How do I deal with issues of advancement and self-promotion at work?

Dear Father Todd, regarding Father John’s post on “Give and Take” how does this combine with trying to be successful in a career, a type where if you do not make your accomplishments known, you will not advance?

A: Your question is a good one because when we are trying to faithfully follow Christ in a world where competition is fierce at times, it can seem like we are caught between a rock and a hard place: I want to follow Christ and have a successful career. Christ tells us in John’s Gospel that we are in the world but not of it (cf Jn 15:19); that is, that we have to live and work in it but that we don’t adopt its godless ways. It is a challenge for us.

First, Christ is calling Christians to have the attitude of self-detachment. What do I mean by this? I mean it in a two-fold way. There is nothing wrong with recognizing the gifts and talents we have received from God for the good of others and in having them recognized by others- unless we are bragging in an arrogant way- but our identity should never be based on this recognition. We are first and foremost sons of God by adoption. This is our primary identity. Also, we need to have an attitude of gratitude realizing that God is the Author of all that we have received and we are called to use our gifts and talents wisely but in a detached way. We need this spirit of detachment so as not to allow our abilities or duties to interfere with our union with God and cloud a proper vision of the human person. With our fallen human nature often the tendency is to let success and money replace God. St Luke tells us in Lk 16:13 that we can’t serve both God and money.

Second, we need to foster purity of intention in all our actions and achievements. This is hard at times as we can easily find ourselves doing things out of pride or vanity. To maintain purity of intention we need increase our union with Christ through prayer, sacrament (Eucharist and Confession) and self-examination (examination of conscience). These means help us to always give our best by putting our talents and gifts at the service of God and others. They also help us not to become self-centered, not to use others for personal gain and not to think we can do it without God’s help. A person with purity of intention is committed to God and to the common good. He doesn’t seek rewards.

Third, we need to be humble. Humility doesn’t mean weakness; it means recognizing that God is in charge, that He is God and I am not. All too often, people can live as if there was no God and can do atrocious things to others (ie: slander, calumniation, criticizing, etc) to get ahead in a career or because the other got the job and they didn’t. The competitive spirit is good but never at the cost of charity. As a Christian we can never stoop to those levels just mentioned. We may also experience our own sufferings along the path of life due to others who will try to get ahead at all costs, who will try to trample us underfoot or undermine our efforts. We need to be humble and upright before God and others and let our integrity speak. Humility helps us not to compromise faith and morals and to avoid deceiving ourselves.

With these three essential points that can help us to work hard on our career choice, keep God at the center of who we are and all we do and maintain a healthy consciousness of using all that God has blessed us with personally for the good of ourselves and the good of those we serve.

Yours in Christ, Father Todd Arsenault, LC

St. John of the Cross – Principles for Detachment

These are the golden rules proposed by St. John of the Cross for total detachment: The soul must always be inclined ‘not to the easiest thing, but to the hardest; not to the tastiest, but to the most insipid; not to the things that give the greatest pleasure, but to those that give the least; not to the restful things, but to the painful ones; not to consolation, but to desolation; not to more, but to less; not to the highest and dearest, but to the lowest and most despised; not to the desire for something, but to having no desires.’ In this way, we shall gradually become accustomed to subduing this inordinate desire for pleasure, which is at the base of all attachments. It is like going against a current; hence it is a hard tiring task which can be accomplished only by strength of will. We must oppose the inclinations of nature and make ourselves do what is repugnant to nature. This is, however, a sweet task for a soul in love with God; it knows that everything it refuses to self is given to God and that, when it has reached the point of renouncing self in everything – of selling everything – God Himself will give it the precious pearl of divine union.

Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C. D.

The Joy of Full Surrender – Abandonment to Divine Providence

Abandonment to Divine Providence
By Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade

Abandonment to Divine Providence (also known in another translation as the Joy of Full Surrender)  has been a life-changing book for me. Aside from scripture, it is the only book that I have read through multiple times (at least three cover to cover). The great power of the book comes through Lectio Divina or meditation on the content versus reading at a purely intellectually level. Read in the former manner, it will provide rich spiritual transformation as you begin to recognize God’s loving presence in each moment. With this recognition and the resulting impact on our relationship with God,  we are better able to leave the challenges of the present and future completely in His hands. If you struggle with worry, anxiety, or if you desire to know Christ more fully each moment, this book is an unparalleled resource.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

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Abandonment XIX – The Present Moment Manifests the Coming of God’s Kingdom

The present moment is like an ambassador who declares the will of God. The heart must ever answer, “Let it be so.” Then the soul will go steadily on by all means towards its target and goal – never pausing in its course, spreading its sails to all winds. All routes and methods advance it equally in its journey toward the great sea, the infinite. Everything becomes an instrument of sanctification. The soul always finds the “one thing needful” in the present moment.

