The last of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises is called "The Contemplation to Attain the Love of God." One of his "points" is:
"This is to consider how God works and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth, that is, He conducts Himself as one who labors. Thus, in the heavens, in the elements, the plants, the fruits, the cattle, etc. He gives being, conserves them, confers life and sensation, etc. Then I will reflect on myself."
Figuratively speaking, according to Genesis, God worked for six days in creating the world and then rested. Humanity is made in God's image and likeness and so we are made to work and labor with God for the good of creation. We are stewards of God's creation. God cares for creation through us.
The Gospel at Mass today (Luke 4: 16-30) is what many have called Jesus' "Inaugural Address" in which he announces his plan of action as he begins his active ministry after his "hidden life" of work at home and with his foster father Joseph. But the people who hear him do not have the eyes of faith and so they reject him and his words. They cannot see how God will accomplish the great works promised by the prophet Isaiah through Jesus.
We are called to have eyes of faith. One of the goals of the Apostleship of Prayer and the Daily Offering is to offer our daily work to God. Such an offering will, with time, help us to see our work with eyes of faith. By offering our work each day and then reflecting upon the daily work that has been offered, our eyes become more sensitive to seeing God at work through us. In that way, more and more, our daily work will play a hidden or sometimes more explicit role in the work of preparing creation to receive Jesus in his second coming.
The first Mass reading today (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18) speaks of that second coming when Jesus will raise all people to new life in the Kingdom of God. Our lives are meant to prepare the world for that day. Our work plays a role in that preparation.
In the Our Father we pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done." When we follow God's will by making an offering of our day with its work, we are allowing the Kingdom of God to break into our lives and the lives of those around us. Little by little Christ reigns in us and over us. As he reigns, God's work is accomplished in us and through us. May we have the eyes of faith to see and believe this!
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Monday, September 2, 2013
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
A Spirituality of Work
Since today is the day after Labor Day, I thought that a good topic for discussion on Relevant Radio's "Inner Life" show would be "The Spirituality of Work."
The pain and frustration associated with work is the result of sin. These are often the result of our own sins and those of others, but also because of Original Sin, which resulted in difficulties and pain in work, for God said: "Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat..." (Genesis 3:17-19). But this pain was not part of God's original plan. Made in the image and likeness of God, humanity was created to work with God in caring for creation. A chapter earlier in Genesis we read: "The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it" (2:15).
Jesus, the model human, shows us the beauty of work. We often think of his work of redeeming humanity only in terms of his three years of active ministry when he taught, healed, raised the dead,
and then suffered, died, and rose. But each of the years and minutes of his "Hidden Life" was redemptive. When he worked as a boy and adolescent side by side with Joseph, he was saving the world. When he did his chores around the house, he was saving the world. All this was done in obedience to the will of the Father and as an act of love for the Father, thus undoing the rebellious sin of Adam and Eve.
Jesus declared that through work we imitate God the Father. He said: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work" (John 5:17). He made it clear that he worked in union with God the Father when he said: "I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me" (John 5:36). If, as Jesus says, he can do nothing on his own but does everything in union with the Father, how much more is it true that we can do nothing on our own. After telling his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches, Jesus says: "Whoever remains in me
The pain and frustration associated with work is the result of sin. These are often the result of our own sins and those of others, but also because of Original Sin, which resulted in difficulties and pain in work, for God said: "Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat..." (Genesis 3:17-19). But this pain was not part of God's original plan. Made in the image and likeness of God, humanity was created to work with God in caring for creation. A chapter earlier in Genesis we read: "The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it" (2:15).
Jesus, the model human, shows us the beauty of work. We often think of his work of redeeming humanity only in terms of his three years of active ministry when he taught, healed, raised the dead,
and then suffered, died, and rose. But each of the years and minutes of his "Hidden Life" was redemptive. When he worked as a boy and adolescent side by side with Joseph, he was saving the world. When he did his chores around the house, he was saving the world. All this was done in obedience to the will of the Father and as an act of love for the Father, thus undoing the rebellious sin of Adam and Eve. Jesus declared that through work we imitate God the Father. He said: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work" (John 5:17). He made it clear that he worked in union with God the Father when he said: "I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me" (John 5:36). If, as Jesus says, he can do nothing on his own but does everything in union with the Father, how much more is it true that we can do nothing on our own. After telling his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches, Jesus says: "Whoever remains in me
and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).
