MM#307--The First Words of God To The Human Race

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. Today's episode will be a cross of a Catholic corner and a Mojo Minute because we are in the season of Lent, a season of digging deeper into our faith to follow more closely our Lord Jesus Christ. And I thought we would go deeper on what it means to work our physical labor and our intellectual labor, because after we work after all, we work a lot in the modern world Some people even define their whole lives all around their job and their work, and most of us spend a lot, a lot of time at our workplaces. So today we're going to take a long, hard, deep look at work and how that figures into our spiritual lives. And we will do this with a great new book I just finished, right before Lent started, called Holiness for Everyone the Practical Spirituality of St Josie Maria Escobar, by Eric Sammons, and we even have a foreword written by a friend of the show here, scott Hahn, a man who we have featured regularly here over the years. But what I really want to cover is our mindset when we are in fact working, because often this is an area for most of us we just haven't gotten a good catechesis, a good teaching at all. The fact is, the bad teaching is no fault of anyone. It's really just a complete blind spot in most Christian theologies. So what do I mean by that? Well, let's go to the book. We can unpack it, we will grab our first pull quote and I think it'll make much more sense For a score. In seven years ago, we, the people, went in the course of human events and instantly recognize these phrases because they are the opening words of some of the greatest works in US history the Gettysburg Address, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The first words of an important historical document come to represent the whole document. So most writers are aware that the opening phrase must be carefully written, for it may have an impact far greater than the few words true meaning. With that in mind, note the first words ever said by God to the human race. It happened in Genesis 128 to 130, where we read, quote be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and ever, ever living thing that moves upon the earth. The first thing God said to his people was a command to work. They were to be fruitful, conquer the earth and be masters of all living things, and this command came before the fall. So work is not a consequence of sin. Wow, how many of us get this wrong repeatedly, just especially when we're suffering at our workplaces Under the threat of a report that is almost overdue, or under the pressure of delivering that speech in front of all the investors, or the task of having to let somebody go at our workplace. So let's repeat, just so we're all get it straight. Let's repeat what we just learned Work is not a consequence of sin. How about that for a nugget of wisdom. Work is not a consequence of sin. Now, that's a profound nugget of wisdom that we will have to write down in our phone so we can remember it. But work was incredibly influenced by sin. So let's go back to the book to further unpack this notion. However, sin did have a profound effect on work, as we see after the fall, when God tells Adam because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you In toil. You shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you and you shall eat the plants of the field From the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust. To dust you shall return. Now let's stop here real fast. Most people don't understand where the beginning of Lent starts, represents the 40 days of fasting and combat, spiritual combat with our Lord in the desert where he avoids the three strong temptations. But also, if you, I, have not gone to any liturgical service, christian liturgical service in, say, the past five years, you probably have forgotten. But every Ash Wednesday I am always reminded from this quote taken from Genesis as they spread the ashes on Catholics' foreheads all around the world, they will utter the phrase from Genesis 19. You are dust and to dust you shall return. Let's keep going. Whereas before man was in harmony with nature in all living things, now he would have to toil and have trouble in his work. But even the fall did not completely obliterate the dignity of work. Just as sin deforms but does not destroy the goodness of man, so too work remains inherently something good, because its source is God. Work in fact still fulfills the original command of God that we subdue the earth, and our work is therefore our means of serving God, and that is a profound nugget of wisdom. So work was not completely made obsolete because of sin, but because of sin now. Now we have to fight even harder to accomplish good work. The toil will be more, so hard, very difficult and challenging, and there will be miscommunications and there will be emotional highs and lows. But let's keep going, because this is some good mojo for today and we have some dense nuggets of wisdom to help us lead a flourishing life. Going back to the book, but work is simply not an obligation that each person must fulfill in obedience to some ancient divine command. Work is also the primary battlefield in our quest for holiness. In essence, holiness is following the will of God in each moment of life, and the majority of our waking hours is spent in our work at some form or another. If one can only grow in holiness through sacred activities, going to mass, volunteering at the parish or spiritual reading, then how can the young professional whose work we conclude 60 hours at the office in another tank communing, ever hope to achieve the goal of every human life, which is sanctity? How can the mother of three children under the age of five have a minute to devote to becoming holy, by making even our secular activities into a means of drawing closer to him. God, in his great mercy, enters into all of our activities, not just those explicitly reserved for him. Note that work is not limited to just our paying jobs. Work also encompasses our responsibilities at home, our relationships and all we do for others. Work, in other words, is essentially everything we do. We must sanctify our ordinary life, and the ordinary life is the world of work. From a quote from a wonderful book by St Josemaria Eskriva titled Christ is Passing by, we find paragraph 47, which says Work is part and parcel of man's life on earth. It involves