How Work Perfects Man and His Acts

We're looking at how our rational nature calls us to work. Now let's see how work can perfect us and all our actions. We begin by considering the work performed by animals and machines.

Animals have served man for centuries. Machines have taken over much (though not all) of that burden. The work they do has been and continues to be valuable to us. The strength of a single man, or even a group of men, can only do so much. But even as we recognize the efficiencies of a well-trained animal or a well-designed machine, we would never say that their work develops their conscientiousness, or their sense of duty and responsibility. That is the case, though, for us men. It is the case because, as we saw last time, our work is the work of a rational being. That's why Cardinal Wyszynski tells us:

...(a man's work) is bound inseparably with his person, shapes and develops his mind, will, feelings and various moral virtues and characteristics, as well as his physical and spiritual skills.

Our work confers a new worth on things, whether it involves shaping the physical or the intellectual realm of God's creation. The ditch digger and the professor, each in his own sphere of work, perfects God's material (manifested in the physical) and spiritual (as expressed by the intellect) creation. But not only do we help to perfect God's creation, we also perfect ourselves in the actions we perform in our work. This is how work becomes a means of both personal development as well as spiritual progress.

However, in Working Your Way into Heaven, Cardinal Wyszynski points out that this fundamental and most important aspect of our work seems almost completely forgotten these days. 

The myth of payment for work has conquered all of us; payment by the hour, piecework, salaries, fees. Man is lost in the pursuit of profit, driven by "duty," which he often understands rather as a sense of external need rather than as a moral value. We are so absorbed by the perfecting of what we do that we completely forget about ourselves. We even consider that excessive work frees us from the duty of molding our own souls.

We think God has no place in the workplace. That's where we pursue material success. That pursuit has consumed too many of us, and so we occasionally hear the call today to achieve greater balance between work and our personal lives. That's good as far as it goes. But for us Catholics, there's more at stake than just being able to escape from the job from time to time to seek relief and pleasure. We know we can and should use all our time to grow closer to God, not just our personal time. If our work derails our spiritual development by so absorbing our attention and effort that we push God out of the workplace, well, something must be done. Otherwise we're caught in the trap of work as merely a means to satisfy our material needs - important to be sure, but not the whole story.  

Cardinal Wyszynski suggests the reality of work being a need of our rational nature as the way out of this trap:

There is only one solution: to break with the notion that assigns only one aim to work (that is, the satisfaction of the needs of our existence), and to return to the one real judgment by which work is not so much a sad necessity and a mere safeguard against hunger and thirst, as it is a need of the rational nature of man, who gets to know himself fully through work, and learns to express himself completely in it. And it is only that that he can influence matter in a really fitting and useful manner.

The fruits of work that is thus understood will not be wasted or badly used but will become a blessing for the world.

None of this precludes your efforts to make a better life by making more money. And understanding work as a need of your rational nature encourages the desire many of us have to seek more satisfying work that uses and integrates our skills and talents, thereby bringing out the best in us. But Wyszynski kicks this up on more notch now. Our work can become a blessing for the world. Next time we'll see how, as we look at work as a social duty.