With this in mind, everything we do can play a part in the ongoing conversion and salvation of the world. When we pray a Daily Offering prayer at the beginning of the day, we ask that everything we do may be done in union with God's will and may give glory to God. Chuck Neff, the host of the "Inner Life" show, shared that one work he particularly dislikes is mowing his lawn. He said that as he mows he thinks about various people that he wants to pray for or has promised his prayers to and he offers his work for them. I
With this in mind, everything we do can play a part in the ongoing conversion and salvation of the world. When we pray a Daily Offering prayer at the beginning of the day, we ask that everything we do may be done in union with God's will and may give glory to God. Chuck Neff, the host of the "Inner Life" show, shared that one work he particularly dislikes is mowing his lawn. He said that as he mows he thinks about various people that he wants to pray for or has promised his prayers to and he offers his work for them. I
added that praying a version of the Jesus Prayer--"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me"--can be another way of uniting prayer with our breath and our work.
We can also see work as an opportunity to practice and grow in the virtues. Take the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. We can make our work an act of faith by surrendering it to God and trying to see how it can give glory to God. We can acknowledge that God is always present and we can ask, "what are you trying to teach me through this work, through this event?" When our work becomes especially burdensome and we are tempted to get down and to despair, we can exercise the virtue of hope, recognizing that our true home is heaven and that this--whatever it is that causes us pain or struggle--this too shall pass. We exercise hope by substituting positive thoughts for the negative ones. And we can exercise the virtue of love, telling God that the work in which we are engaged is being done as an act of love for him. Especially when we are dealing with people who frustrate or upset us, we exercise love by praying for them, willing their good, and expressing that love in the way we treat them. In this way work becomes a very practical way in which we grow in holiness.
One of the last questions we addressed involved rest, balance, and overwork. In Genesis God rested from the work of creation to show us the importance of balance. We too must rest, for in doing so we practice good stewardship of ourselves, our bodies. But it is also a way of exercising trust. When I am tempted by overwork it is usually not only because I want to give glory to God. There is often a good bit of ego involved in the temptation to work too much or too hard. It involves the fear of saying "no" and displeasing others. It involves the desire to look good and to be successful. God wants us to do good work and to follow St. Paul's advice to the Colossians: "Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others..." (3:23). In that way we can seek God's glory at all times and not our own.
An audio of the program can be found here, on the Relevant Radio website. Just go to the calendar and click on September 4.
We can also see work as an opportunity to practice and grow in the virtues. Take the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. We can make our work an act of faith by surrendering it to God and trying to see how it can give glory to God. We can acknowledge that God is always present and we can ask, "what are you trying to teach me through this work, through this event?" When our work becomes especially burdensome and we are tempted to get down and to despair, we can exercise the virtue of hope, recognizing that our true home is heaven and that this--whatever it is that causes us pain or struggle--this too shall pass. We exercise hope by substituting positive thoughts for the negative ones. And we can exercise the virtue of love, telling God that the work in which we are engaged is being done as an act of love for him. Especially when we are dealing with people who frustrate or upset us, we exercise love by praying for them, willing their good, and expressing that love in the way we treat them. In this way work becomes a very practical way in which we grow in holiness.
One of the last questions we addressed involved rest, balance, and overwork. In Genesis God rested from the work of creation to show us the importance of balance. We too must rest, for in doing so we practice good stewardship of ourselves, our bodies. But it is also a way of exercising trust. When I am tempted by overwork it is usually not only because I want to give glory to God. There is often a good bit of ego involved in the temptation to work too much or too hard. It involves the fear of saying "no" and displeasing others. It involves the desire to look good and to be successful. God wants us to do good work and to follow St. Paul's advice to the Colossians: "Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others..." (3:23). In that way we can seek God's glory at all times and not our own.
An audio of the program can be found here, on the Relevant Radio website. Just go to the calendar and click on September 4.
Friday, July 13, 2012
God Labors And So Do We
I have not blogged in a while because last week I was on vacation and this week I've been catching up on all the work that piled up while I was gone. Now I am in Queens Village, NY, at the Novitiate for the Little Sisters of the Poor to whom I am giving an eight day retreat.
