Our work forms us. It strengthens our character and cultivates our integrity. It deepens our love and gratitude for all that we receive from the grace of God.
In my past vocation as a high-school English teacher, I helped students with their college essays and applications. I loved this part of the job. It transported me back to the time when I charted out my own course through life. It’s a terrifying and exhilarating moment, filled with limitless possibility.
I always tried to impress upon them the gravity of the decisions they were about to make, especially about the choice of a major course of study, which should, at least in theory, prepare them for a future career.
Now, of course, what you do for a living isn’t of ultimate concern. God can sanctify any form of work, he can sanctify us through our work, and he can enable us to sanctify others through our work. And if we end up doing something that is not our preference — such as cleaning fancy hotel rooms instead of staying in them while on glamorous business trips — our acceptance of our circumstances can be a great occasion for sanctification and closeness to God.
Nonetheless, the decision of what to do with one’s life is not trivial. The average person spends approximately 90,000 hours, which is most of their waking life, at work. In many ways, what we do for our work molds the shape of our lives. And God made it this way. He wants us to participate in earning our bread, for as St. Paul wrote in his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, “If anyone will not work, let him not eat” (3:10).
I felt a twinge of sadness each time I’ve conveyed this to a student. My heart would twist at the perceived injustice of being dominated by the continuous need to work.
It still does.
I wish I could spend every waking moment building block towers with my son and dancing in the kitchen with my wife. Sometimes I wish I could toss everything aside and hop on a train: destination anywhere.
I wish I could pray the Mass three times per day; I wish I could lower myself into the fabric of space and time the moment the Eucharist hits my tongue and stay there until I feel like coming back to the surface.
At times, I wish I could do only a little work, just enough to keep me busy when I need it — or that I could be a heroic litigator one day, a strong-armed shortstop the next.
Like many, I get fleeting glimpses of comprehension about God’s design for human work. There are moments when the veil lifts — such as when a student’s eyes flash with comprehension or when I’m able to arrange the words of a meaningful sentence just so.
In those moments, I comprehend that work is more than just a way to make a living. I feel the presence of God because I am honoring the gifts and talents he gave me, and, most of all, I am participating in his plan for creation.
It is a common misperception among Christians today that the Gospel is simply about “me and my salvation” or even “going to heaven” after physical death (or, as theologian N.T. Wright would put it, reveling in a “disembodied postmortem bliss.”) This gnostic and Platonic tendency in our thinking misunderstands our ultimate destiny as revealed in Scripture, which is to play a vital role in setting the cosmos aright before ruling over a rescued and renewed creation at the end of time.
We were not meant to go passively through life — indeed, life is nothing if not filled with the call to action. In this life, we have plenty to do for God and his kingdom — and so will we in our glorified and resurrected — and physical — bodies. Our ultimate inheritance is not a cloud and a harp, but a new heaven and a new earth in which we will have a decidedly human role to play.
“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,” explains the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2427).
We are called not simply to enjoy creation — however much I enjoy playing blocks with my son and dancing with my wife — but to “prolong the work of creation” with love for one another and for God. Even Adam in the garden was not given paradise for the sole purpose of “enjoying” it, but for cultivating and caring for it.
So, too, are we cultivating and caring for the unfathomable gift of existence in our world through our work.
And how lucky we are to have it! Our work forms us; it strengthens our character and cultivates our integrity. It deepens our love and gratitude for all that we receive from the grace of God.
This Labor Day, may we rest in the great satisfaction of the work of our hands. And may we roll up our sleeves Tuesday morning with renewed vigor — for not a single bead of sweat from our brow is dropped in vain if offered for the glory of God and his good creation.
