Robert Barron - The Enemy of Melancholy
Peace be with you. Friends, our first reading for this weekend is taken from the marvelous book of Proverbs. You can find that in your Bibles right after the book of Psalms. It's part of the so-called "wisdom literature," so these texts that are more poetic in nature. Proverbs is associated with King Solomon, who's the paradigmatically wise figure in the Old Testament. It's made up of a series of aphorisms, or brief statements, mostly about the moral life, although, you can find some pretty high theologizing too.
Go to Proverbs chapter 8, and you'll see reflections on Lady Wisdom, who is with God at the beginning when he created all things. And that had a good amount of influence on the later "logos" speculation of the Church. So the book of Proverbs, marvelous. It's a great book to peruse. You don't have to read it cover to cover, but you can find wisdom in these aphorisms. Well, the reading for today is taken from the very end of Proverbs, from chapter 31, the final chapter.
Very interesting how a book dedicated to wisdom ends with a kind of hymn of praise to a wise, industrious, resourceful wife. It ends with singing the praise of this marvelous woman. We can speak, if you want, of a kind of feminism within the book of Proverbs since it ends this way, and Lady Wisdom is identified in Proverbs chapter 8. But I don't want to focus so much on that theme today, but rather on what I call a theology and spirituality of work. It's a theme that's very dear to St. Pope John Paul II, but one that we don't reflect on, I don't think, adequately: that work itself in its various manifestations is not something extraneous to the spiritual life, not something secular that we do alongside of our spiritual interests, but in fact is filled up with spiritual power.
When I was coming of age, I can't tell you how many times I heard this little adage: "It's not about what you do, it's who you are". It's not what you do, it's not doing that matters so much, it's being that matters. Well, I'll admit there's something to that distinction. Sure. I get it. At the same time, I've always felt that distinction is simplistic, as though we can simply divorce our being from our action, our being from what we do, when in point of fact, I think our being is deeply influenced by our acting and by our doing. Work has a lot to do with the kind of people that we become.
Again, another John Paul II theme. In our moral choices, he said, we make ourselves the people that we are becoming, and in a similar way, in the work that we do, we become the people that we are meant to be. Now, here's a first thing to think about now under this rubric. Adam, according to the book of Genesis, was given work to do not simply after the fall but before the fall. So there's a tendency to think, well, yes, after sin entered the world, then work is this kind of terrible burden. We have to labor by the sweat of our brow, et cetera.
Now, I don't deny for a second that work, like everything else in life, became worse after the fall. It became more difficult and complicated. That's true. However, remember: Adam was given work to do before the fall. Therefore it belongs to what's good, and beautiful, and positive in our way of being human. Someone that was very prominent in our country some decades ago, the political commentator William F. Buckley, Jr., once said this. And I pass this advice onto many people who struggle with depression. He said, "Industry is the enemy of melancholy". Industry is the enemy of melancholy.
In other words, when you're feeling down, one of the great things you can do is get to work. Get to work on a project. Tends to make you feel better. Now, why? Why? Because work engages the powers. Think of your powers of mind, your powers of will, your powers of creativity and imagination. All of it is awakened when we give ourselves over to a project. I'll give you a silly example from my own life. Much of my life is kind of cerebral. I'm preparing things like this, like a sermon. I'm writing an article. I'm going and giving a talk somewhere. Something I find really satisfying, no kidding, is doing the dishes.
So especially during COVID, I've been home more often. And so I've made it my responsibility to do the dishes after dinner. And you say, "Oh, this is kind of drudgery, and it must be really tiresome". Not really. For me, I kind of enjoy it. Here's this big mess of dishes. And then through simple effort of my hands and so on, I can bring all that to order. There's something satisfying about it. Now, extrapolate from that to all these different forms of work that we engage in and how powerful they are, how much they awaken what is best in us.
Think of it this way too. John Paul II made this point many times. In our work, we become collaborators with God, "co labore," to work with. Could God accomplish all his purposes on his own? Well yeah, of course he could. He's God. But God gives us the extraordinary privilege of cooperating with his work. He draws us into this activity so that we can, with him, bring about a greater world. Okay. Now, with all that in mind, as a general theology or spirituality of work, I want you to look at this wonderful passage from the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs, as the author sings the praise of this industrious, intelligent woman.
