And He Saw That It Was Good

Nicholas Ferreira

It was still dark when he started his work. So much had to be done, so much had he desired to do it. He lost no time in working the land, in watering it. By this time it was already light in the eastern sky. Green shoots were beginning to show their tips, to grow and to flourish. Little animals were scurrying in and out across the vast plains, while in the air overhead, birds circled over the fields of his labour. And as he surveyed all this, it seemed a smile could be seen on his countenance. A man and a woman lay sleeping in the shade, and as he looked on them, his masterpiece, he “saw that it was good, very good. Evening came and morning followed: the sixth day. On the seventh day God rested after all the work he had been doing.”1
God, the Creator, the Worker. And we, like him, created in his image and likeness, are called to continue his labour of creation by our own work. For God said, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.”2 “Man, created in the image of God, shares by his work in the activity of the Creator.”3

At times I ask myself, what makes Mr. Andrews get up early every morning to battle an hour of traffic, only to sit behind a desk crunching numbers that have very little to do with him or his interests? Why does Mrs. Jones spend hours of her day in a rowdy classroom and her nights correcting piles of homework and preparing assignments? The droves of people that flood the highways, trains and buses every rush hour—what keeps them going? For some it may be money, power, love of family, of themselves, personal satisfaction or fulfillment in life.

Yet how consoling it is to know that our daily toil is ordained by God, is in imitation of the One who spent a good portion of his life hidden in the silent, daily struggles of a carpenter’s shop in Nazareth. How motivating it is to know that

while providing the substance of life for themselves and their families, men and women are performing their activities in a way which appropriately benefits society. They can justly consider that by their labor they are unfolding the Creator’s work, consulting the advantages of their brother men, and are contributing by their personal industry to the realization history of the divine plan.4

1 Gn 1:30-31, The New Jerusalem Bible.

2 Gn 1:28.

3 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 14 September 1981, n. 25.

4 Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965, n. 34.

Copyright Nicholas Ferreira, 2008.

Comment

  1. After reading this, I’ve come to appreciate more the balance in the Church regarding work and rest. We are called to work, but we are also called to rest.

    In the end, when the harvest is taken in, our work will end, but the feast will begin, and if there is one thing to do, it will be to completely love while rested eternally in the Lord.

    God bless your work.

    — Mark Gamez · Nov 9, 08:46 PM · #

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