There was some irony in the fact that I had vacation during the first week of a month when the General Intention of Pope Benedict had to do with work: "That everyone may have work in safe and secure conditions." The temptation is to see work as a necessary evil that pays the bills so that we can do what we really enjoy doing, like golf, which is what I did during my vacation. But while one of the effects of the Original Sin was "hard labor" ("By the sweat of your face shall you get the bread to eat" (Genesis 3:19), it wasn't meant to be this way. Labor was always part of God's plan. Why? Very simply, since God "labors" in creating and sustaining Creation, so humans, made in the image and likeness of our laboring God, also work.
Jesus worked. One of the reasons that people rejected him is that for most of his adult life he worked with his hands. In last Sunday's Gospel (Mark 6:1-6a) the people in his home town were "astonished" and said, "Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? ... Is he not the carpenter...?" Later, Jesus, who shows us what it means to be human, declared that he was following the example of his Father in heaven: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work" (John 5:17).
Work is part of our human dignity, part of what makes us like God. It is, or can be, holy.
Recently I got together with a friend of mine, Rip O'Dwanny. We were sitting outside one of his establishments, County Clare, on the East side of Milwaukee, talking, as we do from time to time, about life. At one point Rip raced upstairs to get one of the fifteen copies of a book that he'd recently purchased to give away to people he knew or whom he thought might appreciate it or find it helpful. It's by Robert Ellsberg and is called "The Saints' Guide to Happiness: Practical Lessons in the Life of the Spirit." I was familiar with Ellsberg but not this book which was published in 2003. One of the things I enjoy about travelling to give retreats and missions is the time I have on airplanes and in airports. It's time that I spend reading and I began my trip to New York reading this book.
Chapter 3 is called "Learning to Work." Here is some of the wisdom of the saints that I found there:
From Meister Eckhart: "To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to Him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God in everything we do." And, "The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy."
From Carmelite Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection's "The Practice of the Presence of God": "Our sanctification does not depend upon changing our works, but in doing for God's sake that which we commonly do for our own. ...[God] regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed."
And from the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins: "To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop-pail, gives him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should."
Finally, from the Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it." Ellsberg comments: "How differently we would approach our common tasks--boring and burdensome as they may seem--if we believed our work were in service of the king we seek."
Yes, work can be holy and can give glory to God. When we "offer it up" as an act of love for God, it acquires eternal significance. St. Paul wrote this advice to slaves: "Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others..; be slaves of the Lord Christ" (Colossians 4:24). Moreover, we need not think, like the Shakers, that the work we do may potentially benefit visiting angels. It benefits beloved sons and daughters of God, persons made in God's own image and likeness, or, as C. S. Lewis puts it, "possible gods and goddesses." We are such for we were made, in the words of the Second Letter of St. Peter, "to share in the divine nature" (1:4).
There was some irony in the fact that I had vacation during the first week of a month when the General Intention of Pope Benedict had to do with work: "That everyone may have work in safe and secure conditions." The temptation is to see work as a necessary evil that pays the bills so that we can do what we really enjoy doing, like golf, which is what I did during my vacation. But while one of the effects of the Original Sin was "hard labor" ("By the sweat of your face shall you get the bread to eat" (Genesis 3:19), it wasn't meant to be this way. Labor was always part of God's plan. Why? Very simply, since God "labors" in creating and sustaining Creation, so humans, made in the image and likeness of our laboring God, also work.
Jesus worked. One of the reasons that people rejected him is that for most of his adult life he worked with his hands. In last Sunday's Gospel (Mark 6:1-6a) the people in his home town were "astonished" and said, "Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? ... Is he not the carpenter...?" Later, Jesus, who shows us what it means to be human, declared that he was following the example of his Father in heaven: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work" (John 5:17).
Work is part of our human dignity, part of what makes us like God. It is, or can be, holy.
Recently I got together with a friend of mine, Rip O'Dwanny. We were sitting outside one of his establishments, County Clare, on the East side of Milwaukee, talking, as we do from time to time, about life. At one point Rip raced upstairs to get one of the fifteen copies of a book that he'd recently purchased to give away to people he knew or whom he thought might appreciate it or find it helpful. It's by Robert Ellsberg and is called "The Saints' Guide to Happiness: Practical Lessons in the Life of the Spirit." I was familiar with Ellsberg but not this book which was published in 2003. One of the things I enjoy about travelling to give retreats and missions is the time I have on airplanes and in airports. It's time that I spend reading and I began my trip to New York reading this book.
