‘Come to me, all you who
labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.
Shoulder my yoke and learn
from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for
your souls.
Yes, my yoke is easy and my
burden light.’
Matthew 11:28 - 30
It is well and good to be driven to work
hard, to produce great results, to gain satisfaction from a job well done. But
where do we draw the line about how much we do to achieve those results.
Hagiography is full of self-sacrifice, pain, suffering, loneliness, bullying
and overwork – often leading to early deaths. And this is often glorified as
‘giving their lives to Christ’. No doubt some are called to give more, but we
are not all called to do the same (1 Cor 12:4f).
The Christian life for the vast majority is
living out the Gospel in their daily lives. Those who live ‘at the edge’ – in
mission fields, with refugees, the homeless, the mentally ill, the abused, are
those who remind and prompt us about how grateful we should be and encourage us
to provide the spiritual and financial support they need to do their work.
That doesn’t mean that we view the world
through a television screen, on the contrary, being grateful (from the same
root as the word grace) means pleasing, acceptable, agreeable and welcoming. It
should not be seen as something
passive, to be entertained by or to experience pleasure. As a Christian being
grateful means being generous with my time and resources, so that I might
please God (see Philippians 4:18f).
There is no doubt that those who do the
Lord’s work can indeed be overburdened. No one said it would be easy. The task
of educating and supporting our young people in our Catholic schools is a
vocation:
“…we must remember that teachers and educators fulfill a specific
Christian vocation and share an equally specific participation in the mission
of the Church, to the extent that it depends chiefly on them whether the
Catholic school achieves its purpose.” (The Catholic school on the threshold of
the third millennium).
As educators and support workers we bring
our whole selves to this work, but we remain parents, spouses, friends,
colleagues. Finding the balance between our work and wellbeing is and always
will be a challenge, but it is true that when the going gets tough – turn to
the Lord.
For those of you who are having a break
over the next two weeks, rest up! For those who labour on, work well, work
smart.
Peter
Whereabouts during the break
I'll be on leave most of next week (except Thursday).
In week two of the break I'll be in Hobart Monday to Wednesday, in the office Thursday and on leave Friday.
From Sacred Heart, Ulverstone
From St Brigid's Wynyard
From Stella Maris, Burnie
From St Peter Chanel, Smithton
From Our Lady of Mercy, Deloraine
From St Joseph's Queenstown
From St Finn Barr's, Invermay
From St Thomas More's, Newstead
From St Joseph's Rosebery
From Larmenier, St Leonards
From St Patrick's Latrobe
From Sacred Heart, Launceston
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