph,
who I pulled out here to be with us. We
honor Saint Joseph as the worker, as the one who
taught Christ the value of human work. And we pray,

(02:28):
Hail Mary, full of grace. So Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, And blessed is the fruit
of thy womb. Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray
for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen, come,
Holy Spirit, Come by the means of the powerful innercession

(02:49):
of the immaculate Heart of Mary, thy well beloved spouse.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Ah mad, say grace, how sweet the sound.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Let's say.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
The rat.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
Like me, I w wasce was lost, but now.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
My phone was blood. But now wise see.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Twas grace that to my.

Speaker 6 (03:54):
Hort two feet grace my feet seely.

Speaker 7 (04:10):
Ho preshasted.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
That graves beyond my first believe.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
My chains are gone. I've been set free.

Speaker 7 (04:42):
My God saved has ransomed me.

Speaker 6 (04:53):
And like go.

Speaker 8 (04:58):
His MA series on ading love amazing grace.

Speaker 7 (05:15):
Through many dangers, toils and snaze.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
I have.

Speaker 7 (05:30):
All rety he calls.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Discrets had for.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Me.

Speaker 6 (05:44):
Saved.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Thus fall.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
A grip, swillly.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Me hold.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
My chain eats a God. I've been set free.

Speaker 7 (06:10):
My God said, has readsumed.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Me and like a flood.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
His MA series.

Speaker 8 (06:32):
On being loved.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
Amazing grace.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
The Lord.

Speaker 4 (06:47):
Has prid.

Speaker 6 (06:50):
Mass go to me.

Speaker 7 (06:56):
His word.

Speaker 6 (06:58):
By ho.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
Sacur he with buy sield.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
And pulled.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
Should be.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
As long.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
As line and dures. My chains are gone. I've been
set Freeze my God and saved you has ra hansunned me.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
And like a flood.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
His BC ray on amazing grace.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Amen, the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit. Amen. Only people I sing to these
days are babies, so my voice is untrained. Thanks for
being patient. So we're going to talk about the holiness
of work. I have no idea how I'm gonna fifth

(08:40):
is in an hour. I should have brought glasses. So
God created us to work, and it's an idea that's
been completely forgotten in modern day society because everyone's goal
is to relax, to enjoy themselves. Right. People usually want

(09:05):
to retire early, not so that they can pursue work
for the good of society or the good of the poor,
but so that they can sit on a beach in Malibu, right,
drinking a cocktail, go to a concert or whatever. And
recreation has its place. We all need to rest in
a small proportion to what we're doing for the Lord.

(09:30):
But work is a very important part of our salvation.

Speaker 6 (09:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
So there are a few basic human principles that you
have to understand in order to understand the holiness of work. One,
we were created in the image and the likeness of God.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
We were created different than the animals or other living
things plants, trees, because we're able to reason, and we're
able to to love, and that reason and that love
show itself in our ability to create. Right. And these
are all reflections of God, the great Creator.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
It gives great dignity to the human person when they
use these particularly human gifts of reason and love to
create with the Lord. The first stories we hear in
scripture come from Genesis, with the creation story. God, who
is all perfect, all powerful, he works. He did the

(10:40):
work of creation in sixtays, and then he rested on
the seventh. Right, So it's important to take that seventh
day that you know, Sunday Sabbath, and to recoup so
that you have the energy to give yourself those other
six days again. But it's important for us also to
remember that the work itself is very important for our salvation.

(11:05):
It's a work, is something where we are able to
cooperate with God in creation right in the world, and
also in redemption because after the fall of Adam and Eve,
if you remember, God said to Adam, you know you

(11:29):
will be redeemed by the work of your and the
sweat of your brow. Right. He spoke of the suffering
of Eve and childbirth and how that suffering of motherhood
would sanctify her fallen soul. And he spoke to Adam
about the importance of manual labor.

Speaker 6 (11:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
But manual labor and physical work did not just come
into the world after the fall. God created even before
the fall, and when he put Adam in the garden,
he told him to tend it. So he gave him
work right, physical work. He told him to name the
animals he gave him mental work. So there is something

(12:10):
very dignified and holy in the idea of work, and
it's particularly important to humans. Right. The second human principle
that we have to remember in all of this is
that we have both a right and a responsibility to
love God and our neighbor. So our work is not

(12:33):
just labor for the sake of laboring. Right, We're called
to a work that glorifies God, that shows our love
for Him, which means there's something divine in our ordinary,
mundane life of work. And also to serve and to
love our neighbor. Simone Wheel said that we have to

(12:58):
imitate christ being, and in being a true Christian, that
means to recognize that the neighbor that we're called to
serve is a being of whom nothing is known, lying naked,
bleeding and unconscious on the road. It's a question of
completely anonymous and for that reason, completely universal love. So

(13:21):
our work is not called to simply serve ourselves and
our own salvation or that of our families, but of
our neighbor, even those neighbors who are anonymous, who are unknown.
And the more that our work serves those that do
not have that ability to pay us back. You know,

(13:43):
even your family they love you, and so there's something
paid back. But when you use your work to help
souls that you might not have an affinity for or
might not even know, that makes your love universal and
it makes it pure. It makes it pure. And in
our work we also have to remember that we are

(14:04):
called as Christians, like christ to have a preferential option
for the poor and the vulnerable. Right, So we're not
called in our work to oppress those who are under
us or to use our work to lift ourselves up.
We're called in our work to serve the poor.

Speaker 4 (14:22):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
So you might be a doctor, You might make a
pretty penny being a doctor, but you have to remember
to have always use your gift of healing it with
a preferential option for the poor. So maybe you can
volunteer one day a week at a clinic for you know,

(14:43):
the poor for free, or go on a mission trip,
or you know, pay out of pocket for someone that
you serve who's uninsured. But God wants you to always
have a preferential option for the poor. It does not
mean the wealthier not important. They are and we want
them in heaven and sometimes the wealthy are poor in spirit.

(15:07):
They don't know anything about the Lord. They're the poorest around, right,
So you have to kind of be open in your
understanding of what that means. But those are three basic
human principles that we have to remember when we're speaking
about the holiness of work. We also have to remember

(15:29):
that work is for man, and man is not for work. Right.
So the problem came in during the Communist Revolution when
men were called to serve the God of work.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
We saw that in the Nazi concentration camps as well,
where people only had their worth in what they could do, right,
and if they were not productive, they were not important,
and so they were left to die. That's a wrong perspective.
Work is a tool that man has that helps them

(16:07):
sanctify their own soul, and so when you look at
it that way, you see the holiness of work. But
work in itself is not the end. The glorification of
God and our union of heart with Him is the
end that we're seeking.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
We see in Genesis too, where it says the Lord
God took man and settle them in the garden to
cultivate and care for it. We see in that that
work is a gift from God, it's not a punishment.
He invites us to work alongside with him to share
in his cultivation of the earth and humanity. Saint John

(16:50):
Paul the Second highlighted this, and he said, the unique
and subjective characteristic of the human person contributes to his
or her work that not only transforms the raw materials
into something useful and good for society, but also helps

(17:10):
transfigure the human person. What does that mean? Take something
simple at cleaning your house. The work of cleaning your
house is not important just because the material of your
house is transformed into from something dirty to something beautiful. Right,
and so it's useful to society because a clean house

(17:31):
makes society healthier, healthier. Right, If everybody at a clean house,
then society would be healthier. What's important? The most important
thing is not the actual transformation of that material, right,
the cleaning. The most important thing is the transformation of
the human person, whose heart is sanctified by cleaning.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
So when you are offering up the cleaning of your
house as a sacrifice of love in great humility to
the Lord as a prayer, that's the most important value
of that work. And secondary is the transformation of the
material of your home from something dirty to something clean.

