The Life of Work

Is the road to religion marked FOR SAINTS ONLY? Is the plain, non-mystical citizen wasting his time working for the wife & kids--instead of sweating out the Dark Night of the Soul in holy poverty?

To this perennial question, all churchmen and some saints have answered with a firm No. Last fortnight, in his latest encyclical (see EDUCATION), Pope Pius XII pointed to that great prescriber of physical labor, St. Benedict:

"Were the teachings with which Benedict restored and reanimated the decadent, turbulent society of his time today universally applied and flourishing, then our century could repair its moral and material ruin, find quick and perfect healing for its deep wounds. . . .

"Benedict teaches us another truth often proclaimed, seldom practiced today --that human labor is not something ignoble . . . but a thing that should be loved as something worthy and welcome. The life of work, whether in fields or workshops or intellectual occupations, does not degrade but ennobles men . . . turns them not into slaves but masters and molders of substances surrounding them. . . . Hence all ... must consider that they are serving not only themselves but also the existence and well-being of the whole of civilized society . . . that they work not through compulsion but from love. . . ."

Equally explicit was the late Dr. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote: "From the religious side there is constant pressure to keep the spiritual free from what is felt to be the contamination of the material world, which is regarded as in some way gross and unworthy. . . . But this results ... in leaving the physical to go its own way unchecked by the spirit, so that the vaunted spiritual exaltation has its counterpart in bodily immorality. In either case the unity of man's life is broken; the material world, with all man's economic activity, becomes a happy hunting ground for uncurbed acquisitiveness, and religion becomes a refined occupation for the leisure of the mystical. It is in the sacramental view of the universe, both of its material and of its spiritual elements, that there is given hope of ... making effectual both faith and hope. ... It is such a view which affords the strongest hope for the continuance in reality of religious faith and practice.

"The religious man is not only religious when he prays; his work is religiously done, his recreation religiously enjoyed, his food and drink religiously received; the last he often emphasizes by the custom of grace before meat. He does his duty religiously; above all, his failures in, duty affect him religiously."

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