From Adam in the garden to the foreman at the factory –
everyone has something to say about WORK:
its challenges, its difficulties, its hardships, its rewards.

        St. Francis and St. Clare had something to say about WORK, too.  In their Gospel vision of life, WORK was a grace, a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the spirit of Christ.  (CATECHISM #2427)

       Francis, in his Testament, declared:  And I worked with my hands.  Clare in her Rule directed her Sisters to labor devotedly after the hour of Terce.  Both recognized that in taking up the daily cross of WORK, they could enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.  They could then become fully God’s fellow workers and co-workers for His Kingdom.  (#307)

         Working in this spirit, the Seraphic parents taught their followers to glory in their humble but so efficacious imitation of the Son of God who during the greater part of His (earthly) life shared the condition of the vast majority of human beings: a daily life spent without evident greatness, a life of manual labor.  (#531)

          Thus, sweeping and sewing, cleaning and cooking, work in the field or in the factory, at a desk or on the road become opportunities to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life. (#533)  And the wages of this Spirit-filled labor are fulfillment and peace.