Are you envious because I am generous? Matthew 20:15
I myself will look after and tend my sheep. Ezekiel 34:11
Piety
Let us pray. When I am idle, come to me and give me work to do. Help me to learn to be a good worker and a good manager, working for the common good, treating all persons with the dignity you exhibit, and dealing with them generously. Help me to see your face in all the people I encounter today. By my actions, let me show you that you can trust me, like Peter, to tend your sheep. Deliver us from evil and grant us peace today. Amen.
Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/082306.shtml
Work as a theme runs throughout the Bible. We encounter shepherds, carpenters, vineyard owners, landowners, soldiers, kings, and more who were all going about their work in this world when they encountered the Lord.
If the Bible were being written today, wouldn’t we all want a boss like Jesus and today's landowner if we were the last workers hired?
Today, we live in an era where the last workers hired are usually the first to go in a layoff. Or a corporate restructuring. Or a downsizing. Or competitive outsourcing. We can fill up our dictionary with euphemisms but in the end, the worker loses.
Jesus as CEO also would protect us from corporate greed and excessive salaries paid to a few at the top while workers and shareholders get little. Jesus as CEO would never let his firm turn into an Arthur Andersen, Enron, Worldcom or any of the other examples of greed we have witnessed in recent years.
As parents, managers, workers and children of God, we are challenged every day to live lives according to the teachings of Jesus and the Church. The challenge is that these are not always easy to follow. Jesus today shows us the way of putting Catholic Social Teaching to work in everyday jobs.
The teaching in the parable of the landowner connects directly to the principles of Catholic social teaching. The foundational principle is the common good based on the understanding in Catholic social thought that persons are created as social beings, always in interrelationship and interdependence with others. Jesus hires all the workers he can.
Catholic social thought also promotes the dignity of every human being, as each is made in the image and likeness of God, but this dignity always needs to be seen in relationship to the promotion of the common good. Jesus pays them equally.
Human dignity grounds and is protected by a spectrum of human rights and corresponding duties. This principle of the correlation of rights and duties promotes just living conditions for all as well as the dignity of work and the rights of workers. The generous pay allows each worker to have just living conditions.
Many persons, though, are marginalized in our society and all are called to make an option for the poor, keeping those who are economically poor in the forefront of our minds in all decision-making. Jesus’ landowner keeps the unemployed foremost in his concern. Every time he goes back to the village, he hires those who are idle.
Maybe you think this kind of company won’t succeed today in this era of getting ahead at all costs and beating the competition. Maybe not. But when we read Ezekiel, we see that the Lord was critical of workers who lost sight of their responsibilities. Jesus wanted a change. So Jesus took over tending his sheep.
As Peter Maurin, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement wrote in his ironically titled “Easy Essays:” "I want a change, and a radical change. I want a changefrom an acquisitive society to a functional society, from a society of go-getters to a society of go-givers."
Action
Can you deal with people like Jesus would if he were at your work today? It doesn’t matter if you workplace is home-based, school-based, factory-based, or office based. If you repair roads or repair roofs, work in a mall, store or hospital.
If Jesus were the boss, what would he do differently?
If you saw Jesus face in the face of your employees, how would you treat them differently?
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