(18:17):
Right As a person, a man works, he performs various
actions belonging to the work process, independently of their objective content,
these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to

(18:40):
fulfill the calling to be a person that is his
by reason of his humanity. So the beautiful purpose of
work once again is to show forth the dignity of
the human person doing the work, and not the work itself.
You can look at this as an employer, say, I

(19:01):
work in many large homes with multiple household staff, and
I look at these beautiful Hispanic women that come into
clean so often, and sometimes they're very demean right, And
people can be very nitpicky as this isn't perfect, this
isn't perfect, and they're not looking at the humility and

(19:25):
the kindness and the goodness of the soul doing the work.
And with the recognition that this side of eternity, even
if you dust right now, in ten minutes, you're not
Your house isn't going to be perfectly free of dust,
right like, things are continually changing. So what's most important
in the work is to make sure that that employee

(19:49):
is being treated in a dignified way, especially when they
have a really beautiful good intention in what they're doing. Right,
You don't ever want to use your employee to get
the end of a clean house. First, you want to
love that employee as a soul created by God with
a purpose that in them fulfilling also helps you.

Speaker 6 (20:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
But it's the person behind the work that's most important,
not the work itself. Okay, this is all from Pope
John Paul the Second, and he says that as we
work in any capacity, from tilling the soil of our
gardens or maybe you know, answering emails or whatever it

(20:35):
is that you do every single day, we are offering
ourselves to the Lord through that work in a unique way.
So I can change the diaper of babies in five
different homes, and it looks like I'm doing the same thing,
but every action is unique and special and different in

(20:57):
the eyes of God, depending on the state of mind, heart,
And maybe I'm offering it up for this intention here
and this intention here. But behind each work is a
unique person and by doing it with their whole heart
and soul and mind oriented toward God, it's a unique

(21:17):
prayer and it's very beautiful if you can see it
that way.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
It's very important that we never objectify ourselves or others
for the sake of expediency or material gain. Right. We
always want work to have that end goal of the
glory glory of God, whatever glories God glorifies God. The
book most we look as an example of work to

(21:47):
Jesus Christ, the incarnate son of God himself. He was
born to a carpenter. Joseph was known to be a
man who worked with his hands, either with wood, with metal,
with bricks, with different you know, materials, but he would
build right along the Creator, with the Creator. And when

(22:10):
Jesus came to earth, he watched that work ethic of
his father, and that's where he learned to toil in
a dignified way, in a prayerful way, and he learned
humanly in the human part of himself. The dignity of
work from Joseph right from the creation of man in

(22:32):
Genesis to the new atom Jesus Christ. The reverence and
the great value of work is clear in scripture. When
he visited his hometown, people said, who is this? Isn't
he just the workman?

Speaker 6 (22:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:48):
But Christ put such a value in working. That thirty
of the years that he spent on earth, of the
thirty three he spent simply working. That should show to
us the value of human work.

Speaker 4 (23:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
And then those other three years he lived the work
of preaching. That it was hard to travel through Israel
and to teach and to heal and to forgive sins. Right,
ask a priest to witness the burden of sin and
to bring forgiveness to people is a difficult spiritual work.

(23:28):
And then the last hours he spent on earth was
the work of the passion. So Christ he never ran
away from work.

Speaker 6 (23:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Saint John Paul the Second called Christ's example the Gospel
of work, and he said in his encyclical this was
also the Gospel of work, because he who proclaimed it
was himself a man of work, a craftsman, like Joseph

(24:02):
of Nazareth. He belonged to the working world. He had
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.

(24:23):
Right following the fall, work includes suffering. It wouldn't have
been such a burden if Adam and Eve would have
just done it along with Christ. But they ripped themselves,
I mean, done it along with God the Father. But
they ripped themselves from God the Father and sin. So

(24:44):
then you know this problem came where obeying God seemed
like a toil, right, it seemed painful, and Saint Paul
himself called life on earth toil and drudgery. But the
suffering that we endure when we work. Say that you

(25:06):
are dusting and you get allergies, or you are working
in a factory and your body gets tired. Right, maybe
you're an accountant and sitting in the office all day
like it drives you nuts after a while, when there's
sunshine outside and you're looking at a blank wall. Right,
But that suffering element of work is also a gift

(25:27):
from God, because God himself suffered not only in his
human work, but in accomplishing the work of our salvation
on the cross. The suffering and the struggles that we
experience and our work are gateways to a deeper unity
with Christ when peerfully and intentionally carried out in loving

(25:47):
imitation of Christ and his passion. Saint John Paul the
Second said by enduring the toil of work in union
with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates
with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity.
He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying
the cross in his turn every day in the activity

(26:09):
that he is called upon to perform. There are, as
you study the teachings of John Paul the Second on work,
there are a few basic things that you can pull
from his encyclicals and his writing, and so I'm just

(26:30):
gonna quote him here. I think these are all from
his encyclical on human work. Okay, Yes, Number one, work
is a characteristic of man. Work is one of the
characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose

(26:51):
activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only
man is capable of work, and only man works at
the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Okay.
These are all quotes from John Paul the Second. The
second thing that he says is work has a distinct value.

(27:12):
He writes, there is no doubt that human work has
an ethical value of its own, which clearly and directly
remain linked to the fact that one who carries it
out is a person, a conscious and free subject, that
is to say, a subject that decides about himself. It's
why slavery is so wrong. It's why when I've had

(27:34):
jobs and I suddenly did not feel free, I've had
to leave them, because my choice to work is part
of my gift to the Lord. And people often ask
me how I do everything I do, or how I
do so well that which I do. It's because I'm
not doing it for the sake of work itself. Even

(27:56):
as a nanny or a house you know, manager, or
whatever I do to help a family run. Yes, I
love that family, and I do it for the love
of that family. But I do it even more for
the love of God. Even if God alone knows the
extra effort that I'm putting into something to make it perfect,
I'm doing it solely for Him, and that's enough. I'm

(28:20):
reminded of Catherine Doherty who started Madonna House and she
worked in a department store when she was trying to
raise money just for it was either for her friendship
houses or maybe in between her ministries, and the manager
came to her one day and said, Catherine, nobody sells
as much as you can. You tell me your secret.

(28:40):
Why are you such a good salesperson? And can I
have you train the other salespeople? And she laughed, she said,
I don't know if they would be up for it.
What I'm doing has nothing to do with the merchandise
you give me or the people even coming. What I'm
doing is fulfilling my daily duty and doing the best
job I can at the work put before me for

(29:01):
the glory of God. And that's what makes me the best. Right.
It's keeping that single hearted goal of everything we do
being solely for the glory of God. Right. So it
might be helpful if people recognize that you're doing something well.
You might get a promotion, you might sell more of
whatever you're selling, or whatever it is, you might make

(29:23):
more money. But the sole goal of what you do
in the depths of your heart should be to glorify God,
and that is what gives what you do that work dignity.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Saint John Paul the Second says that the demands of
work and toil are known to all men. It is
not just for the poor. All men are called to
use their body to work to serve the Lord. Toil
is something that is universally known for it is universally experienced.
It is familiar to those doing physical work under sometimes

(30:02):
exceptionally laborious conditions. And it's familiar not only to agricultural
workers who spend long days working the land, which sometimes
bears thorns and thistles, but also to those who work
in minds and inquiries, to steal workers at their blast furnaces,

