Industriousness and order

• The Christian meaning of work
• Sanctification of work: spirit of
service and sense of justice
• Industriousness
• Professional competence and
fulfilling the duties of our state
• The work of a student
• Order: the key to working well
INDUSTRIOUSNESS & ORDER

• What is the essence of work?
• How does God conceive of work?
• Why does God will work?
» John Piper, Why God Wills Work, 1983
» http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-
library/sermons/why-god-wills-work
Christian meaning of work

• First, God wills work because when we
work in reliance on His power and
according to His pattern of excellence, His
glory is made known and our joy is
increased.
John Piper, Why God Wills Work, 1983
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-

• The second reason God wills work is that
by working we provide for our legitimate
needs.
• The third reason God wills work is that by
working we provide for the needs of those
who can't provide for their own.

• Finally, God wills work as a way of building
bridges for the gospel.
– There is a very close connection between the
way we do our work and the attitude that
unbelievers will have toward the Gospel that
makes us tick.

Work, understood both as activity
and as product, is a fundamental
part of human existence
• In producing works of our own making, we
resemble our Creator, and we should do so
consciously and cooperatively. "In this
way, work becomes supernatural, because
its end is God and because it is done, with
God in mind, as an act of obedience."
» St. Josemaria Escriva,
» http://www.ewtn.com/_saints/escriva/work_holiness.htm

according to St. Josemaria
• We have reminded Christians of the wonderful
words of Genesis which tell us that God created
man so that he might work, and we have
concentrated on the example of Christ, who
spent most of His life on earth working as a
craftsman in a village. We love human work
which He chose as His state in life, which He
cultivated and sanctified.

Christian meaning of work:
a means of perfection, a way of sanctity
• We see in work, in men‘s noble creative toil, not
only one of the highest human values, an
indispensable means to social progress and to
greater justice in the relations between men, but
also a sign of God’s Love for His creatures,
and of men’s love for each other and for
God: we see in work a means of perfection, a
way to sanctity.
– St. Josemaria Escriva, Conversations, 10

Sanctification of work: spirit of
• Sacred Scripture tells us that God placed man in the
garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
• From the beginning of man‘s existence, work is for him
a command of nature, a feature of his condition as
created being, an expression of his dignity, a means
whereby he co-operates in the great overall task of
divine Providence, and whereby he shares in the work
of Redemption when his work is associated with the
merits of Christ.

Sanctification of work:
OPUS DEI
• Hence, the sole objective of Opus Dei has
always been to see to it that there be men
and women of all races and social
conditions who endeavour to love and to
serve God and the rest of mankind in and
through their ordinary work, in the midst of
the realities and interests of the world.
– St. Josemaria Escriva, Conversations, 10

Sanctification of work: spirit of
• St Paul wrote: "Even when we were with you, we
gave you this command: If anyone will not work
let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are
living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing
any work. Now such persons we command and
exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work
in quietness and to earn their own living" (2
Thess. 3:10-12).

Honest work is a service to God
• On innumerable occasions, in print and in
person, St. Josemaria elaborated on the criteria
for honest work—industriousness, sound
professional training, attention to detail, care
for the quality of the work accomplished—
and considered it inseparable from good
personal behavior.

Industriousness
• Industriousness: diligence; persevering determination to
perform a task
• Synonyms: diligence, hard work, industry, application,
conscientiousness, productiveness, energy
• Industriousness is busy — always devising ways to get things done.
• Industriousness is energetic — putting focus on accomplishments.
• Industriousness is usable — for a particular purpose or in a special
way.
• Industriousness is diligence — attentiveness and commitment to a
task.
• Industriousness is vigor — strength and energy coupled with intent.
– http://www.virtue.info/virtues/noble/industry/virtue.php

Industriousness
• Work well done is work done with love. To have a
proper regard to the task we are engaged in
is, perhaps, the first step in ennobling it and raising it
to the level of the supernatural.
• We have to put our heart into the things that we
do, and not just do them
mechanically, automatically, ‗because we haven‘t any
option.‘

• In the book Opus Dei by Peter Berglar, he quoted
St. Josemaria Escriva as saying: ―The galley slave
is well aware that he rows in order to make the ship
move; but for this to give meaning to his life, he
needs to appreciate the meaning that suffering and
punishment have for a Christian.
» From Opus Dei: Life & Work of Its Founder, Josemaria
Escriva, by Peter Berglar
German original ©1983 Otto Muller Verlag Salzburg
English edition ©1994 Scepter Publishers, Inc.
Industriousness

• That is, he has to see his situation as a means
of identifying himself with Christ. If, through
ignorance or rejection, he doesn‘t manage to
see this, he will end up hating his ‗work.‘ A
similar effect can be seen when the fruit of
one‘s labors is so alienated from its maker that
it scarcely impinges on his consciousness.‖
Industriousness

• Many people go to ‗work‘ every morning as if they
were going to the gallows, to row a ship to a
destination they are neither aware of nor care about;
all they look forward to is the weekend and the pay-
check.
• This sort of work, evidently, can do nothing to ennoble
or sanctify man, and only with difficulty can it develop
his personality and be of real benefit to society.
Industriousness

