When we reflect on the life of Jesus Christ, one fact should astonish us. Of the approximately thirty-three years he spent on earth, nearly thirty were lived in obscurity. The Gospels concentrate on his public ministry, Passion and Resurrection, while telling us relatively little about the long years he spent in Nazareth. Yet those hidden years were not simply a waiting period before Christ began his real mission. They formed part of that mission. For most of his earthly life, the Son of God lived in an ordinary family and earned his living through the work of his hands.
From a human point of view, very little of historical importance seemed to be happening in Nazareth. The Roman Empire dominated the Mediterranean world, emperors ruled and armies marched, while the Creator of the universe lived in a village of so little importance that Nathanael would later ask, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Jesus lived there with Mary and Joseph, learned a trade from St. Joseph and became known simply as “the carpenter.” Day after day, he carried out the ordinary tasks of a craftsman. The hands through which the universe had been created now worked with ordinary tools. He experienced the routine and fatigue of human labour and dealt with the people of a small community. When he eventually returned to Nazareth after beginning his public ministry, his neighbours were astonished by his wisdom because they had known him for so many years simply as a workman.
This tells us something fundamental about the dignity of work. Christ did not merely teach us that honest human labour has value; he worked. In the ancient world, manual labour was often regarded as something beneath the dignity of those who possessed wealth or social standing. Christ chose a very different path. By spending most of his earthly life as a craftsman, he showed that the dignity of our work does not depend upon prestige, recognition or social status. Any honest occupation compatible with God’s law can become part of our path to holiness.
This has enormous importance for most Christians because relatively few of us will accomplish things that attract widespread attention or find a place in history books. Much of our life consists of ordinary responsibilities and repetitive tasks whose importance may never be recognized beyond a small circle of people. We could easily imagine that holiness must be found somewhere more obviously religious or extraordinary. Nazareth teaches us otherwise. God deliberately chose an ordinary life for his Son. For most of those thirty years, Jesus did not preach to crowds or work public miracles. He lived in a family, earned his living and fulfilled faithfully the duties that belonged to his circumstances.
We therefore do not ordinarily need to escape from our daily life in order to find God. We are called to find him precisely there. St. Josemaría Escrivá insisted throughout his life that ordinary Christians are called to seek holiness in the middle of the world. Our professional work is therefore much more than a practical necessity or a way of earning a living. It is one of the principal places where God waits for us and where we can respond to his call.
This changes the way we judge the value of what we do. We naturally want our work to bear fruit, and it is reasonable to hope that our efforts will be appreciated and that we will advance professionally when circumstances permit. But recognition and success cannot be the ultimate measure of our work. Jesus spent nearly thirty years doing work that attracted almost no public attention, yet those years were no less part of his perfect fulfilment of the Father’s will than the years in which he preached the Gospel and performed miracles. When he worked at his trade in Nazareth, he was carrying out the mission for which the Father had sent him.
This can help us when much of our own work seems unimportant. We complete one task only to find another waiting, and some responsibilities have to be repeated day after day with little visible result. The value of these things does not depend upon whether other people notice them. What matters ultimately is whether we are doing what God asks of us and the love with which we do it. Something that appears insignificant in the eyes of the world can have great value before God when it forms part of the faithful fulfilment of our vocation.
The hidden life of Christ also teaches us not to divide our existence into two separate parts, one belonging to God and another belonging to ordinary life. Jesus did not have one life in the synagogue and another in the workshop. His whole life belonged to the Father. Our prayer and reception of the sacraments nourish our relationship with God, but that relationship continues when we begin our daily work. We do not leave God behind when we enter the ordinary circumstances of our professional life. We can offer our work to him, carry it out in his presence and serve through it the people who depend upon us. The effort and fatigue involved can also become part of our offering.
The workshop of Nazareth was holy because the Son of God was there fulfilling the Father’s will through ordinary work. Something similar can happen in our own lives. We do not need extraordinary circumstances. The work already before us can become a place of encounter with Christ if we learn to carry it out with him and for him.
If we want to sanctify our work, however, good intentions are not enough. Christ would never have worked carelessly. Whatever task he undertook in Nazareth, he would have done honestly and reliably. If he promised something, he would have kept his word, and whatever he made would have received the care the task required. We cannot habitually work badly and imagine that offering our work to God somehow compensates for negligence. We should try to make the work itself worthy of being offered.
This means developing the competence our responsibilities require. If we are students, we should study seriously; if we practise a profession, we should acquire and maintain the knowledge and skills needed to practise it well. This is not a matter of vanity or perfectionism. Other people often depend upon what we do, and they have a right to expect reasonable competence from us. Doing our work well therefore becomes a matter of justice as well as a form of service.
St. Paul tells us, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col 3:23). These words can change our attitude toward duties that seem insignificant or go unnoticed. We may be tempted to work carefully only when a task seems important or when someone is likely to evaluate the result. If we remember that our work is offered to God, however, even ordinary duties deserve the care reasonably required of them.
