The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [172]
All work has dignity. No job, when done freely, is ignoble. Part of our Jesuit novitiate training was doing “low and humble tasks” in the house, like cleaning toilets, mopping floors, and washing dishes. Two of the greatest Jesuit saints, close friends we have already met, did those kinds of work: Alphonsus Rodríguez tended the door at the College in Majorca, Spain. His friend, Peter Claver, the “slave of the slaves,” worked to exhaustion bringing food to the slave ships of Cartagena. No work done freely and with a good intention is undignified. And was Jesus any less the Son of God when he was doing manual labor?
Understanding the dignity of work comes when we realize that we are, as theologians say, “cocreators” with God. In the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius asks us to imagine ourselves “laboring” with God and God “laboring” on our behalf. We work with God to build a better world. And God sees the fruit of our labor, even if others cannot. Think of Joseph, the carpenter who taught Jesus his craft, a man given no lines to say in the New Testament and whose life remains almost completely hidden. Through his silent work he was able to help fashion, as the Jesuit theologian John Haughey says, “the instrument most needed for the salvation of the world.”
Joseph’s work was of supreme importance—even though others may not have seen this at the time. How similar this is to the many millions of people who do hidden work today: spending long hours working to put their kids through school; taking on an extra job to save money to care for an elderly parent or relative; working to exhaustion scrubbing floors, doing multiple loads of laundry, and spending hours over a stove for their families. Even if their efforts are hidden from others, they are seen by the One whose gaze matters most.
Here’s a parable about this that I like: An elderly stone-carver was working in a medieval cathedral on a marble statue of a saint. He spent many days carefully carving the intricate folds of her dress, on the back of the statue. First he used a large chisel, then a smaller one, and then sanded it down with great care. Another stone-carver noticed what he was doing and realized that the statue would be placed in a dark niche, its back facing the wall, his friend’s handiwork hidden. “Why are you doing that hard work?” his friend asked. “No one will see it.”
“God will,” he said.
The Dignity of Work
Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit, spoke of the value of hidden work—in a meditation called “Why Become or Remain a Jesuit?”
I think of brothers I myself have known—of my friend Alfred Delp, who with hands chained [in a German prison for opposing Hitler] signed his declaration of final membership in the Society; of one who in a village in India that is unknown to Indian intellectuals helps poor people to dig their wells; of another who for long hours in the confessional listens to the pain and torment of ordinary people who are far more complex than they appear on the surface. I think of one who in Barcelona is beaten by police along with his students without the satisfaction of actually being a revolutionary and savoring its glory; of one who assists daily in the hospital at the bedside of death until that unique event becomes for him a dull routine; of the one who in prison must proclaim over and over again the message of the Gospel with never a token of gratitude, who is more appreciated for the handout of cigarettes than for the words of the Good News he brings; of the one who with difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods away at the task of awakening in just a few men and women a small spark of faith, of hope and of charity.
The second Ignatian insight into work is acceptance of failure. While we should use our self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism, there is no guarantee that we will