How Our Rational Nature Calls Us to Work

Let's now look at how work preserves our lives and satisfies our material and spiritual needs. We begin by considering how our rational nature calls us to work.

In Working Your Way into Heaven, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski reminds us that we come into this world basically unprepared. While our parents or guardians may teach us to walk and talk, it's when our reason awakens that we begin to perceive our potential in life. God, who created us body and mind, has given us a rational nature to help us fend for ourselves. We do this when we work...

...(Work is) the indispensable means for the maintenance and preservation of life. As a result of this, everything by which man is served is prepared by work for direct use.

Just look around to see the fruits of your labor and the labor of your fellow man. Our work gives value to things, adapts them to our needs.

...work gives us a chance to satisfy hunger and thirst; it shelters us, raises a roof over our heads; it makes human life possible, easy, and pleasant.

But we need to dig deeper to find the full measure of our work. Yes, our physical needs motivate us to produce both the bare necessities as well as those material goods that make life easier. But our rational nature pushes us beyond these basics.

...work leads to the complete development of our spiritual powers and to the perfecting of man.

Just as Christianity elevated the social status of work, so too our reason raises the value of our work beyond material profit.

...because work is the duty of the rational being, man, and because it is for him the way to reveal and develop all his spiritual gifts.

This is why we want to engage all our skills and talents, to the greatest possible extent, in our work.

Our mind, will, feeling, and physical strength share in work. We have really got the ideal picture of the working man when none of these gifts is barred from participation in the course of work. The upsetting of the balance will always be detrimental to a man and even to his work itself.

It's the rare job that perfectly engages our mind, will, feeling and strength. But we can and should do our best to see to it that we engage in our work such that it benefits from the full spectrum our our human nature. If you've ever directed the efforts of a group of men in a project that requires physical exertion, you know that engaging their minds in the project by clearly laying ouy objectives works much better than trying to direct or dictate every movement of each individual. If on the other hand you sit in front of computer screen all day, you know how important it is to engage yourself physically from time to time, even if it's simply getting up and waling around. Our minds work a lot better with a healthy, energized body rather than one that's stiff, achy, and tired.

Summing up,

...work has a human character only when all of our faculties are joined together in it.

Next time we'll look more specifically at how work perfect us and all our actions.