Hey all,

If you listened to episode 55 of the Life on Fire show, you heard us talk about the idea of work being the use of our God-given gifts to work in communion with Him and His will for the benefit of one’s self, one’s family and most of all for the benefit of others who are less fortunate.

However, this made me think a lot more about the idea of work.  Lets face it, work is not simply the 8 hour job that we do 5 days a week.  If you own a home, it is a lot of work to keep that home in good condition and to make improvements upon it.  If you own a car, it is work to do oil changes, to change the air filter and to do regular tune-ups.

Our relationships with friends, family and with our spouses all take work to keep them going.  Would you consider someone truly to be your friend if you didn’t talk to them at least every once in a while?  What if you never worked to celebrate your wedding anniversary?

The same holds true for our faith as well.  In order to know God, and love Him, you must work to do so.  You must pray, go to Mass and do good works that stem from that love.  As James 2:20 states, “faith without works is dead”.

Many people refer to other bible passages such as Isa 64:6 which compare righteous acts to filthy or bloody rags.  However, this isn’t to say that God doesn’t want us to act.  It is saying that when you compare the good acts that we are capable of, to those of God, they are nothing, which makes sense in that level of comparison.  However, this does not hold true in God’s eyes.

Now, it is one thing if you are doing good deeds just to say that you have done them.  For instance, giving blood or donating to charity just so that you can say that you did it to friends and family.  When you do this, who are you giving glory to?  Who are you truly helping?  Are you helping others, or just your reputation?  Matthew 6:3 states that you should not let the right hand know what the left is doing, so that only God in heaven might know and reward you.

However, Jesus himself tells us in Matthew 23:40 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick and visit the imprisoned.  He also states that when we do this for the least of His people, we do it to Him.  So, it is imperative that we do work in our faith.  It is God’s will that we reach out to help those in need and to love others as God has loved us.

However, God does remind us not to do these things in vain or to be boastful.  It is one thing to tell someone that you “donate to charity” or “volunteer at a soup kitchen”, it is quite another to paint a picture of yourself as a saint and a “great Christian” because of it.

This is also in addition to the work that we must do to continue our relationship with God, through prayer and the Sacraments.  Without these, our lifeline to God is shot, and we cannot tell what His will is for us.  No amount of good deeds can erase our sins, only to help remove our inclination to sin.  Only Confession can remove sin completely.

So, in short, we must work to keep our faith, to grow in that faith and to help lead our families to do so as well.  Yes, our everyday jobs are important, and even necessary to our well-being, but, the work to keep from losing our faith is more important.

Remember in John 6:27 Christ reminds us “Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you…”.  We must be willing to work for the physical food to nourish our bodies, as well as the spiritual, to feed our souls.  Without both, we will surely die.