List of points

I wish to continue this conversation with Our Lord with an observation I made use of years ago, but which is just as relevant today. I had noted down some remarks of St Teresa of Avila: 'All that passes away and is not pleasing to God, is worth nothing, and less than nothing.' Now do you understand why a soul loses all sense of peace and serenity when it turns away from its goal, and forgets that it was created by God to be a saint? Strive never to lose this supernatural outlook, not even at times of rest or recreation, which are as important in our daily lives as is work itself.

You can climb to the top of your profession, you can gain the highest acclaim as a reward for your freely chosen endeavours in temporal affairs; but if you abandon the supernatural outlook that should inspire all our human activities, you will have gone sadly astray.

You must fight against the tendency to be too lenient with yourselves. Everyone has this difficulty. Be demanding with yourselves! Sometimes we worry too much about our health, or about getting enough rest. Certainly it is necessary to rest, because we have to tackle our work each day with renewed vigour. But, as I wrote many years ago, 'to rest is not to do nothing. It is to turn our attention to other activities that require less effort.'

At other times, relying on flimsy excuses, we become too easygoing and forget about the marvellous responsibility that rests upon our shoulders. We are content with doing just enough to get by. We let ourselves get carried away by false rationalisations and waste our time, whereas Satan and his allies never take a holiday. Listen carefully to St Paul and reflect on what he said to those Christians who were slaves. He urged them to obey their masters, 'not serving to the eye as pleasers of men, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart, giving your service with good will as to the Lord and not to men'. What good advice for you and me to follow!

Let us ask Our Lord Jesus for light, and beg him to help us discover, at every moment, the divine meaning which transforms our professional work into the hinge on which our calling to sanctity rests and turns. In the Gospel you will find that Jesus was known as faber, filius Mariae, the workman, the son of Mary. Well, we too, with a holy pride, have to prove with deeds that we are workers, men and women who really work!

Since we should behave at all times as God's envoys, we must be very much aware that we are not serving him loyally if we leave a job unfinished; if we don't put as much effort and self-sacrifice as others do into the fulfilment of professional commitments; if we can be called careless, unreliable, frivolous, disorganised, lazy or useless… Because people who neglect obligations that seem less important will hardly succeed in other obligations that pertain to the spiritual life and are undoubtedly harder to fulfil. 'He who is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in very little is dishonest also in much.'

Let me insist again and again that this is the road that God wants us to follow when he calls us to his service in the midst of the world to sanctify others and to sanctify ourselves by means of our daily occupations. With that enormous common sense of his, combined with his great faith, St Paul preached that 'in the law of Moses it is written: thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn', and then he asks: 'Is God here concerned about oxen? Or does he not rather say it for us? Yes, truly for your sake it was laid down; for hope makes the ploughman plough, and the thresher to thresh, in the anticipation of sharing in the crop.'

Christian life can never be reduced to an oppressive set of rules which leave the soul in a state of exasperation and tension. Rather, it accommodates itself to individual circumstances as a glove fits the hand, and it says that, as well as praying and sacrificing ourselves constantly, we should never lose our supernatural outlook as we go about our everyday tasks, be they big or small. Remember that God loves his creatures to distraction. How can a donkey work if it is not fed or given enough rest, or if its spirit is broken by too many beatings? Well, your body is like a little donkey, and it was a donkey that was God's chosen throne in Jerusalem, and it carries you along the divine pathways of this earth of ours. But it has to be controlled so that it doesn't stray away from God's paths. And it has to be encouraged so that it can trot along with all the briskness and cheerfulness that you would expect from a poor beast of burden.