Vigils Reading

ON WORK AND PRAYER
From “The Divine Milieu” by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin2
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Our work appears to us, in the main, as a way of earning our daily bread. But its essential virtue is of a higher order: through it we complete in ourselves the subject of the divine union; and through it again we augment in some sense, in relation to ourselves, the divine end of that union, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence whatever our human function may be, whether artist or workingman or scholar, we can, if we are Christians, speed towards the object of our work as though towards an outlet open on the supreme fulfillment of our beings.

We ought to accustom ourselves to this basic truth till we are steeped in it, until it becomes as familiar to us as the perception of relief or the reading of words. God, in all that is most living and incarnate in Him, is not withdrawn from us beyond the tangible sphere; He is waiting for us at every moment in our action, in our work of the moment. He is in some sort at the tip of my pen, my spade, my brush, my needle – of my heart and of my thought. By pressing the stroke, the line, or the stitch, on which I am engaged, to its ultimate natural finish, I shall arrive at the ultimate aim towards which my innermost will tends.

I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that nine out of ten practicing Christians feel that work is always at the level of a ‘spiritual encumbrance.’ In spite of the practice of right intentions, and the day offered every morning to God, the general run of the faithful dimly feel that time spent at the office or the studio, in the fields or in the factory, is time diverted from prayer and adoration.

On the contrary, try, with God’s help, to perceive the connection even physical and natural which binds your labor with the building of the Kingdom of Heaven; try to realize that heaven itself smiles upon you and, through your works, draws you to itself; then, as you leave church for the noisy streets, you will remain with only one feeling, that of continuing to immerse yourself in God. If your work is dull or exhausting, take refuge in the inexhaustible and becalming interest of progressing in the divine life. If your work enthralls you, then allow the spiritual impulse which matter communicates to you to enter into your taste for God whom you know better and desire more under the veil of His works. Never, at any time, “whether eating or drinking,” consent to do anything without first of all realizing its significance and constructive value in Christ Jesus, and pursuing it with all your might. This is not simply a commonplace precept for salvation: it is the very path to sanctity for each man according to his state and calling. For what is sanctity in a creature if not to cleave to God with the maximum of his strength? And what does that maximum cleaving to God mean if not the fulfillment — in the world organized around Christ — of the exact function, be it lowly or eminent, to which that creature is destined both by natural endowment and by supernatural gift?… Right from the hands that knead the dough, to those that consecrate it, the great and universal Host should be prepared and handled in a spirit of adoration.
May the time come when men, having been awakened to a sense of the close bond linking all the movements of this world in the unique work of the Incarnation, shall be unable to give themselves to a single one of their tasks without illuminating it with the clear vision that their work – however elementary it may be – is received and made use of by a Center of the universe.

2 The Divine Milieu, New York, 1960, pp. 32ff.