(30:22):
to those who work in builders yards and construction work
often in danger or of injury or death. It's familiar
to those with an intellectual workbench, to scientists, to those
who bear the burden of grave responsibility for decisions that
will have a vast impact on society. It's familiar to

(30:43):
doctors and nurses who spend days and nights at their
patients' bedsides. It's familiar to women who, sometimes without proper
recognition on the part of society and even their own families,
bear the daily burden and responsibility of their homes and
the upbringing of children. It's a familiar thing to all workers,

(31:04):
and since work is a universal calling, it's familiar to everyone.
Pope Saint John Paul the Second worked in the querries
and the minds during World War Two as a seminarian
so that he wouldn't be picked up by the Nazis.
So he understands not only in his brilliant intellect, but

(31:24):
also in his body the value of work, and he
offered it all to glorify God. He used to take
the breaks of in the minds when they would have
like a lunch break, and he would read and meditate
on Saint John of the Cross and on scripture. He
used Saint Benedict's idea of work and prayer right Aura

(31:46):
at Lebora to create a monastic setting even in the
midst of the workplace. Number four, he says human work
is a share in the activity of the Creator. The
word of God's revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental
truth that man, created in the image of God, shares

(32:08):
by his work in the activity of the Creator, and
that within the limits of his own human capacities, man
in a sense continues to develop that activity and perfects
it as he advances further and further in the discovery
of the resources and the values contained in the whole creation.

(32:28):
Number five, man ought to imitate God's rest. We're not
only called to work, but then call to rest. If
your whole life is rest. You don't actually, you're not
really imitating the Lord, because he says to work and
then that rest will have meaning. And if you work
for the Lord, then your rest will also be for

(32:49):
the Lord. He says. Man ought to imitate God both
in working and also in resting, since God himself wished
to be present in his own creative activity under the
form of work and rest. This activity by God in
the world always continues. God is even working now, as

(33:09):
he is creating constantly. The words of Christ attest. My
Father is working still. He works with creative power by
sustaining in existence the world that he called into being
from nothing. He works with selvific power in the hearts
of those from whom the beginning he's destined for rest

(33:31):
and union with himself and his father's house. Only by
working hard on earth will we find rest in heaven. Therefore,
man's work two not only requires a rest every seventh day,
but also cannot consist in the mere exercise of human

(33:52):
strength and external action. You can't just use your strength
to do and to do and to do. It must
leave room for man to prepare himself through rest by
becoming more and more what in the will of God.
He ought to be for the rest that the Lord
reserves for this his servants and friends. By resting with God,

(34:13):
God can fill you with you what you need in
order to go and work with God. Right. He also
says work is, as has been said, an obligation, that
is to say, a duty on the part of man.
Man must work, both because the Creator has commanded it

(34:36):
and because of his own humanity, which requires work in
order to be maintained and developed. Man must work out
of regard for others, especially his own family, but also
for the society he belongs to, the country of which
he's a child, the whole human family of which he's
a member, since he is the heir to the work

(34:59):
of generation, and at the same time a share in
the building of the future of those who will come
after him in the succession of history. Even those called
to intense contemplative lives, the great hermits, fathers of the desert,
cloistered sisters, they have a time of work during their day.

(35:19):
They might not be making money, right, it might not
always be for pay. They might be living on alms,
but it doesn't mean that they're idle. They are actively
cleaning and cooking. Some make altar bread, you know. Others
toil the soil, others. I remember Mother Angelica when she

(35:41):
couldn't afford she's a cloistered nun. She couldn't afford to
start ewtn. She and her sisters made fish bait, like
the hooks and the bait that you put on. They
would sell that.

Speaker 5 (35:52):
Right.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
What's most important is that you imbue your work with
that contemplative spirit of prayer. Right. You don't have to
be in a cloister even to do that, just to
keep a quiet atmosphere where you are offering everything that
you do to the Lord. And we'll talk about how

(36:14):
to do that at the very end. Lastly, John Paul
the Second said work is a good thing for man,
a good thing for his humanity, because through work, man
not only transforms nature, adapting it to its own needs,
but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being, and indeed,

(36:36):
in a sense becomes more a human being. So the
more you work, the more you become human. Pope Benedict
the sixteenth, in his encyclical Charity and Truth echoes John
Paul the Second. He says, I would like to remind everyone,
especially governments engaged in boosting the world's economic and social assets.

(37:01):
That the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man,
the human person in his or her integrity. Right. So
it's not the work itself. Man does not exist for work.
The most important thing is the dignity of the man
doing the work. Man is the source and the focus
and the aim of all economic and social life. Right.

(37:26):
Even Pope Francis wrote about this and his encyclical Loudatoci.
Jesus worked with his hands in daily contact with the
matter created by God, to which he gave form by
his craftsmanship. It's striking that the most of his life
was dedicated to this task, in a simple life which

(37:47):
awakened no admiration at all. They said, is this not
the carpenter the son of Mary?

Speaker 4 (37:53):
Right?

Speaker 2 (37:55):
What does the Catechism of the Catholic Church say on work?
It says human work proceeds directly from persons created in
the image of God and called to prolong the work
of creation by subduing the earth both with and for
one another. Hence, work is a duty. If anyone will

(38:17):
not work, let him not eat. That's what Saint Paul said.
Work honors the creator's gifts and the talents received from him.
In work, the person exercises and fulfills in part the
potential inscribed in his nature. The primordial value of labor
stems from man himself, its author, and its beneficiary. Work

(38:40):
is for man, not man for work. Everyone should be
able to draw from work the means of providing for
his life and that of his family, and of serving
the human community. Work is important for everyone. So say
you win the lottery and you have a billion dollars,
do you have to stop working?

Speaker 4 (38:57):
Not?

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Really. You don't have to have a job where you're
paid for it. But you're not called to sit on
the couch all day, right, or to travel from sight
seeing to sight seeing. Your whole life's not supposed to
be perpetual rest. God calls you to use those gifts
to do something. Maybe you'll have the freedom to go

(39:17):
work in an orphanage. Maybe he'll allow you to run
a nonprofit. But God calls all of us to work.
Maybe he wants you to open your home to orphans
and the foster children. Everyone is the right of economic initiative.
Everyone should make legitimate use of his talents to contribute
to the abundance that will benefit all, and to harvest

(39:41):
the just fruits of his labor, he should seek to
observe regulations issued by legitimate authority for the sake of
the common good. And lastly, in the Catechism, it says
a just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. It's
so important, and the Catechism speaks a lot about this

(40:03):
that if you are hiring someone that you pay them
a just wage, right, you don't try to get them
as cheap as possible. I work a lot with Hispanics
in the various households I've been in. Some of them clean,
some of them are nannies, you know, some of them
come in as painters. And it has always sad in

(40:24):
me when I see the employer tried to get the
cheapest labor possible, not honoring the dignity of the person
before them. There is one woman that I know who's
been very hard working in this country for many, many years,
and she worked for she doesn't speak English perfectly, but
she's a brilliant woman. And she worked for a doctor

(40:49):
who paid her maybe eight dollars an hour to watch
his kids in clean her house. And he would only
pay her every few months, and really exploited her because
of her language barrier when the quality of her work
was excellent, and so I mentored her, and I told
her that for her incredible way of cleaning and her

(41:10):
ability to take care of the elderly and the young,
that she should never charge less than twenty dollars an hour,
at least in Indiana. She could charge more in another place, right,
But I helped her find jobs that were worthy of
her work. And when she has come to help me
in my house, even though I struggle sometimes financially, I

(41:31):
would never pay her less than that because that's a
just living wage, right for what she's doing. So as
an employer, you have to make sure that you're always
giving a just wage.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
It's easy to see a just wage being given to
those who are very educated, those who are maybe well known,
those who are beautiful, those who seem successful, right, those
who are popular. But often it's the poor who are exploited,
and we need to fight against that too. Scripture and work.

