Jesus, the hardworking carpenter, took labor seriously. So did Paul, who was proud to be able to support himself through his trade as a tentmaker. St. Benedict wrote in chapter forty-eight of his Rule that “there should be specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading” and that “when they live by the labor of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did, then they are really monks.” Even St. Francis, the humble beggar, heard his call from God as a call to manual labor: to repair the crumbling church of San Damiano and two other small churches in the Umbrian countryside. Far from being a punishment for transgression, work is an essential part of the human vocation, part of what it means to be incarnated with material needs in a material world. Our calling is to find ways to work that align with the person we want to be and the world we want to see.
