What's Good for the Soul is Good for our Work Too
What's good for the soul is good for our work too. For example, last week we found some great bits of advice in the Book of Tobias from the Old Testament. It was the sort of advice that helps us both make spiritual progress as well as improves our performance and relationships at work. For example, when Tobias advises his son to embrace humility, we made a special note to contrast this virtue with our natural tendency towards prideful feelings and behavior:
Getting back to humility, while it's a virtue we've discussed many times in the past, it's important that we pause for a moment to emphasize it's fundamental importance to both our soul and our work. To do that, we recall something we posted a while back about developing the virtue of humility:
OK. It's one thing to recognize the importance of humility, but quite another to practice it all the time. For this we need God's grace. We can also use the example of others we might know who display this all-important, all-powerful virtue. If you can't think of anyone off the top of your head, or even if you can, we Catholics would do well to turn to Our Blessed Mother, surely the most perfect example of one infused with humility (along with with Our Blessed Lord). Father John Grou explains how devotion to Our Lady will help us to quell our tendency to be self-centered and grow in humility:
...humility, not pride, serves you better in your daily work, both as to producing the best work you can, and doing so in cooperation with all those with whom you work. Both you and your co-workers will be happier when you and those around you display more humility and less pride in your daily interactions.Humility's practical benefits don't in any way obscure or minimize it's spiritual benefits, and vice versa. The point we're trying to make here is that it's only natural that these should work hand in glove. Virtues all work that way. To the extent we become more holy, this will be reflected in our thoughts, our words and our actions at all times in all places. So it's really important that we Catholic men at work drill this into our minds and hearts such that we have every confidence that leading a life of virtue will not be, indeed can not be, an impediment to our success at work, however we define that success. Quite the opposite is true. For example, we need to thoroughly and irrevocably know, with total confidence that, despite what some people may think, you can be perfectly honest and succeed in business. Just because examples exist (many?) of unscrupulous business men building success on ruthless ambition, dishonesty, cheating, etc. doesn't mean that's the only way to succeed. And it's certainly not any way for a Catholic gentleman to succeed, right?
Getting back to humility, while it's a virtue we've discussed many times in the past, it's important that we pause for a moment to emphasize it's fundamental importance to both our soul and our work. To do that, we recall something we posted a while back about developing the virtue of humility:
- We become more attractive to both our colleagues and our employers, just as we become more attractive to Our Lord.
- We'll gain a clearer understanding of our true value - not some postured or exaggerated sense of self-worth.
- Knowing our true value entails an appreciation for the specific natural good qualities which God has given to each of us as individuals.
- This knowledge will cause us to know, indelibly, that all the good in us comes from God.
- And that knowledge will help us to more easily handle even the most difficult assignments and bear with the most trying circumstances we might encounter during the day.
OK. It's one thing to recognize the importance of humility, but quite another to practice it all the time. For this we need God's grace. We can also use the example of others we might know who display this all-important, all-powerful virtue. If you can't think of anyone off the top of your head, or even if you can, we Catholics would do well to turn to Our Blessed Mother, surely the most perfect example of one infused with humility (along with with Our Blessed Lord). Father John Grou explains how devotion to Our Lady will help us to quell our tendency to be self-centered and grow in humility:
How shall we then show our solid devotion to the Blessed Virgin? By striving to imitate her interior life, her lowly opinion of herself, her love of obscurity, of silence, and of retirement; her attraction to little things, her fidelity to grace, the beautiful simplicity of her recollection and prayer, the only object of which was God and His holy will, Jesus Christ and His love, her continual sacrifice of herself and of all she loved most dearly and had the greatest reason to love. Let us ask her every day that she may serve us as our guide and model in the interior life, and let us beg of her to obtain for us the graces which are necessary for us, that we may correspond to the designs of God upon us. And these designs are most certainly our death to ourselves and the destruction of our self-love.” (Father John Grou, S.J., 1731-1803)Again we see how important it is for us recognize and overcome our natural tendency to self-love. As Father Grou has shown us, we can do this by begging Our Lady's intercession for the grace to practice the virtue of humility, a virtue good for the soul and for our work too.
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