(42:12):
Scripture speaks a lot about the importance of work and
the value of work and how we are deceive work.
And I'm just going to read some of these Genesis
to the Lord God took man put him in the
garden of Eden to work it and keep it. It's
God's will that we work. But how we're called to
offer everything we do for the glory of God, absolutely everything.

(42:39):
Colossians three says, whatever you do in word or deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks to God the Father through him. Do you have
a cheerful spirit as you work? If you don't, then
start singing as you scrub those floors, or like say,
it's the end of a long day and somebody brings

(42:59):
you one one more thing to your desk to do.
Do you complain, do you gripe? Do you bad mouth?
Or do you say? Thank you Jesus for the gift
of the sacrifice? Help me to do it well for
your glory. And if it be your will that I
go home and rest, have them tell me I can
do it tomorrow right, but to offer it over to him.
But do it enjoy and in thanksgiving for the glory

(43:21):
of God. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the
Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord
you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are
serving the Lord Christ. From one Corinthians. So whether you
eat or drink, whatever you do, do all for the

(43:42):
glory of God. Let all that you do be done
in love. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable,
always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that
in the Lord your labor is not in vain. What
if you pour yourself into a project or work and

(44:02):
it feels like a failure. If you're offering it as
a prayer, If you're offering the toil as a sacrifice
in union with the Cross, it's not pointless.

Speaker 6 (44:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
The Desert Fathers used to give, you know, work to
some of the monks, and they would say, go take
those rocks and move them over there. And then they'd
say take the rocks and put them back again. It
seems pointless, But when they did it in obedience, as
an act of love offered to the Father, it saved
souls in China. So when you offer things up, that's

(44:37):
all that matters. When I was in South Africa, i
helped in a hospital and I was working with these
medically fragile children, but I was also helping the Sisters
organizings and they got these huge donations of baby clothes.
The sister said, will you help me with it? I
said sure. She said, I want you to organize them
by size, so I did. Then she came in she said,
I changed my mind. Can you order or organize them

(45:00):
by color or something? And then you came in and
changed your mind. Can you organize it by gender and
clothed type? And like she kept changing it, and it
was like I'd finish it just to have to redo it.
That bore work. In the salvation of the souls of
the children, I served because I embraced it with love

(45:22):
and prayer. Right in John six, Christ himself says, do
not work for the food that perishes, but for the
food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of
Man will give to you. Do not offer your work
simply to receive a wage to go by earthly food,

(45:44):
right to go to the newest restaurant, to see the
newest movie, or to get the nicest phone. Work so
that the Lord may bless you in heaven. And two Timothy,
it says, do your best to present yourself to God
as one approved a worker who has no need to

(46:04):
be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. In Hebrews
it says, for God is not unjust so as to
overlook your work and the love that you have shown
for His name in serving the saints, as you still do.
What if you Sometimes I've worked for employers who completely
do not understand or appreciate the great sacrifices that I

(46:27):
make above and beyond the job description to help them. Right,
instead of being disappointed, I know God sees it, and
God will reward me. One Thessalonians aspire to live quietly,
to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands,
as we instructed you. What if God gives you the

(46:50):
job of a movie star, to be really popular, to
tell people about yourself and your successes and all of that.
There could be an element of holiness in that, Right
if you're glorifying God preaching him to an audience that
wouldn't know him. But it shouldn't excuse you from being
a man of the towel and the water. As Catherine

(47:12):
Daherty would say, right, are you willing to use your
own hands to serve the poor?

Speaker 6 (47:16):
Too?

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Right? You should never say that work is beneath me.
And as a test, you take a Saturday morning and
go down and dress the wounds that the leper colony
run by Mother Teresa.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
Second, Thessalonians, for even when we were with you, we
would give you this command. If someone is not willing
to work, they shouldn't eat, for we hear that some
among you walk in idleness. God sees idleness is wrong.
Not busy at work or as busybodies. What about people

(47:55):
who pretend like they're doing a lot, but all they're
doing is is something for show. Right, they're not serving
the Lord with humble service and concrete you know action.
Such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus
Christ to do their work quietly and earn their own living. Right, Philippians,

(48:20):
do all things without grumbling or disputing. That you may
be blameless and innocent children of God, without blemish, in
the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom
you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to
the word of life, so that in the day of Christ,
I may be proud that I did not run in labor,

(48:42):
run in vain, or labor in vain. And we have
to trust that when the Lord entrusts a work to us,
that all he wants us to do is our best
to accept that work, to give all of our effort
and and trust it back to him, and it will
bear fruit. Not because of us. None of us is
really able to bear great fruit on earth. Right, Christ

(49:05):
himself said without me, you can do nothing. He didn't
say you can't do very much. He said you could
do nothing. But with God, all things are possible. And
the Lord will bear fruit in you when you accept
the work you do as from him, and you just
offer him back up everything that you can do. Proverb

(49:25):
sixteen says, commit your work to the Lord, and your
plans will be established. Psalm one twenty seven. Unless the
Lord built the house, they labor in vain? Who build?
Unless the Lord guard the city in vain? Does the
guard keep watch? In Ecclesiastics, it says, I perceive that

(49:48):
there is nothing better for them than to be joyful
and do good as long as they live. Also that
everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all
his toil. This is God's gift to man. We should
be joyful, we should be grateful, and we should take

(50:09):
pleasure in our toil and then in the results of it.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Psal ninety says, let the favor of the Lord our
God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands.
Establish the work of our hands. Our work is something
that we do in the Lord and with the Lord,
and for the Lord. Ephesian's four says, let the thief
no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest

(50:38):
work with his own hands, so he may have something
to share with others in need. And second Thessalonians three says,
for even when we were with you, we would give
you this command. If anyone is not willing to work,
let him not eat. Right, He didn't just say, May

(51:00):
you know, the poor should work so they could eat,
but the rich they don't have to work. No, your
work might look differently, but God does not want anyone
to be lazy. And in order to not be lazy,
your work must glorify Him and serve others, like we
talked about at the beginning, especially having a preference for

(51:20):
the poor. The early church fathers had some beautiful things
to say on work. Saint Clement of Rome said, what
then shall we do, brothers, Shall we slacken from doing
good and abandoned charity. May the Lord never allow this

(51:41):
to happen to us. Let us be diligent to accomplish
every good work with earnestness and zeal, for the Creator
and the Lord of the universe himself takes joy in
his work. For in his overwhelming might he has set
up the heavens by his uncertainable wisdom, He's put them

(52:01):
in order. He separated the earth from the surrounding water
and placed it on the solid foundation of his own will.
He has called into existence the animals that move in
it by his own arrangement. Having prepared the seas and
living creatures that are in it, he enclosed them by
his own power. Overall, with his holy, impure hands, he

(52:25):
formed man, the most excellent and greatest and intelligence, with
the stamp of his own image. For God spoke, thus,
let us make man according to our image and likeness.
And God made man male and female. He made them.
Having finished all these sinks, he praised and blessed them,
and said, increase and multiply. Let us consider that all

(52:49):
the saints have been adorned with good works. The Lord himself,
adorning himself with good works, rejoiced holding to this pattern.
Let us follow out his will without hesitation. Let us
do the work of justice with all of our strength.
You might ask what kind of work does God want

(53:12):
me to do? Well? There may be manual labor that
you're called to do to provide for your family, right
for your bills, or things like that, But all of
us are called to the corporal works of mercy, feeding
the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty,
visiting the imprisoned, caring for the sick, right bearing the dead.