• Keep our professional interests alive, plus
our desire to develop our capacities to the
maximum in order to set Christ on the
summit of all human activities.
• St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, n. 183

• All professional work demands previous training and a
constant effort to improve one‘s formation and to
adapt it to the new circumstances that may arise. And
this is very specially true for those who aspire to
occupy leading positions in society, because they are
called to a very important service on which the
entire community‘s well-being depends.
» St. Josemaria Escriva, Conversations, 90
» http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/
sanctifying-ordinary-work
Professional competence and

• ‗What use is it telling me that so and so is a good son
of mine — a good Christian — but a bad shoemaker?‘
If he doesn‘t try to learn his trade well, or doesn‘t give
his full attention to it, he won‘t be able to sanctify it or
offer it to Our Lord. The sanctification of ordinary work
is, as it were, the hinge of true spirituality for people
who, like us, have decided to come close to God while
being at the same time fully involved in temporal
affairs.
» St. Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God, 61
» http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/
sanctifying-ordinary-work

• "I don't understand how a son of mine could be
twiddling his thumbs, killing time. What a pity to
kill time, which is a divine treasure! If a son or
daughter of mine has time on their hands, they
are not doing their duty. I always have to leave
things for the next day.... We have to go to sleep
loaded with things to do, like little donkeys of
God."
– Peter Berglar, Opus Dei: Life & Work of Its
Founder, Josemaria Escriva

‘Professionalitis’
• You really do need to make an effort and put your
shoulder to the wheel. For all that, you should put
your professional interests in their place: they
are only means to an end; they can never be
regarded — in any way — as if they were the basic
thing. These attacks of ‗professionalitis‘ stop you
being united with God!
– St. Josemaria Escrriva, Furrow, 502
• http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/sanctifying-ordinary-work

The work of a student
• Student: form yourself in a solid and active
piety, be outstanding in study, have a strong
desire for the ‗professional‘ apostolate. And
with that vigor of your religious and
professional training, I promise you rapid and
far-reaching developments.
» St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, 346
» http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/study

• You pray, you deny yourself, you work in a
thousand apostolic activities, but you don‘t
study. You are useless then unless you change.
Study–professional training of whatever type it
be–is a grave obligation for us.
» The Way, 334

• An hour of study, for a modern apostle, is an
hour of prayer.
» The Way, 335

• You have a war-horse called study. You resolve a
thousand times to make good use of your time, yet
you are distracted by the slightest thing. Sometimes
you get annoyed at yourself, because of your lack of
willpower, even though you begin again every day.
Have you tried offering up your study for specific
apostolic intentions?
» Furrow, 523

• Whenever your will weakens in your ordinary work,
you must recall these thoughts: ―Study, work, is an
essential part of my way. If I were discredited
professionally as a consequence of my laziness it
would make my work as a Christian useless or
impossible. To attract and to help others, I need
the influence of my professional reputation, and
that is what God wants.‖
Never doubt that if you abandon your task, you are
going away from God‘s plans and leading others
away from them.
» Furrow, 781

• You must study ... but that is not enough.
What do those who kill themselves working to feed
their self-esteem achieve? Or those who have nothing
else in mind but assuring peace of mind for a few
years ahead?
One has to study – to gain the world and conquer it for
God. Then we can raise the level of our efforts: we
can try to turn the work we do into an encounter with
the Lord and the foundation to support those who will
follow our way in the future.
In this way, study will become prayer.
» Furrow, 526

• Be convinced of this: your apostolate consists in
spreading goodness, light, enthusiasm,
generosity, a spirit of sacrifice, constancy in work,
deep study, complete self-surrender, being up-to-
date, cheerful and complete obedience to the
Church, and perfect charity.
Nobody can give what he does not have.
» Furrow, 927

Order: the key to working well
• St. Augustine defined order as ―a disposition of
equal and unequal things, which gives each of
them its proper place.‖ As such, to have order
means not only keeping in their proper places
those things that we use or are around us, but
principally and fundamentally keeping our
thoughts and desires ordered so that we can
properly order our actions.

• St Thomas tells us that if we want to order
various things, we need to see them in relation
to their end or purpose, ―for the order of various
things among themselves is dependent on the
order that they have towards their end.‖
– Joseph L. Soria , Order, 1993
» http://www.scepterpublishers.org/product/samples/478.pdf

• To have order in one‘s ideas—to order
one‘s mind—one must begin by
establishing a hierarchy. That is to say, we
need to know which truths are properly
subordinated to others, and which need
always to prevail in determining our
decisions.

• St. Josemaria has written: ―Order will bring
harmony to your life, and lead you to
perseverance. Order will give peace to your
heart and weight to your behavior.‖
• This is why we have to have order in our mind:
to understand the relationships among things
and the relation of everything to God. We need
ideas which form a hierarchy of both necessity
and certainty, and we cannot allow the
subjective to prevail over the objective.

