First off, I will tell you that my husband is a physician, and the idea you’re advancing goes both ways. His work to save lives is
our work. It is what he and I do, it is what our family does. It is not just that he supports us by the money he brings home. We support him, too, and in doing so we save lives as surely as he does. It is vitally important to our well-being as a family that he makes the world a better place during his working hours. That would be true whether he worked ten hours a week or sixty.
If my husband were a carpenter, it would make a difference to know he made good homes, homes that gave people real shelter. If he were a banker, it would make a difference to know that he handled people’s money in such a way as to increase their security and to increase the ability of others to do well in the world by their businesses and their other ventures. If he practiced law, it would make a difference to know that he did not just advance law, but that he truly advanced justice. If he were a merchant, it would make a difference to know that he helped those who made things that people need to sell them to the people who need them, that he sold things that improved lives by having been made and sold. Every moment my husband is gone from us, it is a sacrifice for us. We want to know that his work serves God and is befitting of the gifts God gave him as a human being.
It is not only that we have more to leave this world than our two children, that we cannot leave all the work of the Church to the professed religious. How can we raise our children to realize they aren’t the center of the universe, when we act as if our universe revolves around them? I don’t think that is how saints are made.
Parents who take no “moment for mom and dad to stop and think about their personal wants and desires” are on a road to disaster. Don’t believe me? The next time you see your pastor, ask him. I have heard confessors say that they have given overwrought mothers who confess having a lack of mildness and patience with their children a penance of taking 30 minutes just for themselves! Even the soil itself can be exhausted, if harvest after harvest is taken, but nothing is ever put back into it. If soil is cared for, though, the seed yields 30, and 50, and 100-fold. It is the work of parents not to be without desires, but to steer their desires to the things that will really fill their lives with life. You will find that even consecrated religious, including the ones in Carmelite monasteries, have time in their day set aside for recreation. Read Autobiography of a Soul, by St. Therese of Liseux…during her recreation time, she painted! In seminaries, these recreation times are required without exceptions; it is not allowed to work on coursework. I have heard the seminarians refer to the time as “Forced Fun.” The Church doesn’t want diocesan priests who never take a minute for themselves, let alone Catholic parents who won’t.
Furthermore, the idea that work ought to be sanctifying is by no means a purely Protestant one! Consider the passage below (boldface mine). Also, read the papal encyclicals on work. You will notice that the work of the laity is not separated by type, depending on whether the layperson is married or not! The work of a Christian is part of the life of a Christian, and an important one.
This is from* Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church*,
Chapter V: The Universal Call to Holiness:
vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html
Furthermore, married couples and Christian parents should follow their own proper path (to holiness) by faithful love. They should sustain one another in grace throughout the entire length of their lives. They should embue their offspring, lovingly welcomed as God’s gift, with Christian doctrine and the evangelical virtues. In this manner, they offer all men the example of unwearying and generous love; in this way they build up the brotherhood of charity; in so doing, they stand as the witnesses and cooperators in the fruitfulness of Holy Mother Church; by such lives, they are a sign and a participation in that very love, with which Christ loved His Bride and for which He delivered Himself up for her.(11*) A like example, but one given in a different way, is that offered by widows and single people, who are able to make great contributions toward holiness and apostolic endeavor in the Church.
Finally, those who engage in labor—and frequently it is of a heavy nature—should better themselves by their human labors. They should be of aid to their fellow citizens. They should raise all of society, and even creation itself, to a better mode of existence. Indeed, they should imitate by their lively charity, in their joyous hope and by their voluntary sharing of each others’ burdens, the very Christ who plied His hands with carpenter’s tools and Who in union with His Father, is continually working for the salvation of all men. In this, then, their daily work they should climb to the heights of holiness and apostolic activity.**
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