(53:36):
These are all very concrete things that you can do
as an act of love, right, regardless of how much
money you have or don't need. Again, Saint Clement says,
the good laborer receives the bread of his labor with confidence,
and the lazy and careless one does not look his

(53:56):
employer in the face. We must therefore be zealous in
doing good, for all things are from God, and we're
all going to have to look God in the face someday.
Right from the Epistle of Barnabas, it's written, remember the
day of Judgment, day and night. Seek each day the

(54:17):
company of the saints, either laboring by speech, going out
to exhort, striving to save souls by the word, or
working with your hands for the ransom of your sins.
Saint Basil, the great also wrote about the holiness of work.
It is therefore immediately obvious that we must toil with diligence,

(54:40):
and not think that our goal of piety offers an
escape from work or a pretext for idleness, but occasion
instead for struggle, for even greater endeavor and patience and tribulation,
so that we may be able to say, in labor
and painfulness, in much watching and hung and thirst, not

(55:01):
only is such exertion beneficial for bringing the body into subjection,
but also for showing charity to our neighbor and order
that threw us. God may grant sufficiency to the weak
among our brethren, according to the example given by the
Apostle and the Acts, when he says, I have shown
you all things, how that so laboring among you ought

(55:24):
to support the weak, and again that you have something
to give him that suffers need. Thus may weep sorry,
Thus may be accounted worthy to hear the words, Come, ye,
blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you
by the firmnation of the world. For I was hungry,

(55:45):
and you gave me to eat. And I was thirsty,
and you gave me to drink. Thus, in the midst
of our work, can we fulfill the duty of prayer,
giving thanks to Him who is granted strength to our
hands for performing our tasks, and cleverness to our minds
for acquiring knowledge, and for having provided the materials for
that which is the instruments we use, and that which

(56:08):
forms the matter of the art in which we may
be engaged, Praying that the work of our hands may
be directed toward the goal the good pleasure of God.
Thus we acquire a recollected spirit when in every action
we beg God for the success of our labors and
satisfy our debt of gratitude to Him who gave us

(56:29):
the power to work, And when, as has been said,
we keep before our minds the aim of pleasing Him.
What if you're sick, What if your body doesn't work anymore,
you're not able to do physical labor. There's many things
that you could do as spiritual works of mercy.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
You can comfort the sorrowing, You can pray for those
who are downtrodden, you can correct the sinner. There's so
much that you can do offering just the suffering of
your body as your work. As you lay in bed,
ravaged with cancer. It's a beautiful work, but to offer

(57:12):
that in union with Christ? Saint John Christostom says, a
servant performs all he does for the pleasure of his master,
and seeks for nothing more than his approving glance. He
does not draw the eyes of others to his work,
even if those others are great, but regards only one thing,

(57:32):
how the Master regards his work. Is it not strange, then,
that we, who have such a master seek for another audience, who,
by their gazing, can give us no aid, but instead
harm us and rob us of our merit and toil.
Why do we seek through our work to glorify and
to please anyone but God? If God sees what we're

(57:54):
doing for him, it's all that matters. Does it matter
if the world sees, or knows, or approves or understands.
Saint John Christostam also said, who, whensoever you see one
driving nails, smiting with a hammer covered with soot, do
not hold him cheap, but rather, for that reason, admire

(58:16):
him because of his work. Since even Peter girded himself
and handled the dragnet and went fishing. After the resurrection
of the Lord, the apostles worked by fishing Paul worked
as a tent maker. Were all called to do something
physical for the lord. Saint Augustine was asked to write

(58:38):
this book. This treatise called The Work of Monks. There
was an argument about those who live on divine providence
and whether they should work or just accept alms, and
his take was that it's not wrong to accept alms,
but it doesn't mean that you're lazy.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Prayer itself can be work. Right. You can pray the
liturgy of the hours, and maybe you depend on the
goodness of others to give you physical money. But you
also have to use your own hands to prepare meals,
to clean the home where you are to serve the poor. Right,
Saint Augustine says this much. I know that he was

(59:18):
neither a thief or a robber, neither a cheerioteer or
a hunter, neither an actor or a gambler, but that
innocently and honorably he performed such labors as are suitable
for human occupation, such as the work of carpenters, builders, shoemakers, farmers,
and similar trades. Respectability does not belittle what is scorned

(59:42):
by those who desire to be called honorable, but do
not wish to be so. Hence the Apostle Paul would
not refuse to perform any rustic labor, or to engage
in any workman's craft. Whatever work men perform without guilt
and tricker is good. That's what Saint Augustine says. He

(01:00:04):
also adds what therefore hinders the servant of God from
meditating on the law of God and from singing the
name of the Lord most High while he performs manual labor,
provided that he, if time set aside also for learning
the Psalms, he is late to sing from memory for

(01:00:25):
this purpose. Those good works of the faithful ought not
to be found deficient in furnishing the necessities of life,
so that at the time when the mind is free
for study, and when as a result, corporal works cannot
be performed, the monk may not be hampered by need. Moreover,
do not those who say they refrain from work for

(01:00:48):
the purpose of reading find in that reading what the
apostle directs? What kind of pervasity is it, then, to
be unwilling to obey the works One wishes to be
a leap, to be a leisure to read, and in
order that what is good be read for a longer period,
but does not wish to do what they read. For

(01:01:10):
who does not know that when one reads a good book,
he advances more quickly in appropriation as he puts into
practice what he reads. What he's saying is what good
is it to read? That you should work? If you're
not working, so you should take a time for spiritual reading,
take a time for spiritual prayer, but offer your work,
which is also necessary as a prayer with the Lord.

(01:01:34):
And lastly, Saint Simon the New Theologian says, but since
the mind is something that is in constant motion and
incapable of total inactivity, it's necessary that it should be
concerned with and eager to practice the commandments of God.
So the whole life of men is filled with care

(01:01:55):
and concern, and cannot be wholly at leisure, even if
many have striven to achieve it, though it is beyond
their ability and power.

Speaker 6 (01:02:04):
But in the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Beginning man was created with such a nature. For in
Paradise Adam was enjoined to till the ground and care
for it. And there is in us a natural bent
for work, the movement toward the good. Those who yield
themselves to idleness and apathy, even though they may be
spiritual and holy, hurl themselves into unnatural subjection to the passions.

(01:02:30):
Say that you're trying to be spiritual and holy, but
you refuse to work, you will quickly fall into the
sins of the passions, and pride will overtake you. And
all of the saints tell you that without humility, all
the other virtues mean nothing. You have to have that
foundation of humility. And here we have the teaching of

(01:02:53):
some of the saints on work. Pope Leo the thirteenth
wrote a beautiful and cyclical called Realum Navarum, and there
he wrote, it's all on human work right, the dignity
of human work. And he wrote, as for those who
possess not the gift of fortune, that there is nothing

(01:03:16):
to be ashamed of in earning their bread by labor.
This is enforced by what we see in Christ himself, who,
being the son of God and God himself, did not
disdain to spend a great part of his life as
a carpenter himself. And Paul six, who was also a saint,

(01:03:37):
first pointed out the profound casual link between the act
of work and its effect upon the value of human development.
In Gaudium at spess he wrote, for when a man works,
he not only alters things and society, he develops himself
as well. He learns much he called cultivates his resources.

