This document discusses the trend of religious indifference in the modern workplace. It argues that many view spirituality as inconsistent with work and separate the sacred from the secular. This has led to a lack of holistic development for employees. Pope Benedict XVI declared a Year of Faith to help rediscover and renew faith amid this crisis. The Adult Workplace Spirituality program aims to foster religious literacy in the workplace so that employees can find meaning and purpose in their jobs through a spiritual lens.

1. Adult Workplace Spirituality
Quenching the Thirst
Borgjie Distura
"Sir, give me this water, so that I may
not be thirsty or have to keep coming
here to draw water."
Jn. 4:15
Oblates of Mary Immaculate
932-0201/932-0182
FR. PHIL ESTRELLA
AWS Facilitator

2. he trend of religious indifference is an undeniable
fact today. It is true that vast and increasing numbers
of men looked upon God as dead and gone. A post
T
conciliar document of the II Vatican Council says
that, “very many people gradually fall into religious indifference
or run the risk of preserving a faith which lacks the necessary
dynamism and real influence in their lives.” i The document
stresses that the problem also affected many baptized people and
affirms that many baptized people became detached from religion
that they profess religious indifference or, almost atheism.ii
This indifference towards faith can also be seen in the
workplace. Spirituality is seen by many as inconsistent with work,
time consuming and extracurricular activity which involves a lot
of resources. There is no need of any spirituality as long as people
do their job and deliver what is demanded of them.
Both employers and employees who detach faith from
work run the risk of dichotomy in their life. In fact many
workplaces separate the sacred from the secular. Many workplace
people believe that spirituality and the workplace are mutually
exclusive.
How did we come to this situation? Religious ignorance is
rampant, and particularly damaging among educated people who
are becoming the majority.iii The workplace is dominated by the
educated people. And they hold contempt against spirituality. The
rapid growth of materialism in the way people live and think is
another reason.iv People who are materialist in life and in practice

3. take material values as the supreme values in life, such as wealth,
strength, comfort, career and health. Because workplace people
are so engrossed in the concerns of this world, this material
obsession can make it harder to approach God. Vatican II
v
recognizes this difficulty too. Too much concern and
identification of man with the world often develop into
prolonged, permanent, spiritual separation of man from his God.
That is why, once an individual is lost in the love of the ever-
present and splendid universe, the creature comes to possess
himself, his society and his world as if they were exclusively his
own.vi
The refusal of someone to give himself in spirit to God leads to
a refusal to holistic maturity. This implies then that his inner
dynamics are not in full force. He is lacking. He is not whole.
Refusal to spiritual development is a refusal to be creative and
find meaning in life. It is a refusal to integral development.
Conscious of all these, Pope Benedict XVI has declared a
Year of Faith that will start on October 12, 2012 the 50th
Anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and
will end on November 24 next year, the Solemnity of Christ the
King. This Year of Faith according to the Holy Father is an
avenue to rediscover the journey of faith so as to shed clearer
light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with
Christ.vii He also affirms the profound crisis of faith caused by
much concern of Christians for the social, cultural and political
consequences of their commitment while denying the
presupposition of faith.
A crisis is both a danger and at the same time, an
opportunity. And the Holy Father wants that this crisis be an
opportunity for rediscovery, renewal and maturity of faith. The
people of today can still experience the need to go to the well,
like the Samaritan woman, in order to hear Jesus, who invites us
to believe in him and to draw upon the source of living water
welling up within him (cf. Jn 4:14).viii

4. What can we offer for the rediscovery and renewal of our
faith in crisis?
First, the renewal of the Church can be achieved through
the witness of the believer in the face of the upsurge of
materialism and secularism. The believer’s existence in the world
is one that is expected to illumine and radiate the word of truth of
the Gospel.
Second, the call to be committed to is an avenue for
rediscovering the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for
communicating the faith. Through this commitment to love the
faith, makes this very same faith grow as much as lived as an
experience of love.
That is why the Holy Father also calls for the New
Evangelization so that each Catholic can deepen his or her own
faith, have confidence in the Gospel, and possess a willingness to
share the Gospel. In a special way, the New Evangelization
focuses on offering again the Gospel to those who have
experienced a crisis of faith. Pope Benedict XVI called for the re-
offering of the Gospel "to those regions awaiting the first
evangelization and to those regions where the roots of
Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of
faith due to secularization."ix
AWS program is a response to this call which aims that
Christians may grow from devotional spirituality to mature
spirituality without neglecting the importance of devotion by
fostering religious literacy especially in the workplace, so that
members of this community can make religious sense out of their
every life – successes, struggles and challenges in the areas of
corporate relationship, business operations and management.
Furthermore, it will give people in the workplace a holistic
environment, to fully exercise their inner dynamics, to be creative
and find meaning to what they do. Spirituality in the workplace
allows him to go beyond merely doing his job towards making
what he does intelligible in the midst of many ambiguities in
order to find meaning and significance in it.

5. Endnotes
i
A. Flannery, ed. Vatican Council II: More Postconciliar Documents, Vol II, Paulines Publishing House, Pasay,
Philippines, 2000, p.534.
ii
ibid., p. 534
iii
ibid. p. 6.
iv
ibid, p. 6.
v
GS 19
vi
V. Miceli, S.J., The Gods of Atheism, Arlington House, New York, 1971, pp. 1-2.
vii
Porta Fidei, 2
viii
ibid, p. 3.
ix
Pope Benedict XVI, "Homily of First Vespers on the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul," The
Vatican, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20100628_vespri-
pietro-paolo_en.html.