• Let‘s look at four questions that business
efficiency experts have used as a rule of thumb
for determining orderliness:
– Have I ever had to interrupt my dictating or writing of
a letter to search for essential texts or documents
connected with the matter?
– Do I spend more time gathering together the needed
documents for a project than actually working on it?
– Do documents frequently go astray and turn up days
later in very unexpected places?
– Do I ever have to push things aside to make space on
my desk for a paper I want to work on?
A ―yes‖ to any of those questions suggests
something to be desired in terms of order.

Order in our activities
• It‘s important to have a basic daily
schedule to organize our activities and
help us avoid laziness, hectic
improvisation, or senseless idleness.
• This is a matter of planning, but we need
to be prudent and avoid rigidness.

• We need to live with a sense of measured
urgency.
• The Romans used to say ― festina lente‖ (―make
haste slowly‖), a reference to the fact that things
done hurriedly often have to be repeated.
• In other words, we shouldn‘t be
turtles, exasperating others with our
slowness, but neither should we be human
rockets, so explosive that we make everyone
around us nervous.

• Let‘s look at two rather frequent attitudes
toward the availability and use of time:
– thinking we don‘t have enough time to do all
that we have to do, and
– thinking we have more than enough time.

―I don‘t have enough time‖
• Many if not most cases of lacking time are really
cases of lacking order: either we don‘t know how
to organize ourselves well, or we are trying to do
more things than we can and should do, which is
also a disorder.
• If we don‘t have enough time, it may be that we
are not attacking our jobs in the order of their
importance, or that the same kind of disorder is
leading us to use more time than is necessary.

• In the words of St.Josemaria, ―It would be
bad if you were to waste your time, which
is not yours, but God‘s and is meant for his
glory. But if on top of that you make others
waste it, you both diminish your own
standing and defraud God of more of the
glory you owe him.‖

• Arriving late for an appointment, distracting
others who are working, interrupting them
unnecessarily – these things cause disorder and
mean that others will have to take additional time
to make up for the time we cost them.
• This is unjust, and we have to make a sincere
examination of conscience to improve and to
make reparation.

• ―If you say that you want to imitate Christ . . . and
yet have time on your hands, then you are on the
road to lukewarmness.‖ – St. Josemaria Escriva,
The Forge, 701
• We have time to waste when there is a lack of
love, when we don‘t realize or don‘t want to
consider the immense task facing those who have
been called to work as co-redeemers with Christ.
• We should be mindful: ―It is no use wasting your
time with ‗your own silly little concerns‘ when there
are so many souls awaiting you.‖

• We may heed the encouragement of
St.Josemaria to examine ourselves: ―Let‘s take a
good honest look at our own lives.
• How is it that sometimes we just can‘t find those few
minutes it would take to finish lovingly the work we have
to do, which is the very means of our sanctification?
• Why do we neglect our family duties?
• How are we so lacking in calm and serenity when it
comes to fulfilling the duties of our state, and yet so
unhurried as we indulge in our own whims?‖
• St. Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God, 41
• http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/friends_
of_god-point-41.htm

• ―Do I live the virtue of order, so that I tackle jobs according to
their relative importance and not according to my own whims
or fancies?
• Am I unnecessarily slow in finishing off my work because of
lack of interest or punctuality?
• Do I break off the work I am engaged in on any excuse,
perhaps causing others to be delayed?‖
• Do I habitually let myself be carried away by impulse?
• Am I careless about where or how I leave the material items
that I use?
• Do I get as much sleep as I should?
• Do I know how to delegate work to those I am working with?‖
» http://www.scepterpublishers.org/product/samples
/478.pdf

• The Christian meaning of work
• Sanctification of work: spirit of service and
sense of justice
• Industriousness
• Professional competence and fulfilling the
duties of our state
• The work of a student
• Order: the key to working well
SUMMARY:
Industriousness and Order

• “You must realize now, more clearly than ever,
that God is calling you to serve him in and from
the ordinary, secular and civil activities of human
life.
• He waits for us everyday, in the laboratory, in the
operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the
university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the
fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama
of work. Understand this well: there is something holy,
something divine hidden in the most ordinary
situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover
it. - St. Josemaria Escriva, Passionately loving the world
» http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/in_love_with
_the_church-chapter-4.htm

• I assure you, my children, that when a Christian
carries out with love the most insignificant
everyday action, that action overflows with the
transcendence of God.
• That is why I have told you so often, and
hammered away at it, that the Christian vocation
consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of
each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my
children, on the horizon. But where they really
meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your
everyday lives...”
– St. Josemaria Escriva, Passionately loving the world
– http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/in_love_with_the_church-
chapter-4.htm

About St. Josemaria Escriva
• Msgr. Josemaria Escriva was born in Spain on January 9, 1902
and died in Rome on June 26, 1975. On October 2, 1928, God
gave him to see and found Opus Dei (―Work of God‖).
• Opus Dei, a Personal Prelature of the Catholic Church, helps
people of every race and walk of life to love and serve God and
other people through their ordinary work.
• Msgr. Josemaria Escriva‘s books are addressed to ordinary
Christians, to invite them to begin and maintain a personal
friendship with God.
• On October 6, 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized the founder
of Opus Dei in St Peter‘s Square, Rome.
• For more information, visit:
http://www.josemariaescriva.info/section/saint_josemaria

Industriousness and order

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