The Blessing And Curse of Work

We all tend to complain about work, until we don't have it. As the infertile who painfully long for a child know when they hear people complaining about their misbehaving kids, the unemployed would gladly put up with many of the seemingly trivial things we complain about in our work lives. 

Like pain in childbirth, our sentence to toil is a result of the Fall. But God in His infinite goodness provides us with goodness even in His punishments. 

As I wrote in "We're Not Adapted For Security and Utopia," 

I thought I was crazy for being bored in paradise, but it makes sense if we were made to strive. Faith is a walk; it is not an escalator or wheelchair ride. It demands assent and action; it is not passive, and it is not handed down generation to generation by passive means either. It must be exercised. 

One thing I have mulled over for a while is the issue of lay 'professional Catholics,' I.e., those whose 'job' is to promote the Faith, or work in full-time ministry, or write about it. For me personally, I'm grateful I was spared from this situation (not for lack of trying). In the way a playboy or a prostitute might equate sex with "work," or a professional athlete not wanting to throw a baseball or football around because they do not equate it with leisure, I think those engaged in full-time ministry enjoy 'checking out' from churchy things because of the association with work. 

Now, mind you, we are called to WORK out our salvation in fear and trembling. As part of our calling as Christians, we are called to do the work God calls us to--not as professionals or contractors, but as willing servants. This takes on a different ethos, because we are not working for food or money, but for the Lord. 

People deserve to be compensated for their work, even when they work in matters of faith of for the Church, and some of it is necessary. But it takes some intentionality to not see our faith as drudgery or a 9-5 that we check out from, but as a love affair. Personally, I'd rather dig ditches or pump septic tanks and retain my faith as a common laborer than divorce myself from it by getting too close to the institutional fire. We don't need more parish administrators or Catholics (TM)...we need saints.