Christians today are mechanics and clerks, teachers and engineers, doctors and housekeepers, politicians and train conductors. Few of them are asked to leave their ordinary trades or professions, for it is precisely within those trades or professions that they fulfill their calling. It is there that they touch minds and hearts and souls with the tenderness of God; and it is there that they heal the people whom they touch. It is there that they instruct and comfort people in need; and it is in that way that they help to drive out the demons that seem to have a strangle hold on those people. In very ordinary ways, these unassuming faithful people participate in the extraordinary establishment of the reign of God. (Dianne Bergant, email to Reflections from Catholic Theological Union mailing list, July 12, 2009)
The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done….The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
(Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC.San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993. p. 119)
It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. (John Paul II)
Work is not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or should be, the full expression of the worker's faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction.
(Dorothy Sayers, Unpopular Opinions)
It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to Communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Principle or Foundation")
"Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation." (Winston Churchill, “Painting as a Pastime,” in Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and Painting, by David Coombs and Minnie Churchill. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004. p. 94)
"They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations." (Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626))
..The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord." This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow... C.S Lewis, Weight of Glory
“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” (Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ)
“I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you; something worth living for - maybe even worth dying for; something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can’t tell you what it might be - that’s for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in the search.” (Sister Ita Ford, M.M. in a letter to her niece)
"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you." (Annie Dillard)
God has created
me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me which He
has not committed to another.
I have my mission;
I never may know it in this life,
but I shall be told it in the next.
I have a part in a great work;
I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught.
I shall do good, I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace,
a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it,
if I do but keep His commandments
and serve Him in my calling.
(Cardinal John Henry Newman)
"God give me work till my life shall end and life till my work is done." (Epitaph (in her own words) of Winifred Holtby)
"Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience." Mother Teresa in "Love to Pray," A Gift for God (1975).
When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation—thought and life are one.
(Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)
"How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand their work, their job, is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metalworker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office! How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cab: you are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if you work with honestly, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab."
(Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love)
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)
The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done….The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
(Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC.San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993. p. 119)
It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. (John Paul II)
Work is not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or should be, the full expression of the worker's faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction.
(Dorothy Sayers, Unpopular Opinions)
It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to Communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Principle or Foundation")
"Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation." (Winston Churchill, “Painting as a Pastime,” in Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and Painting, by David Coombs and Minnie Churchill. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004. p. 94)
"They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations." (Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626))
..The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly "as to the Lord." This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow... C.S Lewis, Weight of Glory
“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” (Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ)
“I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you; something worth living for - maybe even worth dying for; something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can’t tell you what it might be - that’s for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in the search.” (Sister Ita Ford, M.M. in a letter to her niece)
"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you." (Annie Dillard)
God has created
me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me which He
has not committed to another.
I have my mission;
I never may know it in this life,
but I shall be told it in the next.
I have a part in a great work;
I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught.
I shall do good, I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace,
a preacher of truth in my own place,
while not intending it,
if I do but keep His commandments
and serve Him in my calling.
(Cardinal John Henry Newman)
"God give me work till my life shall end and life till my work is done." (Epitaph (in her own words) of Winifred Holtby)
"Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience." Mother Teresa in "Love to Pray," A Gift for God (1975).
When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation—thought and life are one.
(Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)
"How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand their work, their job, is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metalworker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office! How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cab: you are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if you work with honestly, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab."
(Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love)
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)