What if you knew that you only had six months to live, but that you could keep your health, would you live your life differently? In this episode of By Your Life, we discuss what others have done when they thought the end was at hand versus what God is calling us to do.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_11_17.mp3

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time – November 17, 2019

Welcome to the eighty-sixth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. But before we do, I want to back up to a few days ago, to Friday, when the Gospel reading was from the 17^th chapter of Luke. Jesus reminded his disciples, and us, about the days of Noah and Lot, when the people were going about their business, doing the things that they did every day. But then, the flood happened, or the destruction of Sodom occurred. He said, “Fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.” (Lk 17:29-30)

I use this as a backdrop because we find the same warning repeated in this Sunday’s readings. The first reading, the psalm, and the Gospel all speak of the coming of the Lord and the words are similarly alarming in some ways. We heard in the first reading: “The day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch.” (Mal 3:19) And in the Gospel we were warned: “All that you see here–the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” (Lk 21:6)

The thing that struck me as interesting is that tucked in between these warnings of total destruction at the end of time, is the second reading from St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians where he writes about going about our daily lives and doing the things we do every day. As odd as this seems at first glance, it is no accident that these readings are presented together.

St. Paul wrote his second letter to the Thessalonians to reinforce the first and to clear up some misunderstandings. Apparently, some members of the community had stopped working for a living, most likely because they thought the second coming was imminent. Some of these early Christians expected that Jesus would return in glory soon, perhaps in their own lifetimes. As a result, they thought, “Why bother working, the end is near.”

Almost 2,000 years later, we are guilty of the other extreme. Instead of living like the Lord’s second coming might be this week, we have grown complacent. We go about our busy lives without regard to the end of time. He hasn’t come in 2,000 years; chances are he’s not going to come anytime soon. As with most extremes, neither one of these is a good option. We should neither stop all work because the end is near, nor should we live our lives as if it isn’t.

There is an important relationship or an integration of the ho-hum of our daily lives and the coming of the Kingdom. And this is what I’d like to reflect on today. That is, do we glorify the Lord by our everyday lives?

The second reading begins, “You know how one must imitate us. For we did not act in a disorderly way among you, nor did we eat food received free from anyone. On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you.” (2 Thes 3:7-8)

The words “toil and drudgery” produce negative images of work. Yet, Pope St. John Paul II, in his Encyclical Laborem Exercens “On Human Work” wrote, “Toil is something that is universally known, for it is universally experienced. And yet, in spite of all this toil—perhaps, in a sense, because of it—work is a good thing for man. It is not only good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy; it is also good as being something worthy, that is to say, something that corresponds to man’s dignity, that expresses this dignity and increases it. (LE 9)

Listen to that again. Work is good for man not only because it is useful or enjoyable, but because it is worthy and expresses and increases man’s dignity. Do these words reflect how you view your work? Is the quality of your work worthy of honor or respect? Is your work, as St. Paul wrote, “a model for [others], so that [they] might imitate [you]”? (2 Thes 3:9)

Last week, near the end of the Cleveland Browns-Pittsburg Steelers game, a defensive player for the Browns ripped off the helmet of the Steelers’ quarterback and hit him in the head with it. This was not a model for others to imitate. It was quite the opposite. Our day-to-day lives don’t usually include behavior that rises to this level. Neither do we have officials who pull out a yellow flag and call us on it. Our little transgressions are easier to dismiss, but that doesn’t mean our behavior is worthy of respect.

One of my clients recently was expressing frustration because an employee had taken the day off without notice. He simply called in to say he wasn’t going to come in to work that day. The problem wasn’t so much this incident, but an excessive habit of unplanned and unexplained absenteeism. In that same conversation, my client shared that he had just gotten back from vacation and because he was taking a late flight, he planned to come into work a little late the next morning, but instead, he didn’t bother to come in at all. He excused himself because he was the boss, so it was okay. When I looked at him, he knew that I had just thrown an imaginary yellow flag. He immediately acknowledged the problem with that line of thinking. He had just modeled the behavior he didn’t want his employees to imitate. What about you? Is your work a worthy model for others to imitate?

St. Paul goes on, “when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.” (2 Thes 3:10) If you go back to his first letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul wrote, “We were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well,” (1 Thes 2:8), and explained that by “working night and day in order not to burden any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.” (1 Thes 2:9)

So, they worked side by side to share their very selves and by working night and day proclaimed the gospel of God. What St. Paul is warning against is idleness because it can create a burden for others. It leads to taking from and not giving of self and that is denying the gospel of God.

A lot of people will cherry-pick this passage to support their political views opposing welfare or other government entitlements. I can understand how they may have reached this conclusion. My only caution is to examine the motive. Is it based on selfishness or based on love? Is it grounded in greed, or in willing the good of the other?

Believing that people who can work ought to work because work is good for the soul is a fundamental Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth both with and for one another. Hence, work is a duty. Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. It can also be redemptive. By enduring the hardship of work in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, man collaborates in a certain fashion with the Son of God in his redemptive work.” CCC 2427

In other words, we don’t just work to eat. We work because we have a duty to use the talents God has given us and we have an opportunity to unite our work with Christ for the salvation of souls.

All of this theology may seem a bit deep as we head to work on a Monday. But it is important because most of us don’t take a minute to consider that what we do to earn a living each day has anything to do with salvation. But in his encyclical, St. John Paul II continued: “Without this consideration it is impossible to understand the meaning of the virtue of industriousness, and more particularly it is impossible to understand why industriousness should be a virtue: for virtue, as a moral habit, is something whereby man becomes good as man.” (LE 9)

St. Paul goes on to explain why we should pursue industriousness and not idleness, because if we don’t, instead of keeping busy, we end up acting in a disorderly way and minding the business of others. (2 Thes 3:11) So, I think St. Paul is encouraging us not to allow others to sin when he said, “if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.” (2 Thes 3:10) Do not enable them to continue in their idleness. Instead, we should be encouraging them, as St. Jerome wrote, to “do something, so that the devil may always find you busy.”

And that brings me back to the first reading and the Gospel. We have been given fair warning that Christ will come again. It would be foolish to live as if we’ve got plenty of time to get our act together, just as it is foolish to stop living because the end is near. There is an integration of our daily lives and God’s plan of salvation. We are participants in it.

The Second Vatican Council teaches, “Man’s work is a participation in God’s activity and ought to permeate, even the most ordinary everyday activities.” While providing for ourselves and our families, we ought to perform our work in a way that appropriately benefits society and even by our secular activity we can assist one another to live holier lives. (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium)

There are a lot of opportunities to assist each other to live holier lives. But Jesus warned us, we will be hated if we do. People don’t like to be given negative feedback. They can be downright nasty. When I hear people complaining about co-workers, I will ask them, “Have you talked to them about it?” They often respond, “Whoa, I did that once and I’m not going there again.”

My advice is check your motivation. Is your feedback for their benefit or for yours? When we admonish someone, it should always be out of concern for them. You may still be hated but try again. Jesus told us, “You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” (Lk 21:17-19) And, we may help them to secure theirs. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us.

Come Holy Spirit, help us to know the place that our work has, not only in earthly progress but also in the development of the Kingdom of God to which we are all called. Help us to persevere when we are hated because of the name of Jesus and grant us the salvation that His name promises. As we wait in joyful hope of the coming of the Lord, may we glorify him by our lives.

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