Work!

In many places today, more than one out of ten adults are looking for work and have not found any.

This does not include those who have, for one reason or another, given up on finding work anytime soon.

This is the world in which we live and from which we hear Saint Paul in today’s first reading (1 Thessalonians 4:9-11) urging his readers “to work with your own hands”.

Saint Paul, of course, was writing to a specific Christian community: a community in which the precepts and practices of charity as well as the perception of Christ’s imminent return led some to stop working altogether.

However, Saint Paul’s exhortation does also apply to us, to our own day, and to our own society.

People need to work: to be active and productive, to the extent they can.

We need to help others in need, while making sure that we are helping them be active and productive themselves (again, to the extent they are able).

We need to do this as individuals.

We also need to do this as a society (nota bene: governments are but one aspect of society and the activity of government in matters of social economics should be neither excluded nor exclusive).

It should be noted that it is not always easy – as individuals or as a society -- to generate employment opportunities or to help people find work: the best-laid plans for job creation, job training, and job searching do not always succeed. That is yet another reason why serious levels of creativity and activity are required from all parts of society as well as from the jobseekers themselves.

Employed or not, rich or not, powerful or not, each of us need to do our part so that each of us, to the extent that we are truly able, can be active and productive: giving glory to God, taking responsibility for ourselves and those entrusted to us, caring for others in need, and helping others in need do the same.