Have you ever seen a bird — a sparrow, say — that's hurt its wing or gotten tangled up somehow, so it can't fly? It tries again and again until exhaustion finally stops it. A minute later it's back at it, but no luck… It's stuck on the ground, defenseless, panicking, terrified because there's no way out. Cornered, it tries at least to find some kind of cover, maybe a nearby bush… I bring up this scene, which is frankly a little heartbreaking, because it can help you understand something St. Josemaría loved pointing to: striking words from the Book of Job that describe something as essential to being human as flying is to a bird. "Man is born to labor as the birds are born to fly," the sacred author tells us, and St. Josemaría quotes (Job 5:7; quoted in Friends of God, no. 57).
Without each of us working at our own thing (students included, because studying is your work), we'd end up something like that battered sparrow. And yet we often think we'd be happier if we didn't have to work at all… The truth, though, is that if we spent our lives here on earth never doing anything "work-like," we'd sink into the same sadness as a bird that's lost the ability to fly. It happens to people who have to go a long time without a job, or to those who get restless and bored from too much idle time.
God works
Strangely enough, even before the fall, the Book of Genesis tells us that "the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it" (Gen 2:15). The first man and woman were asked to take care of the garden. Why? Because man and woman were made in the image of God, and God Himself works!
The first time work is mentioned in the Bible (using the Hebrew word "melakhá," meaning work or labor), it isn't in reference to humans at all, but to God: the creation of the world in seven days is described as God's own work: "On the seventh day God finished the work (melakhá) that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done" (Gen 2:2). Obviously, God's work isn't exactly like ours. It's similar, but also different. Still, the fact remains that we were created, among other things, to work and to care for things — and that connects back to our being made like God, who also works. In fact, you could say we're not only called to work, we're called to work like God! But how?
Working like God
God chose to reveal what it means to work like him when he decided to become one of us through the incarnation of his Son. Jesus shows us, among other things, that God works and also how he works. Jesus says: "My Father is working still, and I am working" (John 5:17). Wanting to be Christian, which means taking Christ as the reference point for our lives, includes learning from his life of work in Nazareth, through his youth and early adulthood, and later, during his years of public ministry, when he poured himself out to reach everyone, in days full of intensity and grace — and, yes, tiredness too.
Working with the apostles and disciples, he carried the joy of the gospel to so many people. And he got tired; but happily so, because he put into that work all the love he carried inside, right up to giving his life for his friends. Even his Passion was work: the labor of redeeming souls.
St. Josemaría explained the need to work by tying it directly to the work of the Son of God:
We can't resemble Jesus if we don't imitate him in our work, because for people seeking holiness in the middle of the world, that would mean insisting on a different road than the one he walked. If we cut work out of the equation of our Christian life, what would be left? Do we only sanctify our downtime, or the time we spend praying? In that case, we'd be a kind of "Catholic submarine," cruising hidden below the surface all week, doing whatever, and only surfacing on Sunday for Mass before diving right back down until the following week. No trace left behind, nobody able to tell that we're Christians in our day-to-day life, let alone at work. Submerged. At most, maybe we'd raise the periscope once in a while to ask God for something work-related, like help on a difficult test.
By contrast, St. Josemaría taught us that our work and professional vocations are "an essential and inseparable part of our condition as Christians. Our Lord wants you to be holy in the place where you are, in the job you have chosen for whatever reason. To me, every job that is not opposed to the divine law is good and noble, and capable of being raised to the supernatural plane, that is, inserted into the constant flow of Love which defines the life of a child of God" (Friends of God, no. 60).
Living as a child of God: that's the key to working like Jesus, the Son of God who refers everything back to his Father. That's why your job — whatever it is — is the place where you should try to work like Jesus did. And what spirit drove his work? We could sum it up in three well-known phrases: "hallowed be your name" (giving glory to God), "your will be done" (doing God's will), and "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve" (serving others). Could those three phrases describe your work too?
Beware! The Tower of Babel
The real danger is trading those attitudes for a very different one. Take a look at the ambitions behind the confusion at the Tower of Babel: "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves" (Gen 11:4). They wanted to make a name for themselves. Instead of glorifying God, they aimed to glorify themselves. The result was a confusion of languages, division, and people cut off from one another. "Work with God in mind, without craving human glory. Some people see work as a means to win honors, or to gain power or wealth that feeds their personal ambition, or to enjoy the pride of feeling capable," but children of God are called to see work as "a chance to serve everyone, out of love for God" (Letter 14, no. 18).
Go on... Fly!
If you notice your work isn't well done, or isn't rightly oriented, that's your cue to start over. Your work can be like wings that lift you higher every day, carrying your world up toward God along with you. Through your own effort, you might climb only modestly, but with the help of grace, you end up somewhere very high, gazing at Jesus close by in everything you do, not just at work.
You're like that little bird St. Josemaría used as an analogy for himself: "I see myself like a poor little bird, used to flying only from tree to tree or, at most, up to a third-floor balcony… until one day it worked up the nerve to reach the roof of a certain modest house — nothing like a skyscraper… But then an eagle swoops down and snatches our little bird up — mistaking it for one of its own chicks — and, held in its powerful talons, the little bird rises, rises very high, above the mountains of the earth and the snow-capped peaks, above the white and blue and rose-colored clouds, higher still, until it's looking straight at the sun… And then the eagle, letting the little bird go, tells it: go on, fly!…" (The Forge, no. 39).
