After the end of the persecution of the Church, there was a desire among Christians to live out the faith in a radical way. This gave rise to hermits going to the desert to live. Eventually, some of them chose to come together and live in community. They wanted to live in a way that they could give witness to the Gospel. The great pioneer of Western monasticism is St. Benedict of Nursia. Benedictine spirituality is built around two phrases: Ora et labora and Nihil amori Christi anteponere. This means that his monks are to pray and work, and to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.
St. Paul had already written to the Thessalonians:
If anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat (2 Thess. 3:10).
As Christians, we are called to live out work as part of our vocation. It is part of who we are. Work is how we solve problems in an organized way, and also how we collaborate with God’s creation. The Genesis story of creation shows that man is called to cooperate with God’s grand project, taking care of it, and that God has made everything for the good of man.
When we look at human history, we always find work. It is part of the creation story, and with the Fall, there is also a corruption of work. We see a history of intended enslavement and the desire to create division within society based on work.
Change With the Industrial Revolution
With the Industrial Revolution, the divide accelerated, and Karl Marx tried to understand history through categories of oppressor versus oppressed. Agrarian societies were transformed into industrial cities, built around factories. Long hours, child labor, and unmanageable wages came to be the rule. The Church was not blind to the problem, but it looked at it more from a perspective of standing up for the dignity of the human person.
Since the emergence of her Social Doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, the Church has emphasized the protection of workers and the need to combat all forms of exploitation (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 149).
When we look at work as a necessary evil or as merely a means to an end, we miss part of its true significance. Church Social Teaching has always appreciated work as “the essential key” to understanding how society is supposed to function. We look to St. Benedict for a spirituality of work. We see it as cooperating in God’s creation, not simply toil. When Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, they are condemned to toil for their food. Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross redeemed man, and because of this, our activity can serve God’s glory. Benedict united prayer and work, and his monks serve as a model for all of us.
Work as a Fundamental Good
There is a tendency nowadays to demonize certain sectors of society. We can look at something like Wall Street and see it as a towering example of greed and corruption. But even there, we need missionaries and apostles. If we are in a position to move capital in such a way that drives innovation and improves the lives of others, of course we can be living in a way that is worthwhile.
Created in the image of the Creator, our own work in some way continues his, for thereby we contribute to the progress of society and the common good, put to good use the capabilities we have received, improve and beautify the world, support our families, engage in cooperative relationships and, through listening and dialogue, learn to build together something that no one could achieve alone (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 149).
Doubtless, we want to be kind and supportive toward the poor. We have to think about the best way of doing this. While direct social assistance is often necessary and appropriate, we must be careful not to rob them of a true source of dignity. We should want to work, because it is one way that we become more similar to God our Creator.
Financial assistance to the poor may at times be necessary in emergencies, but it cannot become the sole response, since the goal is to enable each person to live with dignity through his or her own work (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 149).
Work is a fundamental good that we want to have available to all capable members of society.
Danger of Optimizing for Efficiency
The Tower of Babel can serve as a metaphor for optimizing for efficiency.
Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 7).
One of the dangers of the rise of Artificial Intelligence is precisely eliminating the need for workers. The Pope argues that we should try to make labor easier for man, not eliminate man. Looking at the Genesis account, we could see that technology should help to eliminate toil, rather than trying to eliminate work.
We have to also be careful to avoid becoming slaves of the machines. In the encyclical, Pope Leo XIV explores different ways that human workers can be put at the service of technology instead of the other way around. This can range from harvesting dangerous minerals to working on a factory line, to cleaning up ugly parts of the Internet to help protect the consumer. There is much work behind the scenes that we can easily miss if we don’t stop to reflect.
When we do look for efficiency, we have to be careful to see what we are seeking. The question cannot merely be: How can we do this more efficiently? We have to also ask: What is this efficiency for? How does this efficiency affect others?
Prayer and Work in a Digital Age
Nehemiah prayed before he decided to undertake the rebuilding of Jerusalem. This was not an escape from work, but rather a way to bring God into the great project that lay before him.
In the past, perhaps the way we looked at spirituality and work was to raise our minds to God as we were tilling the earth with the plow. Now, we have no less of a need for prayer in work, although it may be more often a prayer of discernment.
We need to reflect more deeply on the meaning of our work and the consequences of our actions. Perhaps the Digital Age is pushing us towards work more than any previous period in human history. We have a fascinating opportunity to make effective use of Benedict’s motto of ora et labora. By praying and working, we are able to make our very work into a prayer that we offer up to Christ. By making sure that we prefer nothing to the love of Christ, we make sure that work is not exploiting others, but rather allowing them to flourish in their full human dignity.
Our goal as Christians is not to eliminate work, but rather to work in such a way that our human dignity is respected and cared for. Indeed, we should be witnesses in the world by giving meaning to our work because we are more in tune with what life is all about. We will not always be able to work according to our passion, but we can always put passion into our work.