Chapter 3 is called "Learning to Work." Here is some of the wisdom of the saints that I found there:
From Meister Eckhart: "To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to Him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, we cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God in everything we do." And, "The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy."
From Carmelite Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection's "The Practice of the Presence of God": "Our sanctification does not depend upon changing our works, but in doing for God's sake that which we commonly do for our own. ...[God] regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed."
And from the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins: "To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dung fork in his hand, a woman with a slop-pail, gives him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should."
Finally, from the Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it." Ellsberg comments: "How differently we would approach our common tasks--boring and burdensome as they may seem--if we believed our work were in service of the king we seek."
Yes, work can be holy and can give glory to God. When we "offer it up" as an act of love for God, it acquires eternal significance. St. Paul wrote this advice to slaves: "Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others..; be slaves of the Lord Christ" (Colossians 4:24). Moreover, we need not think, like the Shakers, that the work we do may potentially benefit visiting angels. It benefits beloved sons and daughters of God, persons made in God's own image and likeness, or, as C. S. Lewis puts it, "possible gods and goddesses." We are such for we were made, in the words of the Second Letter of St. Peter, "to share in the divine nature" (1:4).
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
"This Tremendous Lover"
One of the nice things about this time of year, especially for someone like me, living in a large Jesuit community in a city where a lot of Jesuits return to visit their families, is reconnecting with friends. That happened last night. I was about to enter my room for the night when I ran into a Jesuit friend of mine. I was his vocation director back in 1987 and he is currently in special studies in the Washington, D.C. area. He's back visiting his family over the Christmas holidays. He was in one room of our community library, next to my room, and he had a book in his hands. It's a classic of modern Catholic spirituality called "This Tremendous Lover" by the Cistercian monk Fr. M. Eugene Boylan. I told him it's a great book that I'd begun reading a couple years ago and, for some reason, had put down after 300 pages with only 70 pages to go. So this morning I pulled out my copy to look at my underlinings and highlightings in order to see what exactly I liked about that book. My eyes fell upon two pages in particular and what I read amazed me because this book, first published in 1947, sounded just like Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
First John Paul, who in his Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte," written right after the Jubilee Year 2000, wrote that Christians need to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus. Look at what he says in #29 of that document:
We are certainly not seduced by the naive expectation that, faced with the great challenges of our time, we shall find some magic formula. No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you! It is not therefore a matter of inventing a "new programme". The programme already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its centre in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem.
Now, compare that to Fr. Boylan at the end of a chapter entitled "Conversation with Christ:"
...we are so anxious to put the beginner in touch with our Lord as soon as possible in prayer, and urge him to try to develop a sense of continual partnership and friendship with Jesus in all the works of the day. For Christianity is not a set of rules; it is a Person--the Person we call Christ.
Then Fr. Boylan goes on with words that describe the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer and the Daily Offering in which every work and activity of the day can be united to Christ's perfect offering:
And it is in Christ that all things are to be re-established and reuinited and reconciled to the Father (Colossians 1: 19-20; Ephesians 1: 9-10). And since Christ came on earth to do the will of the Father, He can always be found where that will is being done; and the ordinary round of the day's work is part of that will, so that this personal friendship and continual search for Christ is an excellent way to restore the unity of one's life and to supernaturalize all one's work.
And how does Fr. Boylan sound like Pope Benedict? In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist, "Sacramentum Caritatis," he writes:
Christianity's new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). Christians, in all their actions, are called to offer true worship to God. Here the intrinsically eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (Romans 8: 29f). There is nothing authentically human – our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds – that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full. Here we can see the full human import of the radical newness brought by Christ in the Eucharist: the worship of God in our lives cannot be relegated to something private and individual, but tends by its nature to permeate every aspect of our existence. Worship pleasing to God thus becomes a new way of living our whole life, each particular moment of which is lifted up, since it is lived as part of a relationship with Christ and as an offering to God (#71).
Significantly, the Synod Fathers stated that "the Christian faithful need a fuller understanding of the relationship between the Eucharist and their daily lives. Eucharistic spirituality is not just participation in Mass and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. It embraces the whole of life." This observation is particularly insightful, given our situation today. It must be acknowledged that one of the most serious effects of the secularization just mentioned is that it has relegated the Christian faith to the margins of life as if it were irrelevant to everyday affairs. The futility of this way of living – "as if God did not exist" – is now evident to everyone. Today there is a need to rediscover that Jesus Christ is not just a private conviction or an abstract idea, but a real person, whose becoming part of human history is capable of renewing the life of every man and woman. Hence the Eucharist, as the source and summit of the Church's life and mission, must be translated into spirituality, into a life lived "according to the Spirit" (Romans 8: 4f; Galatians 5: 16, 25) (#77).
