Making a Living, Making a Life: Toward a Spirituality of Work

Abstract

“Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life . . . by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen 3:17, 19). For many Christians, this biblical image dominates a spirituality of work. We see Adam and Eve standing forlorn outside paradise, exiled for an act of willful disobedience. Now bereft of God’s shining presence, they carry with them a life sentence of hard work, sweat and pain. In this biblical memory, human work is one of the wages of sin. For most of human history, this somber forecast has been well proved. In much of the world even today—including countries sustained by “advanced” economies—work often takes the form of demanding, dangerous, and sometimes degrading physical labor. A spirituality of work developed within the Christian tradition must be accountable to these stark realities. During this century the Catholic Church has addressed these inhumane conditions of work in its social encyclicals and through a range of innovative and sometimes controversial ministries, such as the worker-priest movement in France, Young Catholic Workers and similar associations in many countries. An essential thrust in a Christian spirituality of work has been and must continue to be this intent to promote economic justice and to protect the dignity of workers worldwide. But our brief discussion here moves in a complementary direction. We will examine the experience of work as a potential opening to life in the Spirit. Work reveals us to ourselves—our talents and limits and ambitions. In our first jobs we begin to discover who we are. Even when we enter the employment scene haphazardly—stumbling into our first job or taking the only work available—over time the work that we do helps us craft a durable identity. To the question “who are you?” we answer “I am a nurse” or teacher or manager or electrician. But caught in the vortex of today’s market forces, more and more of us find our work lives recast by false starts, disappointed dreams, and the necessity to start over again. These dynamics challenge earlier self-definitions and raise new questions of meaning.