Volunteering for necessary Sunday work?

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APXO

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Hello all,

Perhaps I’m overthinking things however I wanted to get some thoughts from more traditionally minded folks on an interior dilemma I’ve been having recently about Sunday work.

The obligation is to assist at mass and avoid unnecessary servile work. I work in public safety, a necessary societal function. Without giving away where I work, I am fortunate in my specific job that I do not have to often work on Sundays and Holy Days. I work in an atypical type of public safety so I do not have the usual 7day rotating shift schedules where one would normally be scheduled to work on Sundays. Unless someone is on-call they usually do not get forced to work these days…however we do from time to time have assignments that come up and the bosses first ask if folks are willing to work them before they have to force people to work them. Recently these assignments have come up so much that we are going to haveto rotate everyone through at least once before people can re-volunteer.

My question is do I error when I volunteer to work assignments that will involve me working on Sundays and Holy days or am I obligated to wait until I am forced by my superiors like most folks who work in public safety? Sometimes I volunteer to help out another coworker who has other things going on in their personal lives and often times these assignments involve overtime which doesn’t hurt. Again, the work is public safety and usually I wouldn’t consider the nature of these extra assignments as “servile” in the traditional sense 90% of the time but it is still work where I’m under another’s thumb so to speak.

I know we are to avoid unnecessary work…but are we to avoid necessary work unless forced into it?

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
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APXO said:
Sometimes I volunteer to help out another coworker who has other things going on in their personal lives and often times these assignments involve overtime which doesn’t hurt.
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Sounds like very charitable to me on your part.
The day of the Lord, is the day of the Lord. Dedicate it all to Him.
If you want to compensate any feelings of guilt for extra work done on Sundays, donate the amount of money worth you worked on Sundays to the Church or other charities. That is if it troubles you and you want to do something to compensate.
 
No you aren’t “erroring” if you volunteer and no you don’t have to wait until you are required by your boss.
 
APXO said:
I know we are to avoid unnecessary work…but are we to avoid necessary work unless forced into it?
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In my opinion yes. I personally wouldn’t do this if it meant that I couldn’t attend mass on either Saturday evening or Sunday. Other Holy days which fall midweek are a different matter if you’re still working of course, it may well be extremely difficult to attend those and damage your work relationship badly.

I wouldn’t volunteer to miss the weekend days of obligation personally.
 
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I can generally work out arrangements so i can assist at mass on these weekends so that isnt an issue for me. So that being said, should one/can one volunteer to perform work if its a necessary work (like in my case, public safety)?
 
If that’s so then yes, I would feel at ease with that.
I asked my priest a while back about Sunday working and he said that it was fine if you were serving others, that is quite a broad directive but I think the work you speak of sits comfortably within that scope.

Sorry if my opinion was initially unsettling, if you can still attend mass at weekends I don’t see a problem.
 
Public safety would fall under the category of necessary work. People are depending on somebody doing it.
 
There have been threads in the past where some people criticized firefighters and EMTs who went to Mass on duty (because their radios were disrupting the complainers). The FF/EMTs explained that they had shifts that prevented attendance at Mass (e.g., a 36-hour shift could cover all Saturday vigil Masses and all Sunday Masses), and attending while on duty (and leaving if dispatched) was the only way they could attend. I always took those criticisms to be uncharitable.

Public safety is a necessary duty. Jesus didn’t just say it was okay for Him to heal on the Sabbath; He said healing was okay on the Sabbath. And it isn’t just the classic sheriff-running-toward-the-gunman or EMT-performing-CPR or firefighter-carrying-me-out-of-the-burning-building scenario, either. Absolutely, you should feel free to accept public safety duty on a Sunday. If others suffer from scrupulosity with respect to the Sabbath, they can stay out of public safety jobs; but they should not force you to do so. Otherwise we would be abandoning everyone who needed help on the Sabbath.
 
I’ve always worked jobs like these. Hubby has too.

I was a paramedic that worked everything from 13 to 24 hours shifts. I was in the military and worked entire drill weekends or was located in a remote location with no possibility of making it to mass.

Now, I work as a blood banker in a very busy hospital. I work 7 on 7 off overnights. Every other weekend it’s incredibly difficult to make it to any mass. I do the best I can. But, I can’t work miracles.

I’d love to see some of these judgmental people try to make it to church after working 4 10 hour overnights with several emergencies that required all the concentration you had to not be on autopilot and get the work done correctly and quickly. I’d also love to see their faces when they get into a car accident and need emergency care to live and any of the doctors, nurses, lab techs, radiologists, and all the first responders weren’t there to help because they had other priorities. We are Catholics too and not all of us work 9-5 day jobs with every weekend and holidays off.

Last week we had a young pregnant woman hemorrhage to the point of near death on a Saturday evening. I was a train wreck after that shift and even though I could have dragged myself to the evening mass before my next shift…emotionally, I needed to sleep and spend every second with my girls.
 
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You are being paid for your work? I’m doubting that this is “servile” work 🙂 It is kind to volunteer sometimes so that others may enjoy time with their families. One might even say it is a Christian thing to do!!
 
To answer the title “only if you feel called…” and expect nothing temporal in return
 
Most churches have a Saturday evening or afternoon mass where the Sunday mass is celebrated. Many churches have an early morning (7 or 8 am) Sunday mass that maybe you could attend before you go in. Certainly there is a time that you would be able to attend, even if you had to work on Sunday.
 
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