Dear Friends,

 We hope that you are safe and well.

 Today's Meditation is a reflection by Joan Chittister on "The Spirituality of Work."

 We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.

In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.

We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!

With our love and care,

Ron and Jean

MEDITATION 752: Joan Chittister: "The Spirituality of Work"

"Work enriches and develops life on all levels," writes Sister Joan in her reflection on work.

A Spirituality of Work

The sacred work of the monastic is the Divine Office or Opus Dei—the work of God and lectio. This work of God, the praise and practice of the will of God, is the monastic’s lifetime concentration. But then there is the manual work of taking in the harvest that will sustain both the community and the surrounding area. And just as important, there are the works of service needed to maintain the physical and familial needs of the community itself. Finally, Benedict cites the intellectual work and study required to deepen the monastic’s spiritual life and human understanding as the years go by.

Work, in other words, enriches and develops life on all levels. Work is the discipline that keeps us involved in every dimension of the communal life. Every monastic in the monastery—young and old—is to be given a task to help maintain it, one way or another. That work is a commitment to God’s service. Therefore, monks are to have specified periods of both manual labor and study. We all carry the monastery together, both its physical and its intellectual works or ministries.

In today’s world, the effect of whatever work each of us does— intellectual, artistic, social, communal, or individual—must be good for the globe as well as for the local area and the particular monastery.

The most telling indicator of the spiritual deterioration of the Western world may well be its distortion of the purpose of work. In this culture we work so that we can do something other than work as soon as possible. We work for personal profit, not for the good of the human race. And we routinely work at segmented tasks that have no overarching meaning to us. Without a sense of purpose in life and a sense of obligation to leave the world better than we found it, we can work in places that dump chemicals into lakes and rivers without a quiver of conscience.

We are taught at a very early age to work for ourselves alone: our money, our status, our security are what counts, not the quality of our society as a whole. The notion that individuals can have whatever individuals can get turns greed into virtue. We criticize welfare for the poor, which we call food stamps, but have no problem at all with welfare for the rich, which we call tax breaks. We use the poor of other countries to provide labor at slave wages. We export our jobs but not our wage scales. We use work to exploit people rather than to liberate them. Indeed, we need new ideals of work.

A spirituality of work, the ancient Rule of Benedict implies, has five components. It sees work as your gift to the world. It builds the human community. It leads to self-fulfillment. It saves you from total self-centeredness and gives you a reason to exist that is larger than yourself. And it enables the Creator to go on creating. Clearly, work sanctifies you by calling you to save the globe for others and save others for the sake of the globe.

Once upon a time, past the seeker on a prayer rug came the beggars and the broken and the beaten. Looking up to heaven, the seeker cried out, “Great and loving God, if you are a loving God, look at these and do something!” And the voice came back from heaven, “I did do something—I made you.”

A spirituality of work is that process by which you finally come to know that your work is God’s work, unfinished by God because God meant it to be finished by you.

—from The Monastic Heart by Joan Chittister (Convergent)

What's New: August 8, 2022

PAX CHRISTI USAMary Lou Kownacki, Director of Benetvision, and the Erie Benedictine community were credited with the success of Pax Christi USA in a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter. Click here to read the piece, which describes the fifty-year history of Pax Christi USA and features a picture of Joan Chittister, Sister Mary Lou, and other key figures in the Catholic peace movement.

POEM OF THE WEEK

The Widening Sky

I am so small walking on the beach

at night under the widening sky.

The wet sand quickens beneath my feet

and the waves thunder against the shore.

I am moving away from the boardwalk

with its colorful streamers of people

and the hotels with their blinking lights.

The wind sighs for hundreds of miles.

I am disappearing so far into the dark

I have vanished from sight.

I am a tiny seashell

that has secretly drifted ashore

and carries the sound of the ocean

surging through its body.

I am so small now no one can see me.

How can I be filled with such a vast love?

—Edward Hirsch

Compiled by Mary Lou Kownacki, Jacqueline Sanchez-Small, and Benetvision Staff