It is no longer a matter of either prayer or silence, privacy or conversation with others, reading or writing, thinking or abandonment of thought, seeking spirituality or avoiding overconcern with it, abundance or want, illness or health, life or death; the one thing needful is simply what comes to the soul each moment by the will of God. This includes the stripping, the self-denial, the renunciation of earthly things, in order that the soul may be nothing in itself or live for itself, but may live wholly by God’s will, and at His good pleasure content itself with the duty of the present moment, as though that were the one thing in the whole world.

If whatever comes to such a surrendered soul is “the one thing needful,” we see clearly that we can lack nothing and should never complain. If we murmur, we lack faith and are living by reason and the sense which, failing to recognize the sufficiency of grace, are always discontented.

To hallow the name of God is, in the language of Scripture, to love Him, adore Him, and to recognize His holiness in all things. Things, like words, do indeed proceed from the mouth of God. The events of each moment are divine thoughts expressed by created objects. Thus, all those things by which He makes His will known to us are so many names, so many words by which He shows us His will. In itself, this will is one, singular; it bears but one unknown, ineffable name; but it is multiplied infinitely in its effects and takes on their names. To hallow the name of God is to know, adore, and love the Ineffable One expressed by this name. It is also to know, adore and love His blessed will at all times, in all its effects, seeing all things as so many veils, shadows and names of this eternally holy will. It is holy in all its works, holy in all its words, holy in all its forms of manifestation, holy in all the names it bears.

It was thus that Job hallowed the name of God. That holy man blessed his terrible desolation which expressed the will of God. He called it not ruin,  but one of God’s names and blessings, he declared that this divine will, expressed by the most terrible afflictions, was ever holy, no matter what name or form it might bear.

David also hallowed the name of God at all times and in all places. Therefore it is by this continual discovery, by this manifestation, this revelation of the will of God in all things that His kingdom reigns within us, that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven, that He gives us our daily bread.

Surrender to God’s will contains the essence of that incomparable prayer which Christ Himself has taught us. We repeat it vocally several times a day according to the teaching of God and His holy Church, but we utter it in the depth of our hearts each moment that we lovingly receive or suffer whatever is ordained by His venerable will. What lips need words and time to express, the heart effectively utters with each beat. Thus simple souls are called to bless God in the depth of their hearts. Yet they sigh over their inability, however, to praise Him as they would like, so true is it that God gives these souls His grace and favor by the very means which seem to deprive them of these blessings. This is the secret of God’s wisdom, to impoverish the senses while it enriches the heart, and to fill the heart in proportion to the aching void the senses experience.

Let us learn then to recognize the imprint of the will of God, of His worthy name in the event of each moment. How holy is that name! It is only right therefore to bless and receive it as a form of sacrament which by its only power sanctifies the souls in which it finds no obstacle to its action. Can we do anything other than to infinitely value whatever bears this august name? It is a divine manna which falls from heaven in order to strengthen us continually in grace. It is a kingdom of holiness which comes into the soul. It is the bread of angels which is given on earth as it is in heaven. No moment can be unimportant, since all of them contain treasures of grace and the food of angels.

Yes Lord, let Your kingdom come into my heart to sanctify it, nourish it, to purify it, to render it victorious over all my enemies. How insignificant is this precious moment in the eyes of the world, yet how great to the eye enlightened by faith! And can I call that little which is great in the eye of my Father who reigns in heaven? All that comes from there is most excellent. All that decends from there bears the imprint of its origin.

Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade - Purchase The Joy of Full Surrender

Abandonment XVII – Especially for Us

We can only be truly instructed by the words which God speaks to us personally. No one grows in knowledge of God either by reading books or by curious historical research. These means give us but a vain and empty knowledge, which serves only to confuse us and inflate us with pride.

That which truly instructs us in what comes to us by the will of God from moment to moment. This is the knowledge gained through experience, which Christ Himself was pleased to acquire before teaching others. In fact, this was the only knowledge in which He could grow, according to the expression of the holy Gospel (Luke 2:52); because being God, there was no degree of speculative knowledge which He did not already possess. Therefore if this experimental knowledge was useful to the Incarnate Word Himself, it is absolutely necessary for us if we would touch the heart of those whom God sends to us.

We only know perfectly that which we have learned by experience through suffering or action. This is the school of the Holy Spirit, who speaks the words of life to the heart; and all that we say to others should come from this source. Whatever we read, whatever we see, becomes divine knowledge only by the fruitfulness, the virtue the light which this experience gives. Without this experiential knowledge, all our learning is like unleavened dough, lacking the salt and the seasoning of experience. Without this experiential knowledge, we have only vague, untried ideas to act on, we are like the dreamer who, through knowing all the highways of the world, misses the road to his own house.

Therefore we have only to listen to God from moment to moment in order to become learned in the knowledge by which the saints lived, which is all practice and experience.

Set aside what is said to others, but listen to what is said to you and for you; you will find enough in that to exercise you faith, because this interior language of God, by its very obscurity, exercises, purifies and increases your faith.

Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade - Purchase The Joy of Full Surrender