Ordinary Work, Chapter 1, Part 4

"St. Josemaria urged Christians to have a 'truly priestly soul and a fully lay mentality.' This is not a contradiction. For, as both priests and kings, we have a vocation that is both sacred and secular. We share in Christ's kingship; we share in His priesthood. So we sanctify the temporal order and offer it to God, restore it 'in Christ' because we live in Christ. We restore it, a little bit at a time, beginning with the inch or the yard or the mile over which we have been given dominion. ... Our alter is our desktop, our workstation, the row we hoe, the ditch we dig, the diaper we change, the pot we stir, the bed we share with our spouse."
-Ordinary Work, Chapter 1

I have recently changed jobs. This has been the cause of several effects.

First off, it has totally obliterated by contributions to the blog and the podcast. I wish to add my Mea to the Nostra Culpa.

Second, it has ceased the bouncing of my paychecks. I'm a patient sort of fellow... but when paychecks start to regularly bounce... it really is time to seek employment elsewhere.

Third, it has given me a broadened perspective on our subject of ordinary work. It has served to confirm my suspicion that job-to-job experiences are all pretty much the same in the ways that count.

In my new job, just as in my old job, I deal with people that can be difficult. I am placed in situations where it is challenging and frightening to witness Christ. There are periods of action and periods of tedium. Opportunities to increase virtue and opportunities to decrease vice. Times to compromise and times to stand firm. And a lot of just plain hard work. I am becoming more convinced that these essentials are common to most (if not all) work.

It has the potential to be very depressing.

If a person were seeking fulfillment in their work and their occupational accomplishments, this could easily lead to despair. Imagine you have a career goal and you lock on it like a laser beam. You work in a difficult, taxing, competitive environment. You sacrifice a lot. You compromise your principles more than you should. Finally, you reach that goal! You get the promotion, or the new job or whatever. And... you discover that it really isn't much different than you were at before. Maybe you have more money and the things it can buy... but that is very likely to lead to an "increased" lifestyle which doesn't leave much more money left over than before. And money comes with more than it's share of new difficulties.

So you lock onto the next rung of the ladder. And once there, it is still the same. And on you go.

At some point this person is going to realize that it is all the same and all empty. What a tragedy it would be to spend your life running that race, only to find that there is no happiness to be had at the end of the maze! What a calamity to realize that you gave up large portions of your life, missed your kids' childhood, chasing something that wasn't there. No wonder people become nihilists!

But St. Josemaria is drawing forth a different vision out of the endless wellspring of the Gospel. He asserts that this work, with all its stresses, pains, tediousness and challenges, is actually our alter! It is our work, in Christ, which sanctifies our little portion of creation and sanctifies ourselves.

If this is true, then it certainly changes the whole dynamic of our work! It means that the grace of Christ, which can never be earned or deserved, is given to us and others through our work. It means that we participate in the priestly ministry of offering up that which was been placed in our care. It means that we have a responsibility to see to those things, and those people, which have been designated to us.

The nature of the work itself begins to become (it seems to me) more irrelevant. We are all in fundamentally the same boat.

I look forward to the development of these ideas, and examples of how this life is to be lived out.