This does not mean that everything must be done perfectly. Perfectionism can itself interfere with good work. We may spend excessive time improving something that is already sufficiently well done while neglecting other responsibilities that deserve our attention. Sometimes professional competence requires meticulous attention to detail; at other times, limited time and resources mean that we must accept a result that is good enough for the purpose. We should learn what good work reasonably requires in the actual circumstances, do it as well as we can, and then move on without becoming obsessed with achieving an impossible perfection.
Our work also involves much more than completing tasks because it brings us into contact with other people. Some are easy to work with, while others test our patience. We may have a supervisor whose decisions we find difficult to understand or a colleague whose habits irritate us. Sometimes the hardest part of our work is not the work itself but the people with whom we have to do it. These situations are also part of our path to holiness.
We should try to treat the people around us as Christ would treat them. This can demand more of us than professional competence. We may know exactly how to solve a technical problem and still find it difficult to remain patient with someone who interrupts us at the wrong moment. We may do excellent work and yet become defensive when someone criticizes it. A colleague may need help when we are already busy, or another person’s mistake may create additional work for us. In these ordinary situations we are given opportunities to forget ourselves and serve. Sometimes, after a difficult day, the most important thing we accomplished may not have been the task we completed but the patience we showed when we were tempted to lose our temper.
Our professional life is also one of the principal places where lay Christians can bring others closer to Christ. We spend much of our time alongside people of very different beliefs, some of whom may rarely enter a church or think seriously about religion. They nevertheless see how we work. They notice whether we are honest and reliable, whether we keep our word and accept responsibility when we make a mistake. They see how we treat people who cannot advance our interests and how we react when things go wrong. The coherence of our life can make the Christian faith more credible.
Professional competence therefore has an apostolic dimension as well. If we speak frequently about our faith but are unreliable in our work, our words lose much of their force. Someone who is respected for his integrity and competence is often better placed to speak about deeper matters when the opportunity arises. Example, however, does not mean that we should never speak. A colleague may ask what we believe about a moral question or begin to ask deeper questions because of some difficulty in his life. At such times we should be able to speak naturally about our faith without turning the workplace into a pulpit or hiding Christ because we are afraid of what others may think.
Friendship usually provides the best setting for this kind of apostolate. When we take a sincere interest in the people around us, trust develops over time, and deeper conversations arise naturally. We may eventually have an opportunity to speak about God or help someone take a step closer to him. Our work can thus become much more than a means of earning a living. It becomes a place where we serve people, form genuine friendships and perhaps help others encounter Christ.
Work, of course, is not always interesting or satisfying. We may begin a profession with enthusiasm and later discover how much of it consists of routine. Similar problems return, familiar tasks have to be repeated, and the novelty that once motivated us gradually disappears. Jesus knew the ordinary rhythm of work in Nazareth. For nearly thirty years, day followed day, and he must have repeated many of the same tasks countless times. He did not need constant novelty in order to fulfil the Father’s will, and neither do we.
We can sometimes imagine that our life would become more meaningful if only our work were more exciting. There are certainly times when changing jobs or professions is reasonable, especially when another form of work is better suited to our abilities or responsibilities. But no occupation eliminates routine. Sooner or later, every kind of work requires perseverance. Much of our sanctification takes place when we return faithfully to our duties after enthusiasm has faded, finish what we have begun and refuse to let our mood determine the quality of what we do.
Human work also bears the consequences of the Fall. Genesis reminds us that labour would involve toil, and we experience this in fatigue, frustration and disappointing results. Christ entered fully into the reality of human effort. He knew what it meant to work with a body that became tired, and in his Passion he would take upon himself the full weight of human suffering. When our duties involve unavoidable effort, we can unite it to him and make it part of our offering. We do not need to seek unnecessary suffering, glorify overwork or neglect legitimate rest. But the difficulties that genuinely belong to our responsibilities can become another way of following Christ.
If we want to sanctify our work, we also need freedom from an excessive attachment to professional success. We should take our work seriously and hope that our efforts bear fruit, but success cannot become the measure of our worth or the foundation of our happiness. Professional life can easily absorb us because it gives us a sense of accomplishment and identity. We naturally enjoy being good at what we do and being respected for it. The difficulty begins when recognition becomes too important, so that we continually compare ourselves with others, resent someone who advances more quickly, or experience criticism of our work as an attack upon our value as a person.
We need to keep our work in its proper place. Before we are professionals, students, parents or anything else, we are children of God. Our deepest identity does not depend upon what we achieve. God loved us before we accomplished anything, and his love does not increase when we succeed or diminish when we fail. Knowing this gives us the freedom to work hard without making an idol of success. We can reasonably hope for advancement without allowing ambition to dominate us, and we can rejoice when another person receives recognition that we ourselves might have wanted.
The same freedom helps us deal with failure. Sometimes we fail because we did not prepare adequately or made a poor decision. When that happens, we should acknowledge our responsibility, learn from what occurred and repair any harm we caused. Then we begin again. At other times, we may work conscientiously and still fail. Circumstances change, a project does not succeed, someone else receives the position we wanted, or years of effort produce much less than we expected. These experiences can be painful, but they do not mean that our work has been wasted.
