Paying Our Debt to Others With Our Work - Part 5
Today we get down to specific suggestions about how we can pay our debt to others with our work. While we focused on the poor, and how they're often exploited, many more needy folks exist who can use our help. Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, in Working Your Way into Heaven, tells us that we owe a debt to these people. His logic goes something like this:
We owe a debt to others simply because of the fruits of their labor. No matter that so-and-so's work wasn't intended by him or her to specifically to benefit you. The fact is, it does benefit you and me and everyone else. Our own work contributes to others. So they owe a debt to us. We saw this a true virtuous circle.
When we left off last time, we posited that with the right approach to work, with what we might call a supernatural approach, we can assure our efforts each day align us with God's Plan, even as we work diligently to meet the plan for our business. Now let's look at an elegant and beautiful description of just what such a supernatural approach looks like in the words of Cardinal Wyszynski:
So help is decidedly not about money. Sure, it's great if you make enough to provide help with your surplus. But even if we generously contribute our money, our obligation to help others doesn't stop there. Indeed, it doesn't even begin there. True charity is expressed by the spirit of love described by Cardinal Wyszynski. That's where we need to find ourselves as we head off to work today. If we give money without a spirit of charity, those coins we drop on the poor and the needy will sound like and be worth nothing more than the "tinkling cymbals" to which St. Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 13.
Let's turn now to today's work. In this supernatural light, it should not be only an expression of our competence, our efficiency, our ability to help our company earn profits. While it needs to be all that, it also needs to be an expression - and this is not an option - of our love.
As business people, when we work efficiently, helping our business succeed in the marketplace, the benefits accrue to everyone. As professionals, when we run our practice diligently, competently, focused on our clients, not ourselves, the benefits accrue to everyone. Name any job, any profession, and the same holds true. In one sense, it's simply common sense when we look at our work and the work of others this way. But when we add Christian charity - our love - to our work, we now enter the realm of working our way to heaven.
What could be better than a world in which the love of neighbor and the desire to be saved - i.e., to get to heaven - are bound together. Our desire for heaven does not cause us to ignore our neighbor. Our love of neighbor won't be tainted in any way by our desire for heaven.
Okay, so for most of us this may be an ideal at the moment. We haven't developed the purity of intention, the purity of action that prevents us from tainting our charitable deeds with some degree of pride or selfishness. Our fallen nature keeps interfering.
So what! That's life - at least for most of us mere mortal, not-quite-saints. We need to pray constantly for God's grace to purify our intentions, to help us to act with pure motives in, as Cardinal Wyszynski tells us, "the spirit of love, of sacrifice, of disinterestedness." No matter that this may not come naturally to us: That's what God's grace will provide.
As Catholics, we should be in the habit of asking for grace daily, in everything we do. When we do this, it takes nothing away from our skills and talents, our competence, in executing the duties of our daily work. His grace purifies those skills and talents, and our competence. Rather than puffing us up with pride when we do a really good job, we remember that we're simply doing what we should be doing. And we're grateful that the benefits of our efforts accrue to everyone. While we don't turn down that promotion, or bonus, that's not what we live for. We pursue advancement for the sake of our families and those who need our help. We accept recognition graciously and humbly, without hint of pride. While this may not be our natural inclination, while we may feel the tug of our self-centered, fallen human nature, with God's grace we will in time truly and totally imbue our work with charity, that is, the love of God and the love of our neighbor.
That's all for now. We're not finished with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski's book, Working Your Way into Heaven. It's a rich source of ideas to help us better understand the true nature of our daily work. In addition, it contains beautiful passages that can help us to elevate our work, to unite our daily efforts to God's great work of Creation. Can you see why we'll be returning to it as a primary source illumination and inspiration for us Catholic men at work?
We owe a debt to others simply because of the fruits of their labor. No matter that so-and-so's work wasn't intended by him or her to specifically to benefit you. The fact is, it does benefit you and me and everyone else. Our own work contributes to others. So they owe a debt to us. We saw this a true virtuous circle.
