What To Focus On At Work As We Begin The Easter Season - 2

Our Easter Season at work has begun. We'll refocus from our Lenten discipline at work to what we might call our Easter discipline at work.

We'll return to our Stability Project next week. For now, here's something we posted last year....

 

Let's set aside our current C-Virus Mess for today. It goes on, but what of it? It is what it is. Despite it all, a new day arrives. It's time to get down to our daily prayer and spiritual reading. Our work beckons.

My recent spiritual reading selections include reminders of the importance of "little things" and of suffering. 

Most of us aren't sitting in the White House or the C-Suite of a mighty corporation. We're just Catholic men at work. And work brings lots of little things that demand our attention. 

Perhaps it could be following up on emails to connect with this or that client. Or perhaps a report needs to be assembled and sent out to everyone summarizing last quarter's results with some anticipation of what lies ahead. Sounds important, but mostly it's tedious work from the writing to the assembling to the sending. Then there are those slew of articles, culled carefully, stacked (physically and digitally) awaiting reading and review. Past experience tells me I'll learn a thing or two, but I may also find nothing of value in one or two of them, always a frustrating experience.

Lately, there's been an extra layer of study. As is not uncommon with new administrations in Washington, laws and regulations change. On my plate now sit proposals regarding income and estate tax changes. I need to get up to snuff with what may soon become law, then figure out how any of this might effect this or that client. 

As I slog through the details best I can, it's important to set aside the boiling emotions that inevitably come with this sort of study: Here we go again. The government stirs up a new brew of rules and regulations. They're never as clearly laid out as one would like. And the unintended consequences, always hiding between the lines, will likely impact exactly the wrong people - those who have simply tried to prudently plan for their family's future, who can't afford to have their efforts undermined by government officials. Never mind that many of the politicians behind this travesty are at best overzealous, at worst clueless or thoroughly corrupt. What's it all for?

(Okay, enough of the rant.) 

I won't bore you with more detail of the little things generously sprinkled through a typical work day, except for this: These comprise the fertile soil into which we plant our spiritual seeds each day. How do we do that? We embrace each little thing and handle it with loving care. We consider our attention to detail, our completion of the task in a timely manner, (especially when a particular task might be especially boring or even distasteful for whatever reason) as an act of love for God. We do it out of love - FOR GOD.

The study I need to commit to in my work, and the daily spiritual reading I do each day thus serve as expressions of love. Not all my work study, and certainly not much of my spiritual reading, is ever boring or distasteful. But there are days that can change a mole hill into a mountain. Other days when study or reading that you typically look forward to becomes a real chore, something that can seem almost impossible to plow through. Think: when you're tired, sick, injured, etc. 

Easter - the full Easter Season - drives home the incredible fact that the Son of God - Who is God Himself - not only condescended to live amongst us, but suffered horribly unto death for us. He did this to both open the Gates of Heaven to fallen man, as well as give us an example of how we might hope to gain eternal happiness. And, yes, that example is His suffering and death - His Cross.

Easter does not obliterate the Cross. It serves as a lily-white garland on that Cross that helps us to gaze lovingly on what otherwise can be difficult, painful, seemingly impossible to do out of love for God. (Some churches display such a wooden Cross with white garland at Easter.)

Some day, all our work, all our spiritual acts, all difficulties, including pain and suffering, will end. On that day, we will see Our Risen Lord and Savior in all his Risen Glory. Easter gives us the hope that our encounter will be a happy one. If all we do each and every day can be an expression of love for God, that hope will not be in vain.

Happy Easter!