You're at Work...Where is God?
So often, God disappears once the workday begins. This past Sunday, we talked about God disappearing from our society and culture. Today, let's get specific and address this problem as it applies to our work day.
Our secular world does not acknowledge God, or if it does, assigns Him to the world of our emotions, perhaps conceding that there's a kind of "psychological" reality to God. But God actually in the world? No. God doesn't belong anywhere in the world. Indeed, many of us have simply kicked Him out of the world. Not only do we not acknowledge God's presence in our everyday lives, we ban even any mention of Him.
So in our planning and decision-making each day, we rely on ourselves. We are to work to "make a name" for ourselves. We are to strive for "our" success, advance in our position, increase our prestige, our esteem in the eyes of others. It's all about us. Almost never about God, about striving to do His Holy Will in any and every thought, word and action throughout the day.
Okay, so we Catholics do understand enough about our faith to pray from time to time, especially when it comes to things we want. But is God really right in there, in our lives each day in every moment, every single aspect of our lives?
Even we who know our faith face a daily and constant challenge. Our Holy Father, in his Ash Wednesday address this year, provided some really useful insight here:
But even now, the choice is ours, this day, to work in God's presence, to let him into our lives, to rely on Him as we work, to work only for Him, for His greater glory, and not for our personal "success." Here are the closing words of our Holy Father, in his last Ash Wednesday address to us:
Our secular world does not acknowledge God, or if it does, assigns Him to the world of our emotions, perhaps conceding that there's a kind of "psychological" reality to God. But God actually in the world? No. God doesn't belong anywhere in the world. Indeed, many of us have simply kicked Him out of the world. Not only do we not acknowledge God's presence in our everyday lives, we ban even any mention of Him.
So in our planning and decision-making each day, we rely on ourselves. We are to work to "make a name" for ourselves. We are to strive for "our" success, advance in our position, increase our prestige, our esteem in the eyes of others. It's all about us. Almost never about God, about striving to do His Holy Will in any and every thought, word and action throughout the day.
Okay, so we Catholics do understand enough about our faith to pray from time to time, especially when it comes to things we want. But is God really right in there, in our lives each day in every moment, every single aspect of our lives?
Even we who know our faith face a daily and constant challenge. Our Holy Father, in his Ash Wednesday address this year, provided some really useful insight here:
Today one can no longer be Christian as a simple consequence of living in a society with Christian roots: even those who come from Christian families, and are brought up religiously must renew every day the choice to be Christian, that is, to give God the first place, in front of the temptations that a secularized culture presents us with all the time, before the criticism of many of our contemporaries.Pope Emeritus Benedict (before his abdication) told us that we face the challenge of "conversion" each and every day of our lives. In the face of all that surrounds us, we must choose each day to live as Christians, to acknowledge the presence and reality of God in our lives. I read his words then, and so, during Lent, the opportunity for conversion presented itself in a special way, a kind of special challenge.
But even now, the choice is ours, this day, to work in God's presence, to let him into our lives, to rely on Him as we work, to work only for Him, for His greater glory, and not for our personal "success." Here are the closing words of our Holy Father, in his last Ash Wednesday address to us:
In this time of Lent, in the Year of Faith, we renew our commitment on the way of conversion, to overcome the tendency to close in on ourselves and to make room for God instead, looking at our daily reality through His eyes. We might say that the choice between closing in on our egoism and opening to the love of God and others, corresponds to the alternatives in Jesus’ temptations: the choice, that is, between human power and love of the cross, between a redemption viewed solely as material well- being and redemption as the work of God, to whom we give the first place in life. Conversion means not closing in on oneself in the pursuit of one’s own success, one’s own prestige, one’s own position, but making sure that every day, in the small things, truth, faith in God and love become the most important thing.Wise words indeed for us Catholic men to remember today in our daily work.
Comments