When we left off last time, we posited that with the right approach to work, with what we might call a supernatural approach, we can assure our efforts each day align us with God's Plan, even as we work diligently to meet the plan for our business. Now let's look at an elegant and beautiful description of just what such a supernatural approach looks like in the words of Cardinal Wyszynski:
Our work must be filled with the spirit of love, of sacrifice, of disinterestedness, of service to those who cannot work, or service to the poor, to orphans, and to those who are unfit for effort and toil, especially the sick. The poor are God's family. They are in His care. And He exercises His care over them through our hands, abilities, talents, zeal, industry, and love.So yes, we have a debt. But we don't pay it in a spirit of strict obligation. We pay it with true Christian charity - with love. And this helps us to understand the dilemma of how we help others when we really don't earn enough money to help others. Money isn't everything: Even in the case where meeting our financial obligations to our family exhausts our means, even when there's nothing left over for those others who might need our help, we are all in a position to help.
So help is decidedly not about money. Sure, it's great if you make enough to provide help with your surplus. But even if we generously contribute our money, our obligation to help others doesn't stop there. Indeed, it doesn't even begin there. True charity is expressed by the spirit of love described by Cardinal Wyszynski. That's where we need to find ourselves as we head off to work today. If we give money without a spirit of charity, those coins we drop on the poor and the needy will sound like and be worth nothing more than the "tinkling cymbals" to which St. Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 13.
Let's turn now to today's work. In this supernatural light, it should not be only an expression of our competence, our efficiency, our ability to help our company earn profits. While it needs to be all that, it also needs to be an expression - and this is not an option - of our love.
As business people, when we work efficiently, helping our business succeed in the marketplace, the benefits accrue to everyone. As professionals, when we run our practice diligently, competently, focused on our clients, not ourselves, the benefits accrue to everyone. Name any job, any profession, and the same holds true. In one sense, it's simply common sense when we look at our work and the work of others this way. But when we add Christian charity - our love - to our work, we now enter the realm of working our way to heaven.
What could be better than a world in which the love of neighbor and the desire to be saved - i.e., to get to heaven - are bound together. Our desire for heaven does not cause us to ignore our neighbor. Our love of neighbor won't be tainted in any way by our desire for heaven.
Okay, so for most of us this may be an ideal at the moment. We haven't developed the purity of intention, the purity of action that prevents us from tainting our charitable deeds with some degree of pride or selfishness. Our fallen nature keeps interfering.
So what! That's life - at least for most of us mere mortal, not-quite-saints. We need to pray constantly for God's grace to purify our intentions, to help us to act with pure motives in, as Cardinal Wyszynski tells us, "the spirit of love, of sacrifice, of disinterestedness." No matter that this may not come naturally to us: That's what God's grace will provide.
As Catholics, we should be in the habit of asking for grace daily, in everything we do. When we do this, it takes nothing away from our skills and talents, our competence, in executing the duties of our daily work. His grace purifies those skills and talents, and our competence. Rather than puffing us up with pride when we do a really good job, we remember that we're simply doing what we should be doing. And we're grateful that the benefits of our efforts accrue to everyone. While we don't turn down that promotion, or bonus, that's not what we live for. We pursue advancement for the sake of our families and those who need our help. We accept recognition graciously and humbly, without hint of pride. While this may not be our natural inclination, while we may feel the tug of our self-centered, fallen human nature, with God's grace we will in time truly and totally imbue our work with charity, that is, the love of God and the love of our neighbor.
That's all for now. We're not finished with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski's book, Working Your Way into Heaven. It's a rich source of ideas to help us better understand the true nature of our daily work. In addition, it contains beautiful passages that can help us to elevate our work, to unite our daily efforts to God's great work of Creation. Can you see why we'll be returning to it as a primary source illumination and inspiration for us Catholic men at work?
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