Make it Work

I grew up with my dad's consoling answer, "I don't know, we'll make it work." This, inevitably, meant that HE would make it work out and I just had to sit tight and wait. Patiently. It usually, if not always, did work out. Generally, it meant he had to work harder, but he was always willing to do that for the right things in life, and for just about anyone.... or maybe simply everyone.

So, I grew, and I find myself saying "I don't know. We'll make it work." Like my father, I suppose that if I work extra hard and think and pray extra hard, well, then, it will work out. Because, that's the way the world works in the USA. Hard work = Good Results. Right?

Yes, but the the good results come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, because the path to heaven looks a bit different for everyone, and this - in the end - is the only good result that our hard work, prayer, and thought can really ever achieve. This wasn't an easy thing to swallow.No, I'd say it was a huge blow to realize that no matter how hard I worked, somethings were so out of my control, that it was like working to keep the sun in the sky a few minutes longer.

I began to think of where the peace comes from? Naturally, I turned my mind to the frail "work horse" we more appropriately call St. Maximilian. This man's dreams were all but shattered. He died not knowing if his beloved Friary was even intact. He died perhaps with a premonition of the imminent danger facing Mugensai no Sono. He died having worked himself to death, quite literally, and to what end? A peaceful one.

His 'secret' - hardly kept to himself - was w=W. When our will is equal to God's Will, then we are at peace. We trust with luminous faith that what seems to be a failure is just another step on the road to heaven. It occurred to me, then, that w=W might also stand for when our work is God's Work! How wonderful!

While I can't focus as much on results as I once did, I can focus all the more on the work and the will. Will to make every action His action and then He can do what HE WILLS.

Mary Didn't Work Either

public domain

(Sigh) ....

"Stay at home" moms, we know how it feels. Why does the culture we live in equate work with making money? I think that if someone dug ditches all day long under the Phoenix August sky - for free - people would look in amazement and say the familiar words..."Oh, so you don't work?!"  Somehow it is only "work" if you are getting paid. Pleasure has nothing to do with it.

You might love your job and sit in an air conditioned room all day long, but if you make bank - that's "work."  So, moms, don't feel so bad. It isn't just that there are large pockets of people that don't understand the role of motherhood - there are even more and larger pockets that don't understand the role of work.  

I find this curious - because the two are in a way connected.  Look back to Genesis and both begin at the dawn of creation. Work is not an end in itself, of course, but it is good. Even before the fall we were to work - joyfully, painlessly.  We were made keepers of the earth, made responsible, when we were given dominion. We were called to prepare the land to bear life when told to subdue the earth. And we were told to be fertile and multiply. Therefore, our work embraces responsibility for the good of creation, of which the most sacred is humanity.  Our work should bear fruit, new life, growth and development. Finally, our work is ordered to God and family. Our work is ordered to the final command to be fertile and multiply.

Mothers (parents, fathers, guardians)
- biological or spiritual (priests, vowed, etc) - do not lack, but rather embrace, these three attributes of work. Truly, they have the greatest work - in quantity and quality!

Solidarity. Subsidiarity?

Happy Labor Day to all. I take this opportunity to share with you a too often hidden gem of Catholic Social Teaching: Subsidiarity.  This principle is says that things should be done by the smallest entity possible.  In other words, if I am capable of taking care of my health needs, I should. If my neighbor is not, I should help them. The city and the government at large, notice, are not in this equation.

Subsidiarity means personal responsibility that enables and cultivates sincere love of neighbor. When persons are forced (through subtle or obvious means) to depend on outside forces for their well-being,  their personal dignity and the dignity of WORK - which we celebrate today - is completely undermined.  This is why Pope John Paul II, in Centesimus Annus, wrote that the welfare state “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

The Catholic Church thus defends, as always, the TRUTH that solidarity is nurtured and freely possible only when accompanied by authentic subsidiarity. For example,consider that I am taxed in order to give medical aid to the poor.  This money first cycles through a mega-government and countless beauracracies. Along the way precious dimes and dollars are siphoned off to keep said cycle running. In the end someone, somewhere gets some help. Note, that I was never really FREE to give the money in the first place, but compelled by law. This is solidarity without subsidiarity. 

 What if, instead, I took that money and donated directly to the charity of my choice?  100% of the money given would go directly to whom I consider most in need, locally or otherwise. This would be solidarity and subsidiarity at its finest. 

Really, not very confusing. Clear defense of the sacred rights of each human worker, his property, and his obligation to be a good steward to his neighbor.