(01:04:02):
He goes outside himself and beyond himself. Rightly understood, this
kind of growth is of greater value than any external
riches which can be garnered from it. A man is
more precious for what he is than for what he has.
And Pope Saint John Paul, the Second Christ, while being God,

(01:04:29):
became like us in all things, devoted most of the
years of his life on earth to manual labor at
the carpenter's bench. This circumstance constitutes in itself the most
eloquent gospel of work. Oh I read this already showing
that the basis for determining the value of human work
is not primarily the kind of work being done, but

(01:04:52):
the fact that the one who's doing it is a person. Right.
Work is a good thing for man, a good thing
for his humanity, because through work, man not only transforms nature,
adapting it to his own needs, be also achieves fulfillment
as a human being. Indeed, in a sense, he becomes

(01:05:13):
more a human being without this consideration, it's impossible to
understand the meaning of the virtue of industriousness, and more particularly,
it's impossible to understand why industriousness should be a virtue,
For virtue is a moral habit and is something whereby

(01:05:33):
man becomes good as man. This fact in no way
alters our justifiable anxiety that in work, whereby matter gains ignobility,
man himself should not experience a lowering of his own dignity.
Just if, like say, you're creating something beautiful, that material

(01:05:56):
becomes more and more beautiful, it should never be at
the expense of man. Right. It's why the sweatshops over
in Asia are wrong. They may provide a beautiful sweater
for you at a very cheap price, but it's at
the cost of their own human dignity. Right. So work
is important as long as this serves man. Right. Again,

(01:06:21):
it's well known that it is possible to use work
in various ways against men. That it's possible to punish
man with a system of forced labor and concentration camps,
That work can be made into a means for a
pressing man. That in various ways it is possible to
exploit human labor, that is to say, the worker, even

(01:06:42):
in those situations of slaves of Saint Vincent de Paul
when he was captured as a slave by pirates, or
in more modern times feather Walter Chiswick in his book
He leadeth Me speaks about his work in the concentration camps.
And I study the victim saints of the concentration camps

(01:07:04):
all the time. They were free from the oppression of
work because they found freedom in God, and they did
the work imposed on them by the Nazis, by the Russians,
for the glory of God, and not for the Nazis themselves.
And so that which was oppressive found in new dignity.

(01:07:26):
I'm going to read an excerpt at the very end
from Father Chiswick Pope John Paul. The second continues, work
constitutes a foundation for the formation of family life, which
is a natural right and something man is called to.
In a way, work is a condition for making it
possible to found a family in the superior vision of work.

(01:07:53):
In the superior vision, work is a punishment and at
the same time a reward of human activity. It involves
another relationship, the essentially religious one, which has been happily
expressed in the Benedictine formula aura at labora, the religious
fact confers on human work and enlivening and redeeming spirituality.

(01:08:17):
Such a connection between work and religion reflects the mysterious
but real alliance which intervenes between human action and the
providential action of God and inkyritas en veritat. Pope Benedict
the sixteenth clearly outlines seven defining principles of what decent

(01:08:40):
work is. Pope Benedict the sixteenth send decent work One
expresses one's essential dignity. Two is freely chosen if you're
being forced into some kind of a job. If you
don't feel free to come and to go, then it's
no longer something honorable by the Lord. Three It enables

(01:09:02):
respect and freedom from discrimination.

Speaker 4 (01:09:05):
Four.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
It allows families to meet their needs and provide for
their children's education. Five It permits free organization of workers.
Six It leaves enough room for rediscovering one's roots at
a personal, familial, and spiritual level. Seven. It guarantees retirees

(01:09:27):
a decent standard of living. My retirement is left to
the Lord, but Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa, she
spoke on the dignity of work. Here she tirelessly labored
until the very end of her life, doing extreme always
choosing the most difficult or disgusting manual labor for herself.

(01:09:51):
Once somebody walked into an airport bathroom and saw her
cleaning a toilet, and they asked her, and she said,
I'm doing it for the love of God, for the
next person that uses this dirty toilet. Right, she said,
never do the work carelessly because you wish to hide
your gifts. Remember this work that we do in the
world is his, is God's. You are his coworker. Therefore

(01:10:16):
he depends on you for your special work. Do the
work with him, and the work will be done for him.
The talents that God has given you are not yours.
They have been given to you for your use for
the glory of God. There can be no half measures
in the work that you're called to do. Saint Benedict

(01:10:38):
said idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the
brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain
times and at others. In devout reading, Saint John Boscow
said work is a powerful weapon against the enemy of
the soul, and he believed one's work should be offered
as a sacrifice to God. He said, daily work, regardless,

(01:11:01):
regularly and conscientiously performed, is a sure stepping stone to sanctity.
Saint Jeanna barretta Mola said, everyone works in the service
of man. We doctors work directly on man himself. The
great mystery of man is Jesus. He who visits a

(01:11:22):
sick person helps me. Jesus said, just as this priest
can touch Jesus, so do we doctors touch Jesus. In
the bodies of our patients. We have opportunities to do
good that the priest doesn't have. Our mission is not
finished with. Medicines are no longer of use. We must

(01:11:44):
bring the soul to God. Our word is some authority.
Catholic doctors are necessary. Saint ELIZABETHI and Stan also says,
the first end I propose in our daily work is
to do the will of God. What is the work
Christ is calling you to do? If you know something
is as will, then that burden will be light and

(01:12:07):
He will give you the strength to do it well
and faithfully. Saint elizabethan Seton says, secondly, do work in
the manner that He wills it. And thirdly, do it
because he wills it. Saint Ambrose says, every worker is
the hand of Christ that continues to create and do good.

(01:12:29):
Saint John of the Cross speaks about the great power
of one act of work done with pure love. He says,
God is more pleased by one work, one act, however small,
done secretly without desire that it be known, than a
thousand acts done with the desire that people know of them.

(01:12:53):
Those who work for God with purest love not only
care nothing about whether others see their work, but they
do not even seek that God himself know about them.
Such persons would not cease to render God the same
services with the same joy and purity of love, even
if God himself were never to know of it. Mother

(01:13:16):
Teresa says, in this life we cannot do great things.
We can only do small things with great love. We're
called to fill up our workday with great love. Without love, deeds,
even the most brilliant count as nothing. That's Saint terrez
of lsu So without love, even brilliant works mean nothing.

(01:13:38):
You can own a multimillion dollar company, but if you
do not have love right then it means nothing. Saint
Angela Maurici says, do not lose heart. Even if you
should discover that you lack qualities necessary for the work
to which you're called. He who called you will not
desert you. But the moment you're in need, he will

(01:13:59):
stretch out his hand when you do the work that
you do for his glory, because He's asked of it.
God himself provides you what you need in order to
succeed in that work for him. Saint jose Maria Screeva,
the founder of Opus Stay, wrote much about the importance

(01:14:20):
and the dignity and the sanctity of work. He said,
before God, no occupation is in itself great or small.
Everything acquires value of the love with which it's done, right,
the love with which it's done. He also says, let
me stress this point. It's in the simplicity of your

(01:14:41):
ordinary work, in the monotonous details of every day, that
you have to find the secret which is hidden from
so many, of something great and new love. He also said,
work is part and parcel of man's life on earth.
It involves fe weariness, exhaustion, signs of the suffering and

(01:15:04):
struggle which accompany human existence, and which point to the
reality of sin and the need for redemption. But in itself.
Work is not a penalty or a curse or a punishment.
It's a gift from God. It makes no sense to
classify men differently according to their occupation, as if some
jobs are nobler than others. Work, all work bears witness

(01:15:29):
to the dignity of man, to his dominion over creation.
It's an opportunity to develop one's personality. It's a bond
of union with others, the way to support one's family,
a means of aiding in the improvement of the society
in which we live, and in the progress of all humanity.