effort, weariness, exhaustion, signs of suffering and struggle that accompany human existence, and that the point and that 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. Those who speak of it that way have not understood sacred scripture properly. It is time for us Christians to shout from the rooftops that work is a gift from God, and then it makes no sense to classify men differently according to their occupation, as if some jobs were more noble and nobler than others. Work, all work, bears witness to the dignity of man, to his dominion over creation. It is an opportunity to develop one's personality. It is a bond of union with others, the way to support one's family, a means of aiding in the improvement of society in which we live and the progress of all humanity. All right, so very, very good. Now a quick recap of our major nuggets of wisdom is that work is not a consequence of sin, but that sin does influence our work. It makes it much more difficult, but that doesn't diminish work as its ultimate dignity. We have to keep those three things in mind. So now let's bring this all together and help us to have some practical steps coming out of this mojo minute. Let's go back to the work, back to the book. It's a long quote, but hang in there with me. As a priest, st Josemaria offered daily mass, eucharistic sacrifice on the altar for God, and that was the work that he made his first fruits. But what about all those who were not ordained a priest? Do they have anything to offer? Scripture says that every disciple of Christ is a priest, see 1 Peter, 2, 9. So all of us must offer sacrifice to the Lord. We do this by offering our work to the Lord. Thus our desk, our bench, our kitchen counter, these become the altars in which we offer our work to the Lord. Work, therefore, is not an obstacle to holiness. Rather, it's a means by which holiness is achieved. Making our work a holy offering to God can be a struggle, however Many of the faithful work in a secular environment that may be hostile to religion in general, in Catholicism in particular, it's not uncommon for professional work environments to be filled with foul language, racy discussions and other activities amenical to the Catholic faith. And the home is certainly no sanctuary. The modern media has done nothing, if not been relentless, in finding ways to pipe such content into our homes through TV, radio and the internet. It might make us tempted to think that holiness can only be achieved by a flight from the world, but God does not call the majority of His children to separate themselves from such a world. Instead, he calls us to be the salt and light in it. Write that down. That's a major negative wisdom. God, I'll repeat it here God does not call the majority of His children to separate themselves from such a world. Instead, he calls us to be that salt and that light in it. Going back to the book, maintaining proper priorities will help us offer our work to God and grow in holiness through it. Most practicing Catholics would agree that the order of our priorities should be God, family and work. But over time we allow this order to become inverted without ever noticing it. The 10 minutes extra we stay at work as an exception quickly becomes one to two additional hours each day. We eventually even adapt our schedule to the extra time instead of working as efficiently as possible to get home to our families, or we tell a slight mistruth, telling ourselves it won't hurt anyone when marketing our company's product, hoping that it will help us to meet our quarterly sales quota, slowly and subtly we put our work ahead of our faithfulness to God into our families. Similar dangers exist in the family. How many of us started out thinking about our child's college education before we've even left the maternity ward? We seem to hope that they will be absorbed in their Catholic faith by osmosis rather than by living and learning it day by day, day in and day out, through the efforts of their parents. On the other hand, we break our backs, helping them achieve the highest levels of secular education. If the goal of every person is to be with God in heaven for eternity. Shouldn't we spend at least as much energy on their spiritual formation? In similar fashion, we urge our older children to delay marriage in parenthood long enough to be financially quote established. But by doing so we implicitly support a culture that looks upon children as a burden and something extraneous to a fulfilling life. So, in summary, let us make our work our prayer, and we can do this quite easily Of all of our work, from washing dishes to building houses, to correcting homework, to writing sales reports, to teaching college courses, all of these jobs, almost any job, as long as it's not actual sinning, if it's not a sin I mean robbing banks and prostitution are the two that come to mind immediately. Those jobs, if they can be called jobs. They cannot be sanctified because those jobs in and of themselves are not doing the work of God. But almost any job can be sanctified, from street sweeper to the president of the United States. And while I just had a thought that some of you will likely send me a message, can we call our politicians prostitutes because they essentially steal our money and don't give us very good representation? That is indeed a good one and it's indeed a tough call whether politicians are in a separate category from prostitutes, but let us pray for both categories, shall we? So in today's mojo minute, let's close with one last quote from chapter seven, most especially because we are in this special season of Lent and there's many graces that we can obtain from this special season. That project at work you are dreading can be offered for the salvation of your anti-Catholic co-worker. You need to clean the oven. Offer it up for the son who is leading a profligate lifestyle. The report that is due tomorrow can be offered to strengthen, perhaps, a failing marriage. God takes all of the work we offer to him, imperfect as it may be, and uses it in some mysterious way for the good of others. Work is not just something that we must do before we can enjoy ourselves. It is a powerful means to our salvation and to the salvation of others. So let us remember that God's first words to us as a human race was that we were to work. Let us offer up our work today and every day for the good of souls and the salvation of others. Then we will be doing God's true work.

We are on.

Earth.