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In Praise of the Working Life
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
“National Catholic Register”
By Joseph Pronechen
Ah, Labor Day. A day to sit back, relax and soak up the unofficial end of summer. Push thoughts of the new school year aside? Maybe. Contemplate what our work means? Definitely.
“Work is meant to provide a dignified livelihood for ourselves and loved ones on the material level, but our work goes beyond that primary purpose,” says Father Jeffrey Kirby of St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, S.C. “By doing good work we honor our Creator, and we help edify and build up our society and the world around us. Our work is meant to give order and remedy to our lives and to encourage solidarity with God and with others.”
That purpose should propel us to honor God by doing an honest day’s work.
“Because we are made in God’s image we’re called to extend the work of God in the world,” continues the priest, who has clearly done his spiritual homework on work. “Pope John Paul II really stressed this collaboration and cooperation in his encyclical Laborem Exercens [Human Work]. We aren’t meant to live for work, but to work in order to fully live.”
Honest work, then, shouldn’t be seen as simply a secular burden or a spiritual punishment for original sin – even though work certainly has an element of fulfilling basic needs and redeeming the consequences of original sin. “Through our work, we participate in the good of others,” Says Father Kirby, “and we consecrate the world to God one cubicle at a time.”
Tom Spencer tries to do that both at home and as principal at St. Joachim Elementary School in Madera, Calif. Although he left secular education because he wanted to incorporate his faith into his work, he doesn’t think a person needs to be in a religious institution to appreciate the spiritual side of working.
“Work is difficult, and yet there’s value, purpose and meaning associated with it,” he says. “Even working around the house on common tasks can be fulfilling.”
The experts agree: Work is transformed when the worker sees his or her tasks as opportunities to align human effort with the building up of God’s Kingdom.
“We’re called to holiness through the ordinary, and that happens to be our work,” says Catholic business consultant, author and motivational speaker Dave Durand.
Durand, the Register’s “Working Life” columnist, adds that you know you’ve given an honest day’s work when “you can put your head on the pillow and say, ‘I gave everything I could as a good steward of the abilities God gave me.’”
Michele Spencer, Tom’s wife and mother of 11, knows the secret of finding supernatural satisfaction from work. The homemaker and home-schooling mom explains, “It’s something I love to do, so the yoke is easy. What we do, taking care of our children is building up the Kingdom of God, our society, the Church,” she says. “We forget our work’s true meaning because it seems so mundane. Making dinner and cleaning the house seems not that important, and yet, it’s the most important labor we can do. That’s why I enjoy most of what I do.”
Pope John Paul addressed exactly this point I his encyclical, writing, “Toil is…familiar to women, who, sometimes without proper recognition on the part of society and even of their own families, bear the daily burden and responsibility for their homes and the upbringing of their children.”
In those moments when she does not want to do a particular task around the house, Michele immediately remembers the Catechism’s teaching on how work sanctifies us, setting us apart for Christ. “Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. It can also be redemptive” (No. 2427).
For Tom, this includes the times he cuts the lawn, repairs the family car and helps Michele do the dishes. “Even when hot and grimy,” he says, “it’s fulfilling.”
Father Kirby points out, “I come from a family of mechanics. It was literally spirituality of the monkey wrench.” But today, he sees the contemporary world’s struggle with artificiality because it’s several steps removed from the sources of goods and services. People want their car fixed but can be turned off by the grease in the garage, and likewise with the dirt on the farmer or perspiration on the carpenter.
“Because we’re so far removed from that as a society, we tend to look at that type of work as less noble,” adds the priest. “Actually it’s that work, when done well, that builds solidarity in society and with God.”
He points out that St. Joseph was a carpenter while St. Paul supported his preaching ministry with a tent-making business.
Of course, not all work is honest and not every exertion honors God. It’s easy in the modern world to participate in efforts grounded in, or oriented toward, sin.
Durand cites as examples marketing that tempts people to indulge in their baser or most materialistic impulses and sales pitches that conceal the full truth about what’s being sold.