Now, here is what Fr. Boylan, on a page just before the previously quoted passage, wrote:
What has written in the earlier part of this book makes it quite clear that religion applies to every moment of our life. Christ wants to share every single action which we perform and what He cannot share is well nigh worthless. ... And, we may add, the solution of this general problem of making Catholicity a vital force in the everyday life of the laity is one of the most urgent needs of the day. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the fate of Christendom depends upon it.
Fr. Boylan wrote this more than 60 years ago, but it shouldn't be surprising that he and our recent popes are in such agreement, for what they propose is perennial. Our lives will have significance and meaning, and our world will find the just order that can lead to lasting peace, only when we live in union with Jesus Christ.
First John Paul, who in his Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte," written right after the Jubilee Year 2000, wrote that Christians need to go deeper in their relationship with Jesus. Look at what he says in #29 of that document:
We are certainly not seduced by the naive expectation that, faced with the great challenges of our time, we shall find some magic formula. No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you! It is not therefore a matter of inventing a "new programme". The programme already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its centre in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem.
Now, compare that to Fr. Boylan at the end of a chapter entitled "Conversation with Christ:"
...we are so anxious to put the beginner in touch with our Lord as soon as possible in prayer, and urge him to try to develop a sense of continual partnership and friendship with Jesus in all the works of the day. For Christianity is not a set of rules; it is a Person--the Person we call Christ.
Then Fr. Boylan goes on with words that describe the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer and the Daily Offering in which every work and activity of the day can be united to Christ's perfect offering:
And it is in Christ that all things are to be re-established and reuinited and reconciled to the Father (Colossians 1: 19-20; Ephesians 1: 9-10). And since Christ came on earth to do the will of the Father, He can always be found where that will is being done; and the ordinary round of the day's work is part of that will, so that this personal friendship and continual search for Christ is an excellent way to restore the unity of one's life and to supernaturalize all one's work.
And how does Fr. Boylan sound like Pope Benedict? In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist, "Sacramentum Caritatis," he writes:
Christianity's new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). Christians, in all their actions, are called to offer true worship to God. Here the intrinsically eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (Romans 8: 29f). There is nothing authentically human – our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds – that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full. Here we can see the full human import of the radical newness brought by Christ in the Eucharist: the worship of God in our lives cannot be relegated to something private and individual, but tends by its nature to permeate every aspect of our existence. Worship pleasing to God thus becomes a new way of living our whole life, each particular moment of which is lifted up, since it is lived as part of a relationship with Christ and as an offering to God (#71).
Significantly, the Synod Fathers stated that "the Christian faithful need a fuller understanding of the relationship between the Eucharist and their daily lives. Eucharistic spirituality is not just participation in Mass and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. It embraces the whole of life." This observation is particularly insightful, given our situation today. It must be acknowledged that one of the most serious effects of the secularization just mentioned is that it has relegated the Christian faith to the margins of life as if it were irrelevant to everyday affairs. The futility of this way of living – "as if God did not exist" – is now evident to everyone. Today there is a need to rediscover that Jesus Christ is not just a private conviction or an abstract idea, but a real person, whose becoming part of human history is capable of renewing the life of every man and woman. Hence the Eucharist, as the source and summit of the Church's life and mission, must be translated into spirituality, into a life lived "according to the Spirit" (Romans 8: 4f; Galatians 5: 16, 25) (#77).
Now, here is what Fr. Boylan, on a page just before the previously quoted passage, wrote:
What has written in the earlier part of this book makes it quite clear that religion applies to every moment of our life. Christ wants to share every single action which we perform and what He cannot share is well nigh worthless. ... And, we may add, the solution of this general problem of making Catholicity a vital force in the everyday life of the laity is one of the most urgent needs of the day. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the fate of Christendom depends upon it.
Fr. Boylan wrote this more than 60 years ago, but it shouldn't be surprising that he and our recent popes are in such agreement, for what they propose is perennial. Our lives will have significance and meaning, and our world will find the just order that can lead to lasting peace, only when we live in union with Jesus Christ.
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