Dear Parishioners:
I am not sure how often any of us have considered a career in business as a calling from God or anyone else for that matter. In our world today business is frequently looked upon as dirty, or at least more concerned with making money than anything else.
Michael Novak has written a short work entitled, Business as a Calling, Work and the Examined Life. According to Novak there are four characteristics of a calling: each calling is unique; a calling requires certain preconditions; a true calling is revealed by the enjoyment and sense of renewed energies its practice yields; they are not usually easy to discover. While he holds that a calling can be entirely secular, he also admits that there is probably something of the divine in every calling.
His chapter on Little-known Facts about Business reveals some very interesting points. For example, the following chart reveals some interesting facts about who is giving themselves an opportunity to listen to God's Word in something other than private contemplation.
He writes of how commerce brings us together by making us dependent upon one another for all the products we use. "From all over the world we have been brought together - those who make and those who enjoy the fruit of their labors and inventions (p.48)."
He calls upon business to practice virtue both individually and corporately. Business will not succeed in a morally corrupted climate. That does not mean that a person will not accumulate wealth by sinful means. Evil has a way of perverting whatever it touches. He suggests three cardinal virtues of business, Creativity, Building Community, and Practical Realism. These virtues can make business fun and successful.
There will be a more complete review in this issue of the Texas Catholic Herald. I hope you will enjoy the book as much as I did. A refreshing look at business and its dignity.
Fr. Bill
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