Listen. "She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food from far away". You know what I love about that? Yes, she's working with willing hands, but she's also seeking wool and flax. No one's just handing her what she needs for her work. No, no. She goes out with a sense of industry and purpose, and she finds what she needs like the ships of the merchant. How wonderful, this exotic image of bringing goods from far away.
Well, that's what this industrious woman does through her work. Furthermore, "She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household". Think what it was like in the ancient world to provide food for your household. I mean, I can make my breakfast and lunch in a couple of minutes because it's all there, the eggs, and bread, and cold cuts, and soup, it's all there. I just have to throw it in the microwave or in a toaster, and it's done. But imagine now in ancient times, when you had to provide food for your family, go out and hunt it, or grow it, and you had to prepare it. So of course, she's up in the middle of the night, every day working, working, engaging her powers for the sake of her family.
How about this? I'm still continuing with this passage. "She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard". Well, this woman's not just doing manual labor. She's doing that. But she's a business person going out there and looking at different options. She considers this field. She buys it. She invests. She's engaging not just her manual powers but her intellectual powers. John Paul II is strong in that too. I couldn't help but think, with this great stress on hands in this passage, the work of hands, and the fruit of your hands.
One of my great heroes, Bob Dylan, has that marvelous song "Forever Young". It has the line, "May your hands always be busy, may your feet always be swift, may you have a firm foundation when the winds of changes shift". That's a deeply biblical idea. May your hands always be busy, engaged, active. Then how about this now, a different type of handiwork. "She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy". How wonderful. The same hands that prepare food and work the fields are now reaching out to those in need.
Perhaps it's the fruit of her industry that gives her the wealth that she's able now to share. That, too, everybody, is a type of work, isn't it? Work on behalf of the poor. Terrific. She does that too. Then this. Her clothing is described, and it's described as being a "fine linen and purple". That means it's a very high level. We'd say it's a very fancy suit of clothes. But listen: But "Strength and dignity are her true clothing". Terrific, isn't it?
So she is wearing fine clothes, but the real beauty of her clothing is in her strength and dignity. How did she become strong? Through work. Where's her dignity come from? From her work. Those who suffer with unemployment, and that's a curse in our society, what they feel, it's not just the financial burden of that, but it's the loss of dignity that people often feel when they lose their work, they lose their livelihood. That's where it comes from. Then this, not just physical work, not just investment, not just giving to the poor, but listen to this. "She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue". She also does intellectual work.
John Paul II talked about, and he was a man that knew both manual labor when he was a young man, and then a lot of intellectual labor: philosopher, a theologian, a writer, a teacher, he spoke about his desk as his intellectual workbench. I've always liked that because I do a lot of work like that. And when I sit down in my office at my computer, I often think of John Paul II's line. This is your intellectual workbench. You put in a good many hours of work on a sermon, or an article, or a book. What are you doing?
Well, listen again. "She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue". She does the work of the mind. Terrific, terrific. And then here's the wonderful coda with which the reading ends for today: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is [fleeting]". True, isn't it? "Boy, that person's charming". That can be deceitful. Maybe they're charming because they want something out of you. They're charming because they're playing a game. Beauty? We all know that: it's fleeting. Even the most beautiful people, how long does it last? Not that long.
But listen: "But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her a share in the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the city gates". You see what he's doing now at the end is correlating all of this wonderful work that this woman does, intellectual, moral, physical, all of this work by which she realizes herself, and he puts it now under the aegis of the fear of the Lord. Quite appropriate, quite appropriate. It's under God that we do the work which conquers our melancholy, yes indeed; but more than that, which awakens our powers; but more than that, gives us the dignity God wants us to have.
So, in light of this beautiful reading, could I invite everybody listening to me now, when you go off to work, and whatever that is. I mean from doing the dishes, to going off to your office in a high-rise building, to caring for your family, to intellectual work. I don't care what it is. But think of this now as collaborating with the purposes of God. See it as a spiritual act, a moral act, an act that brings you into union with the purpose of God. And God bless you.