Work glorifies God when it helps us grow in virtue, he explains. Simply honoring the Ten Commandments in the workplace, moment by moment, can transform a “bad day at the office” into a saving and sanctifying experience.
“I know people who’ve been urged to fudge the truth and be comfortable about it, but they chose to stand up for what is right,” says Durand, “even when it meant being passed over for a promotion or risking termination.”
The Catechism teaches that “Work united to Christ can be redemptive” (No. 2460). John Paul told us how: by “uniting work with prayer.” Some people use the traditional morning offering. Tom Spencer turns to Pope St. Pius X’s prayer to St. Joseph, and he continues a practice he learned in grade school – writing “JMJ” at the top of a paper, as a reminder of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, throughout the day.
“Christ waits for us in our work,” reminds Father Kirby. “He walks with us and labors with us.”
Staff writer Joseph Pronechen is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.
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He Finally Had to Say Yes or No
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
“The National Catholic Register”
August 24, 2008
Page C2
By Joseph Pronechen
For some, thoughts of a vocation come early. “Probably the first time I thought of being a priest was in fourth grade,” Father Jeffrey Kirby, 33, parochial vicar of St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, S.C., distinctly remembers. “My mom was picking me and my sister up from fourth grade, and I was wondering what girl in the grade would be my girlfriend. Then I thought: ‘Well, I’ll just become a priest and I can love them all.’ Now I look back and see
God was fashioning my heart for celibacy and faithful priesthood.”
More fashioning came during other childhood events in the Kirby household of dad Alan, mother Fran, and Father Kirby’s older brother and younger sister.
“When I was a kid, my dad built us a clubhouse, and I turned it into a church. I preached and kids would come – probably more for my mom’s cupcakes than my preaching,” says Father Kirby. “Obviously, I had things like a
desire to share on my heart.”
Because he desired to be a good Christian and wanted his faith to be part of his education, he went to the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Studying history, he planned to go to law school and work in human rights. During his last year of graduate school at Franciscan, everything was going right in his life, and his future looked bright.
“But I felt things were going wrong,” he explains. “Spiritually, I felt so heavy and melancholy, and I couldn’t understand it.”
He visited a priest for counsel. “There’s one question, and until you answer this question and say Yes or No, your life will always be ambiguous,” he was told.
“I was lukewarm at the time and thought I had my plan – when he really put it there right in front of me,” Father Kirby says. He then realized in prayer that God was calling for that Yes or No.
“Vocations are very simple,” Father Kirby explains. “The Master turns and says to his disciple, ‘Follow me.’ And it’s just a matter of saying a generous Yes. He asks for a generous Yes – not, ‘I’ll think about it.’ The rest is history.”
After priestly formation and studies in Rome, he was ordained in July 2007 for the Diocese of Charleston, S.C., by Bishop Robert Baker, now ordinary of Birmingham, Ala. Father Kirby was one of six new priests, the largest group ordained for that diocese since the 1950’s.
On his first anniversary, people asked Father Kirby several times if the priesthood was everything he thought and expected. He had the same answer for everyone. “No, not at all. It is so much more than I could have ever expected – and I had high expectations. It’s so much more than what I could have imagined in the celebration of the sacraments, pastoral ministry, preaching the Gospel. The priesthood is a beautiful gift Christ has given the Church. For some reason, God has decided to share the gift and give that vocation to me.”
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Drug Rehab Community To Add Third House
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
“The National Catholic Register”
March 9, 2008
By Joseph Pronechen
Register Correspondent
ST AUGUSTINE, Fla. – Since 1994, Comunita Cenacolo America (Community of the Cenacle) has been proving its fully faith-based program restores hope and turns addicts around. It accepts no government funding. It’s not a therapeutic program.
“It is a School of Life because we are trying to go back to the basics, living together in simplicity [there is no TV or radio], working hard, sacrificing, learning to do things you don’t like to do,” said Albino Aragno, the director of the community in America. “Prayer is the foundation of community.”
