“The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it” (Genesis 2:15).

In our culture, we place a premium on working hard, grinding it out, less rest, and more productivity. The underlying assumption is that the busier you are, the more important you must be. Work in and of itself is not a bad thing — our culture is acknowledging a truth there — but our abuse of the gift of work, our failure to view work as a gift, is a problem.

This perspective diminishes our human dignity by treating ourselves and others as cogs in an economic machine with the primary aim of increasing profits. It also orients our hearts away from God, as work becomes a burden to be carried rather than a share in His ongoing creative activity. Finally, this approach also draws others away from God; it is counter-evangelical in that the grinding evacuates the very joy God intended work to bring us.

The Gift of Work

In Genesis, we read that God planted Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and instructed them to cultivate and care for the land (Gen 2:15). This scene occurs before the fall, so we can conclude that work is not meant to be a punishment for humanity but an open invitation to be sharers in God’s work. Created in the imago Dei — i.e., the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27) — we find that work is part and parcel to God’s very own being.

Taking this idea a step further, St. Augustine tells us that as our first parents were cultivating the garden, God was cultivating their hearts:

For this reason the turn of phrase by which the man is said to work the land, which is already land, into also being landscaped and fertile, is the same as the one by which God is said to work the man, who was already a man, into also being godfearing and wise (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 8.23).

Even today, as we work in our respective roles, we are not only invited to participate in the life of God, to be co-creators with Him. We are also invited to allow Him to cultivate our hearts through the work we are called to.

Restoration and Reorientation

Continuing our reflection on Genesis, we recall that our Creator rested from His work on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). Surely, He did not need rest, but, in His love for us and desire for intimate relationship with us, He provides us with the blueprint for happiness, which includes rest and work.

In the Old Testament, we also find God instructing His people to make time for rest. We see this instruction in His commandment to honor the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8) and to celebrate Jubilee years, in which our ancestors were commanded not to sow or reap (Leviticus 25:8-15).

As Catholics, we can understand our work as an outflow from the Bread of Life that is the “work of humans hands” we celebrate on Sunday, our Christian Sabbath. Sunday, then, is our day of restoration as we reorient our lives back to God, particularly to our Eucharistic Lord. As Pope Benedict expressed in his 2005 celebration of Corpus Christi, “Without Sunday we cannot live.”

It is on Sunday that our Catholic family comes together as one body to worship God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We are nourished with the Bread of Life, and the Lord’s words, spoken with the voice of the priest, “This is my body given up for you,” permeate our hearts and become our own words as we work throughout our week. In this way, as we imitate Christ’s self-emptying love, our “Amen” at Mass rings true in our daily practice.

Self-emptying Love

Work, then, is less about checking off items on a to-do list or basking in a position of power. Work, in fact, is rooted in the work of God from the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, through the life of Jesus Christ, who was a carpenter and then sacrificed Himself on the cross for our Salvation. Although carpentry and His death don’t seem directly related, they are: Jesus expressed the same movement of self-emptying love whether He had a hammer or a nail in His hand (Phil 2:7-8).

Work is also a means to achieving an evangelical end, as those who witness our joyful toiling seek to imitate us, who are imitators of Christ (1 Cor 11:1). No longer are we just accomplishing tasks; now, we are co-creators with God in the garden of this world as we seek to actively and joyfully reconcile all things to Him (Col. 1:20).

So, as we move throughout our week, let us contemplate the gift of sharing in the Lord’s work and reflect upon how God is calling us to cultivate the garden He planted us in. How are we being invited to imitate Christ’s self-emptying love in our work?

Your sister in Christ,
Vanessa

This article first appeared on Catholic Women in Business.