How To Let the "Four Last Things" Help You at Work During Lent
(Originally published on March 3, 2016)
We continue with the "Tools of Good Works" from St. Benedict's Holy Rule to help us focus on those acts of charity that we can perform during Lent in the work place.
We start today with:
Developing the practice of facing your mortality, specifically by employing these "Tools of Good Works," should not foster fear. It should cultivate charity, something most of us need. No matter how successful, how rich, how powerful any of us might be, we're all in the same boat. We're going to die. Money, power, or success won't matter when we meet Our Lord at the moment of our death. Developing a deeper understanding of this puts our relationship to each other in perspective. Boss, worker, entrepreneur, civil servant, President of the United States. No matter. The end is near - whether near means in the next 60 minutes or 60 years from now. If a recent snowstorm fostered charitable acts among our neighbors as we chipped in to help each other dig out, so too should this understanding of us all facing the same fate encourage us to be more charitable to each other.
In addition, you may want to consider that every minute counts. Every minute as in those 480 minutes (assuming an 8 hour work day) or more you'll be working today. For those of us who have "career" plans, and maybe plot out a strategy to "get ahead" in the coming years or decades, this has a salutary effect. Knowing you're going to die, indeed that you might die a lot sooner than called for in your career plan, tells you something: don't let today slip by. These 480 minutes are precious. They may the last 480 minutes you'll have to work for the greater glory of God.
Now, given that realization, what do you do? Well, you don't ignore your plan. It's OK to have a time horizon beyond today. But you do work as if this could be your final pass. Such a realization drives home an important point: Working for the greater glory of God stands apart from, and should take precedence over, working for your greater glory. The cool thing about this realization, though, is this: Your greater glory may take years or decades to come to fruition. God's greater glory, on the other hand, is served daily. If you work for Him today - every one of those 480 or more minutes - and He calls you home at the end of the day - this very day - you've served Him perfectly, you've worked for His greater glory. And in His mercy, you may derive from the fruits of your labor something that, if you work for your own greater glory, might take not 480 minutes, but 480 months, or more.
And you thought that there was no way death and judgement had anything to do with your "To Do" list. Wrong. That "To Do" list points you directly to eternal life, to Heaven, to God. Not that your special Lenten discipline of prayer, fasting, and charitable work doesn't pitch in as well. But the work at hand - in all its detail, considering all its demands - provides an extraordinary opportunity on this ordinary day grow closer to God. That's what sanctifying your work is all about.
We conclude today's remarks as we have been, with this traditional exhortation from the praying of the Stations of the Cross, to remind ourselves we live and work now in the holy season of Lent:
We continue with the "Tools of Good Works" from St. Benedict's Holy Rule to help us focus on those acts of charity that we can perform during Lent in the work place.
We start today with:
- To fear the Day of Judgement.
- To dread hell.
- To desire eternal life with all spiritual longing.
- To keep death daily before one's eyes.
Developing the practice of facing your mortality, specifically by employing these "Tools of Good Works," should not foster fear. It should cultivate charity, something most of us need. No matter how successful, how rich, how powerful any of us might be, we're all in the same boat. We're going to die. Money, power, or success won't matter when we meet Our Lord at the moment of our death. Developing a deeper understanding of this puts our relationship to each other in perspective. Boss, worker, entrepreneur, civil servant, President of the United States. No matter. The end is near - whether near means in the next 60 minutes or 60 years from now. If a recent snowstorm fostered charitable acts among our neighbors as we chipped in to help each other dig out, so too should this understanding of us all facing the same fate encourage us to be more charitable to each other.
In addition, you may want to consider that every minute counts. Every minute as in those 480 minutes (assuming an 8 hour work day) or more you'll be working today. For those of us who have "career" plans, and maybe plot out a strategy to "get ahead" in the coming years or decades, this has a salutary effect. Knowing you're going to die, indeed that you might die a lot sooner than called for in your career plan, tells you something: don't let today slip by. These 480 minutes are precious. They may the last 480 minutes you'll have to work for the greater glory of God.
Now, given that realization, what do you do? Well, you don't ignore your plan. It's OK to have a time horizon beyond today. But you do work as if this could be your final pass. Such a realization drives home an important point: Working for the greater glory of God stands apart from, and should take precedence over, working for your greater glory. The cool thing about this realization, though, is this: Your greater glory may take years or decades to come to fruition. God's greater glory, on the other hand, is served daily. If you work for Him today - every one of those 480 or more minutes - and He calls you home at the end of the day - this very day - you've served Him perfectly, you've worked for His greater glory. And in His mercy, you may derive from the fruits of your labor something that, if you work for your own greater glory, might take not 480 minutes, but 480 months, or more.
And you thought that there was no way death and judgement had anything to do with your "To Do" list. Wrong. That "To Do" list points you directly to eternal life, to Heaven, to God. Not that your special Lenten discipline of prayer, fasting, and charitable work doesn't pitch in as well. But the work at hand - in all its detail, considering all its demands - provides an extraordinary opportunity on this ordinary day grow closer to God. That's what sanctifying your work is all about.
We conclude today's remarks as we have been, with this traditional exhortation from the praying of the Stations of the Cross, to remind ourselves we live and work now in the holy season of Lent:
We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee,
Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou Hast Redeemed the world.
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