Mother Elvira Petrozzi, an Italian Sister of Charity, opened the first Comunita Cenacolo in Saluzzo, Italy, in 1983 to treat drug- and alcohol-addicted men. Since then, the project has grown to 60 houses with 1,500 residents in countries such as Ireland, France, Russia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Some are for women, while missions in South America care for homeless, abandoned and abused children. Each house has a chapel and the Blessed Sacrament with Eucharistic adoration daily.
In 1999, a formation house opened in Italy, and there are already four priests from the community, 15 brothers, nearly 10 seminarians and 30 sisters in formation. On Dec. 8, 2005, Comunita Cenacolo was granted status as a Public Association of the Faithful.
When he was rector of St. Augustine Cathedral-Basilica and before he became a bishop, Bishop Robert Baker of the Diocese of Birmingham, Ala., co-founded a community in St. Augustine, Fla.
That was nearly 15 years ago, and now there are three houses in St. Augustine: the original Our Lady of Hope, Mary Immaculate for men and St. Maria Goretti for women, which is to open this year.
Having a strong feeling the Blessed Mother wanted to get people off the streets, he met with a small group for a continuous novena to Our Lady of Good Hope.
He learned of Mother Elvira through a priest at the Vatican.
“The devotion to Mary was something I was looking for and I didn’t discover anyone else having that,” Bishop Baker said.
He had been asking, “Why aren’t we using our Catholic resources? We have the sacraments … At times we’re too reluctant to share our faith with other people when that is the most important element in conversion and rehabilitation. Mother Elvira has figured that out and follows that pattern as few other I’ve seen do.”
“She has a strong prayer base that would run circles around any monastery,” he said. “The focus of the prayer life is the Eucharist and a strong Marian devotion.”
Everyone prays the Rosary three times a day – morning and evening in the chapel, and afternoons with fellow workers. She insisted, “People have to eat three times a day for our body; why not pray three time a day to feed our soul.”
“She’s not shy about it,” said Bishop Baker.
Nor is she shy about ordering a disciplined life because people struggling with addictions have self-centered dispositions that need corrections.
“These men understand that they struggle to overcome their addiction,” said Father Jeffrey Kirby. “There are no easy answers, no attempt to baby them. The real Gospel teaches both death and resurrection.”
Father Kirby spent six weeks at the community’s Saluzzo motherhouse while studying for the priesthood in Rome for the Diocese of Charleston, and counts the community as a big part of his understanding of the Church’s mission, especially the New Evangelization.
“For me,” said Father Kirby, “in the second part of Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) when Pope Benedict is speaking about what authentic social action is, he’s talking about Comunita Cenacolo.”
Because the addicts have to relearn how to live, pray and sacrifice, Mother Elvira insists they take three years, unlike the three to six months for many other programs. This detachment from the world was challenging at first for 30-year-old Jeffrey, who has been with the community nearly three years, but most beneficial because it freed him “from all kinds of distractions from discovering Jesus,” he said.
Everyone works a full day, almost monastic in style, growing vegetables, building, repairing. Mother Elvira insists on total reliance on divine Providence. Addicts pay nothing. No state money is accepted.
“We experience every day the providence of God,” he said, as various donations arrive at just the right times. “Addicts don’t trust personally in their own life. So, by depending on the providence of God, you see God is working for us. It’s a beautiful teaching for us. You see God provides.”
Mother Elvira’s approach “leads addicts to real, authentic and enduring recovery,” observed Father Kirby.
No formal studies have measured percentages of success, but neither have studies been done for any other faith-based program, according to senior research associate Mary Gautier at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
Aragno shies away from specific numbers.
“For us its considered a successful person who embraces and lives the faith and the Christian life outside,” he said. “You can go into any hospital to be detoxed. But to maintain that you have to embrace a new way of living.”
Joseph Pronechen is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Information: HopeReborn.org
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