Nazareth again gives us perspective. For nearly thirty years Jesus worked without the visible results that we normally associate with a great mission. There were no crowds following him and no public miracles, yet every one of those years formed part of his perfect fulfilment of the Father’s will. When our own efforts seem to accomplish little, we should certainly examine whether something needs to change. Poor results may reveal that we need advice, greater competence or a different approach. Once we have done what reasonably lies within our power, however, we should leave the results with God. As St. Paul wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor 3:6). We have our part to play, but the final fruit does not depend upon us alone.
A supernatural outlook also helps us understand professional ambition correctly. There is nothing wrong with wanting to advance, assume greater responsibility or make fuller use of our abilities. Christians should not confuse mediocrity with humility. We should, however, examine why we want to succeed. A new position may enable us to serve more people or use our talents more effectively, which can be an excellent reason to seek it. If our principal motive is prestige or the desire to feel superior to others, our ambition has become disordered. It can be useful to ask ourselves whether we would still desire a particular success if no one admired us for achieving it.
Greater professional responsibility should also deepen our spirit of service. When the Apostles argued about who among them was the greatest, Christ taught them that authority must be understood in terms of service. If others work under our direction, they are not merely resources for accomplishing objectives. They are persons with responsibilities and concerns of their own. We should expect good work and correct problems when necessary, but the way we exercise authority should always respect their dignity.
We also need to learn how to work well under the authority of others. There will be times when we disagree with decisions or believe that we could organize things better ourselves. Sometimes we should offer suggestions or raise legitimate concerns, but we also need to know how to cooperate loyally once a decision has been made, provided that nothing morally wrong is being asked of us. Working with others requires us to live with their limitations as well as our own, and this can become a demanding school of charity.
We should not postpone holiness until our professional circumstances become ideal. We may tell ourselves that we will pray more when work becomes less demanding, give more time to our family when the present project is finished, or become more patient when our schedule is less stressful. Yet there is almost always another project. God calls us to seek holiness in the circumstances we have now.
This does not mean that we should passively accept circumstances that have become seriously disordered. If our workload is unreasonable or our professional life is damaging our family responsibilities, health or relationship with God, prudence may require us to reorganize our life or even change jobs. Work is important, but it is not everything. A person can be extremely successful professionally while neglecting what matters most. We need to keep the different responsibilities of our vocation in their proper order.
Sometimes this means leaving work unfinished. There will almost always be another message to answer or another task that could be improved, and we need to know when enough has been done for the day. Christ gives us an important example. During his public ministry there were always more people who wanted to see him and more sick people who could have been healed, yet he sometimes withdrew from the crowds to pray. He did not allow the endless needs around him to prevent him from living according to the Father’s will. We need the same freedom. Our work is a means of sanctification, but it should never become an excuse for neglecting God or the people he has entrusted to us.
Eventually, for many of us, professional work changes greatly or comes to an end. Retirement can be difficult when much of our identity has been connected with a career. The responsibilities and recognition that structured our days may suddenly disappear, and we may wonder what purpose remains. Yet our vocation to holiness does not end when our professional life ends. God may simply be asking us to serve him differently. We may have more time for prayer and family, while years of experience may enable us to help younger people in ways that were impossible when our professional responsibilities occupied most of our time.
Even when age or illness greatly limits what we can do, our life remains valuable and fruitful. We can continue to pray and love the people around us, and we can offer our limitations to God. Our worth has never depended upon our productivity. If we have learned throughout our lives to see work as one way of responding to God rather than as the source of our identity, we will be better prepared for the day when that particular form of service changes or ends.
The Christian understanding of work is therefore deeply liberating. We take our responsibilities seriously because they form part of God’s call, and we try to do our work well because other people depend upon us and because we want to offer God something worthy. But we do not worship our work. Much of what seems urgent today will eventually be forgotten. Organizations change, projects disappear and professional achievements that once seemed enormously important gradually recede into the past. What remains before God is the love with which we have lived.
At the end of our lives, the decisive question will not be how impressive our career appeared to others but whether we loved God and the people he placed in our path. This gives us the deepest meaning of sanctifying our work. We take the duties before us and offer them to God. We try to do them well, accept the effort they require and serve the people we encounter through them. When we succeed, we thank him; when we fail, we learn what we can and begin again. Day after day, our work becomes part of our response to his call.
We return finally to Nazareth. For nearly thirty years, the Son of God worked in a small village where almost no one recognized who he truly was. To his neighbours, he was simply the carpenter. Yet those hidden years changed forever the meaning of human work. Because Christ worked, the ordinary duties that fill so much of our own lives can become a place where we meet him. When we return tomorrow to the work that awaits us, however ordinary or repetitive it may seem, we can remember Nazareth. Christ is waiting for us there.
*By the Via Virtutis team
Photo by Pedro Henrique Santos on Unsplash
