Gospel: Jn. 4: 5-42
13 Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; 14 but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst…”
Life-giving work
By Bishop Precioso D. Cantillas, SDB, DD
Water and work are common and basic elements in everyone’s day to day life. Even if, like many ordinary things and events in life which go unnoticed or taken for granted, water and work could bring home in each one of us great realizations which in turn could give greater sense and meaning of our earthly existence. In fact, Jesus makes us reflect on the “water” that He gives which would quench all our thirsts as He conversed with a woman fetching water to drink. We need water in order to live as we need to work in order to sustain our life. And as Jesus reveals to us an “eternal life-giving water” I think He could provide us also with an “eternal life-giving work”.
The worker however must first of all understand that his work does not have only an earthly value—money with which he could buy most if not all things he needs to live—but also a meaning and value beyond his earthly existence. The human worker is not merely a beast of burden or a machine for production. He is essentially a moral and a spiritual being in flesh and blood. While his physical body is engaged in work, the moral and spiritual elements within him are fundamentally involved as well; in fact, the latter gives life to the movements or motions of the former. The emotions, memory, imagination, thoughts, moral judgments, and spiritual experiences come into play very significantly as the worker moves about in his tasks.
The worker then must nourish his spirit and consequently his work with the life-giving water which Jesus gives. He does so by uniting his thoughts and feelings with those of Jesus whether at home or at work, finding satisfaction in Jesus’ words and loving presence which is real and true every time and everywhere in our day to day life.
Why die young?
By Teresa R. Tunay, OCDS
It’s so unfair that work gets blamed for so many of man’s maladies these days. At a recent wake, guests were discussing why people seem to be dying younger, and of illnesses that simply appear and knock you down from nowhere. All this time everybody sees you’re so fit—the next week you’re in the ICU, days later they’re viewing your remains.
The man we were mourning had it worse, but his case seems all too common nowadays: this supposedly healthy man, age 45, was just partying (read drinking) on Feb 16; on Feb 17, he said he did not feel well and observed that he had slight difficulty in breathing. He thought it was just hangover so he didn’t go to work and instead went to sleep early. That’s it—he didn’t wake up anymore. “Atake siguro,” guessed his sister, because the wife said he had never been ill. “He was a workaholic,” she said. “Must be work-related stress,” said his children, now with careers of their own.
In our own careers, what keeps us going? The desire to acquire more, for a comfortable life? The need to achieve and be recognized? That is the “water” we “drink” that sustains us in our drive to “succeed”. When this “water” serves only ourselves and those we choose to love, it makes us forever “thirsty”, grasping and greedy, always wanting more, more, more. That produces stress. To quench our self-destructive thirst, Jesus offers a different kind of “water”—one that springs from love of God, self, and neighbor. Abiding in Him our perspective changes—we can now see the futility of acquisition and ambition, we no longer “thirst”. We can now see that work was never meant to kill us—it is a gift to enable us to express our creativity and love. As Jesus leads us to the truth of God dwelling within us, he “moderates our greed” and gives us new life. End of “work-related stress”.
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