(01:15:51):
He said, this is Jose Maria Skrieva. Your ordinary contact
with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings,
your work, and your affections are there, you will have
your daily encounter with Christ. It's in the midst of
the most material things of earth that we must sanctify ourselves,

(01:16:12):
serving God and all of mankind. Let me stress this point.
It's in the simplicity of your ordinary work, in the
monotonous details of every day, that you have to find
the secret which is hidden from so many. That is
the gift of love. When you bring order into your life,

(01:16:34):
your time will multiply, then you'll be able to give
God more glory by working more in his service. He said,
it is no good offering to God something that is
less perfect than our poor human limitations permit. The work
that we offer must be without blemish, and must be

(01:16:54):
done as carefully as possible, even in its smallest details.
For God, God will not accept shoddy workmanship, because it
would not be worthy of Him. For that reason, the
work of each one of us, the activities that take
up our time and energy, must be an offering worthy
of our creator. It must be an operazzio day, a

(01:17:19):
work of God that is done for God. In short,
a task that is complete and faultless. He said, you
really do need to make an effort and put your
shoulders to the wheel. For all that, you should put
your professional interests in their place. They are only a
means to an end. They should never be regarded in

(01:17:42):
any way as if they were a basic thing. Saint
jose Maria Screeva said, I beg you don't ever lose
a supernatural point of view. Correct your intention as the
course of a ship is corrected on the high seas
by looking at the star, looking at Mary. Then you'll
always be sure of reaching the harbor. He's saying. Keep

(01:18:05):
first things first, do your work for the glory of God.
By doing your daily work well and responsibly, not only
will you be supporting yourselves financially, you'll be contributing directly
to the development of society. You'll be relieving the burdens
of others and supporting local and international welfare projects for

(01:18:26):
the less privileged in individuals and countries. And when you
have finished your work, do your brothers help him for
Christ's sake, so tactfully and so naturally that no one,
not even He, will realize that you're doing more than
what injustice you ought. That indeed is virtue befitting a

(01:18:49):
son of God. And lastly, professional work is also an apostolate,
an opportunity to give ourselves to others, to reveal Christ
to them, and to lead them to God the Father.

(01:19:10):
I want to add here before I read this last
excerpt from Walter Chisik, some spiritual principles. How do you
practically offer your work every day to the Lord? How
do you make it holy? One is a daily offering?
Say it every day, Oh Jesus, in union with your
most precious blood poured out on the cross and offered

(01:19:31):
in every mass. I offer you today my prayers, works, joy, sorrows,
and sufferings, in praise of your Holy Name, for all
the desires of your sacred heart, in reparation for sin,
for the conversion of sinners, for the union of all Christians,
for all of the needs and intentions of my heart,
and for our final union with You in Heaven. Secondly,

(01:19:54):
offer every movement as worship. When I exercise, I offer
every step, every swing of my arm as a gift
to God as a prayer. Sometimes in the morning, if
I have a dire intention, I'll say every blink of
my eye today, every beat of my heart, every breath,

(01:20:17):
everything that I am doing, every word I speak, I
offer for this intention, this intention, for your glory. Right Lord,
be glorified in what I look at and every glance
and everything I hear, and everything that I speak, and everything.

Speaker 6 (01:20:33):
That I do.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
And we find this in Scripture Romans twelve. I'm sorry,
Romans one one to two. I urge you, therefore, brothers,
by the mercies of God, offer your body as a
living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God your spiritual worship.
Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed

(01:20:59):
by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern
what is the will of God, what is good and
pleasing and perfect. Offer your bodies as the ember to
burn with the fire of charity, and everything you do.
Only then will you have a fragrant aroma of Christ's
presence in the midst of the world. And if you

(01:21:19):
don't know how to do this, well, offer yourself to Mary,
to Joseph the Worker, ask them to present you to Christ,
my Queen and my mother. I give myself to you
in order to show my devotion to you. I offer
to you this day my eyes, my ears, my mouth,
my heart, my hands, my feet, right my entire self

(01:21:40):
without reserve. We're for good, Mother, as I am my own,
Keep me and guard me as a property. I'm sorry
my alarm went off here at the very end, I
want to read an excerpt from Walter Chiswick, who was
captured by the Russians and who suffered in the Nazi

(01:22:01):
concentration camp, and he wrote a chapter in his book
He leadeth Me on work. He said, I had plenty
of chance to reflect on the nature of work and
the reasons for work during my years in the prison
camps of Siberia, whether it was work on the docks
or in the mines, work out in the unsheltered frozen tundra,

(01:22:22):
building a new prison camp from scratch, or work on
the construction of new plants to meet the Soviet government's
five year industrialization quotas for the Far North. We worked
because we had to work in order to eat, to live,
and to survive. Like slaves. Right to work was the

(01:22:45):
purpose of our having been deported to these camps. There
was no other reason for our existence. There were millions
of us, and it did not really matter to those
in charge of the camps who lived and who died.
They could not be bothered eating unproductive mouths. We had
been sentenced as enemies of the state. If our work

(01:23:06):
helped to build up the state, it might be considered reparation,
as we would eventually be freed. If not, then good riddance.
Work was surely a curse under these conditions. The prisoners
hated work, and hated the officials who made them work,
and they hated the government that had condemned them to

(01:23:26):
these cruel occupations. Only the fact that they had to
work to get enough food to live on to survive
made them report dumbly and mechanically each morning for the
labor brigades and march off across the Arctic wastes, arms
locked behind their backs to face another stay quota of work.

(01:23:48):
The urge to survive was what made them do it.
The thought of survival was all they had to live
for and all that they lived by. They did as
much work as they had to in order to survive,
and avoided as much work as they could possibly avoid
and still manage to survive. The work was not important,

(01:24:09):
but the food was, and even the food was important
only because without it man could not survive for long.
What was important was to get through the day, and
at the end of each work shift a man counted
the remaining days of his long term and thank god
that one more day had passed. There was nothing ennobling
about work in the slave labor camps, except for the

(01:24:33):
need to work enough to get enough food to survive.
The individual prisoner felt no sense of purpose in the work,
experienced no sense of accomplishment. He did not share in
the official desire to industrialize the far North, to sets
to set new records of Soviet achievement, to tame the

(01:24:54):
wilderness and tap the wealth of natural resources that lie
far beneath the frozen and Siberian tundra. In fact, the
men in the labor camp took certain delight in being
able to sabotage the work whenever they could, And even
if the brigaders watched them closely, even if they were
forced to fulfill a certain quota of work in order

(01:25:16):
to eat, they still did their best to make sure
the work was sloppily done. Far from taking any pride
in their work, they found in it a way to
revenge themselves on those who had set them to do it.
And how did Father Chiswick find holiness in this?

Speaker 5 (01:25:36):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
I came, during all those years to no work at
its worst, at its most brutal, its most degrading, its
most dehumanizing worst. And I reflected a lot about it.
As I said, I thought a lot about it, and
I prayed much over it. What was work to me
during those years? If not a punishment, if not a curse?

