It has often been considered that faith and the ordinary life of a person, that is his work, his daily activities, are not compatible. That, for instance, being ethical and being guided by morals in business or in the workplace, must be dichotomized from religious belief.
Some years ago, in 1928 to be exact, a young priest, Josemaria Escriva (now a canonized saint), was inspired to start a “revolutionary movement” known as the Opus Dei (Work of God). Then, as today, Christians dichotomized between living their Christian faith and their daily lives. Piety and contemplative prayer were seen to be the function of priests, nuns and religious, but the ordinary man had to make a living, and going to Mass on Sundays and holidays of obligation, saying some devotional prayers and, in general, “being good” were enough. His relationship with God and his relationship with the world were two different things—being “good” meant not doing “bad” things like murder, stealing, fornication and adoring false gods.
Opus Dei opened up a whole new way of sanctification in the middle of the world through the exercise of one’s ordinary daily life and work, and the fulfillment of family, personall, and social obligations. being a “saint” did not have to mean being tortured and killed for one’s faith, but in little things that one encounters in one’s everyday life, even for those of us who work for a living. In Saint Josemaria’s words, “Everyday life is the true setting for your lives as Christians. Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work and your affections are….It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God and all mankind.”
Professional excellence, or the way you carry out your work in the office, in the factory, or where you make your living, is perfectly compatible with human integrity, and requires the development of human virtues in the exercise of one’s profession. It is wrong to separate moral demands from work demands. Business or the workplace is an ample field for the exercise of virtues—and “virtue” is not an invention of Christianity, for the idea of virtue had existed in raised it to a higher order.
Thus, one must not live a kind of double life—on the one side, an interior life, a life in relation with God, and on the other a separate and distinct professional, social and family life, full of earthly realities. We cannot be like schizophrenics: there is just one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is this life that has to become, in both soul and body, holy and filled with God. He is there in the most visible and material things. We have to learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life, give the most trivial occurrences and situations their noble and original meaning.
Remembering this, as we go to our workplaces, leads us to do our work perfectly, to put love in the little things of our everyday work-life, thus, discovering the divine something that is hidden in the small details. In Saint Josemaria’s words, “…When a Christian carries out the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God….Christian vocation consists of making heroic verse out of the prose of each day….”
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The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Finex.