(01:25:59):
Truly in the sweat of my brow did I eat
my bread and little enough bread at that? What was
there ennobling about my work? How is his work holy?
I didn't even have the satisfaction a father and mother
can feel worn out by work as they maybe and
having provided food and a little bit of comfort for

(01:26:22):
their family. I couldn't feel the sense of challenge, of
self sacrifice, of patriotism that a Soviet citizen might feel
who had volunteered to work for a year or two
in the Virgin Lands, leaving behind a family and all
that was dear to him to travel to the Arctic
in order to help build a factory, open a new mine,

(01:26:44):
or complete a housing project. And even my work itself
offered little in which I could take pride or satisfaction.
It was the lowest, commonest, roughest labor, requiring no skill
or thought, just a strong and a weak mind, as
we used to say. And yet I did take pride

(01:27:05):
in it. I did each job the best I could.
I worked to the limit of my strength each day,
and did as much as my health and endurance under
the circumstances made possible. Why. Because I saw this work
as the will of God for me. I didn't build
a new city in Siberia because Joseph Stalin or Nikita

(01:27:27):
Khrushchev wanted it, but because God wanted it. The labor
I did was not a punishment, but a way of
working out my salvation in fear and trembling. He transformed
it by the theology of work, and he changed his perspection, perspective,
and his intention, and it gave his work divine meaning.

(01:27:51):
Work was not a curse, even the brutish grunt work
that I was doing. But I saw it as a
way to God, perhaps even a way to help others
to God. I could not therefore look upon this work
as degrading. It was ennobling, for it came to me
from the hand of God himself. I saw it as
God's will for me. My feller prisoners, of course, were

(01:28:14):
quick to ask me if I was crazy. They could
understand a man working to overfill a quota if that
meant more food, but not out of a sense of
pride or accomplishment. My strength and limited endurance after years
in prison rarely made it possible for me to do
much more than make my daily quota, not overfill it,

(01:28:36):
so that they could not understand why I drove myself
so hard and did my best each day. They asked
me how I could possibly cooperate with the wishes of
the government. Why I always did my best instead of
sabotaging the work, How I could help to build a
new society for the communists who rejected God and despised
everything I stood for. Christian prisoners indeed even asked me

(01:29:00):
if it was not sinful to cooperate with, or at
least give the appearance of cooperating with, communism. I tried
to explain that the pride I took in my work
differed from the pride a communist might take in building
up the new society. The difference lay in the motivation.
As a Christian I could share in their concern for

(01:29:21):
building a better world. I could work as hard as
they for the common good. The people who would benefit
from my labor would be just that people, human beings,
families in need of shelter against the arctic weather of Norilsk,
or people in far off places elsewhere who would have
a better life because of natural resources I had helped

(01:29:43):
to liberate from the frozen earth, or because of materials
which the factories I helped build would someday produce. I
could justify therefore my cooperation in this work for the
good of all mankind. If it came to that, it
differed little in that receipt from any work any man
anywhere might undertake. But there was more to it than that.

(01:30:06):
There was a realization that the work of itself is
not a curse, but a sharing in God's own work
of creation, a redemptive and redeeming act, noble of itself
and worthy of the best in man, even as it
was worthy of God himself. There was a tremendous truth
contained in the realization that when God became man, he

(01:30:28):
became a working man, not a king, a chieftain, not
a warrior or statesman, or a great leader of nations,
as some had thought the Messiah would be. The Gospels
show us Christs, the teacher, the healer, the wonder worker.
But these activities of his public life were the work
of three short years. For all the rest of time

(01:30:50):
of his life on earth, God was a village carpenter,
the son of a carpenter. He did not fashion benches
or tables or bends, or roof beams or plowbeams by
means of miracles, but by a hammer and saw, acts
and ade. He worked long hours to help his father,
and then became the support of his widowed mother by

(01:31:12):
the rough work of a hill country craftsman. Nothing he
worked on as far as we know, as ever it
set any fashions or become a collector's item. He worked
in a shop every day, week in, week out, for
some twenty years. He did the work all of us
have to do in our lifetime. There was nothing spectacular

(01:31:33):
about it. There was much of the routine about it.
Perhaps much of it was boring. There was little we
can say about the jobs we do or have done
that could not be said of the work God himself
did when he became man. Yet he did not think
it demeaning, beneath his dignity, dehumanizing. If anything, he restored
to man's work its original dignity, its essential function as

(01:31:57):
a sharing God's creative act. Once again, God worked, and
on the seventh day he rested for our Lord. Though
it was not merely a symbolic action like that of
the politician who sweeps one section of a sidewalk to
launch a clean up campaign or turns the first spadeful
of earth on a groundbreaking ceremony. He worked day in

(01:32:20):
and day out for some twenty years to set us
an example, to show us that these routine chores, too,
are not beneath man's dignity, or even God's dignity, that
simple household tasks and repetitious work of the wage earner
are not necessary evils, but noble, redemptive works worthy of

(01:32:40):
God himself. Work cannot be a curse if God himself
undertook it. To eat one's bread with the sweat of
one's brow is to do nothing more or less than
Christ himself did. And he did it for a reason.
He did it for years on end. He did it
for more than three quarters of his life on earth,

(01:33:00):
to convince us that God is not asked of us
anything more tedious, tiring and routine, more humdrum, more unspectacular
than God himself has done. He did it to make
it plain that the plainest and dullest of jobs is,
or at any rate, can be, if viewed properly in
respect to God, into eternity, a sharing and divine work

(01:33:24):
of creation and redemption, a daily opportunity to cooperate with
God in the central acts of his covenant of salvation.
For me, as a priest, the thought of Christ the carpenter,
Christ's the working man was motivation enough I could work
again as a priest now in the camps. But that
was not the only work God had sent me to do.

(01:33:47):
I have given you an example, he said to his
disciples at the Last Supper, that is, I have ministered
to you, so you also com minister to another. And
Christ did that by washing feet. Did not consist solely
in teaching, healing, administering the sacraments, no more than his
life on earth had consisted only of those three years

(01:34:09):
of public life. I was set here in the midst
of a labor camp to work as he might have
worked if he had been here, to set the example
of work he would have said if he were in
my place, For I was Christ in this prison camp,
and part of my teaching had to be that work.
All work, any work has a value in itself. It

(01:34:31):
is a value in so far as it partakes in
the creative act of God. It is value in so
far as it partakes of God's redemptive acts. It is
value in itself and a value for others. Though through
it I worked out not only my own salvation by
accepting the situations of each day from the hand of

(01:34:54):
God and laboring so I might offer them back to
Him somehow improved by my efforts. But also for the
salvation of others, at least by the example I could
set for them. Beyond that, I could offer up my
labor's hardships as a redemptive act for others, and as
a means of reparation and atonement for my own past

(01:35:16):
failings as well as theirs. In the cruel circumstances of
the labor camps, where men had lost all sense and
understanding of the dignity of work, I as a priest,
had to serve as another Christ by the way I
went about my work, every day, every hour, to the
best of my ability, and the last ounce of my strength.

(01:35:38):
I had to try to demonstrate again in the wind
and the snow and the wilderness of Siberia, what Christ
had demonstrated through twenty years of carpentry at Nazareth, that
work is not a curse but a gift of God,
the very same gift He gave to the first man,
Adam when he created him in his own image and

(01:35:59):
put him in the garden of Eden, to till it
and keep it as a steward of the Lord. Glory
be to the Father and to the Son and to
the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is known,
ever shall be world without it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Hello, God's beloved. I'm Annabel Moseley, author, professor of theology,
and host of then Sings, My Soul and Destination Sainthood
on WCAT Radio. I invite you to listen in and
find inspiration along this sacred journey. We're traveling together to
make our lives a masterpiece and with God's grace, become saints.

(01:36:48):
Join me Annabel Moseley for then Sings, My Soul and
Destination Sainthood on WCAT Radio. God bless you. Remember you're
never alone. God is always my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:37:07):
Thank you for listening to a production of w c
AT Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
Please join us in our mission of evangelization, and don't
forget Love lifts up where knowledge takes flight.