Job seekers urged to trust their faith
Focus on searching for a new job but stay spiritually healthy and never let pride take the place of trust in God.
Jesuit Father George Schultze, the spiritual director at St. Patrick's Seminary and University in Menlo Park, shared that message with job seekers who gathered April 27 for a meeting of Edgewood Works, an employment support group started by the social justice ministry at St. Matthias Parish in Redwood City.
Father Schultze said job seekers must give their total focus to the task of finding work. But he said it is also vital that they experience the frustration, even the desolation, that comes with the process with a sense of faith and calm and knowledge of the companionship of Jesus.
"You and I, the sons and daughters of God, clearly find ourselves at times in the desert of life with thoughts of abandonment and despair," he said. "We are in a state of desolation. We have two choices: we can either trust in God or fall to the temptation of pride."
Father Schultze defined pride as "a misguided attempt at solving our desolation by sinful means."
Alcohol, drugs, pornography, infidelity and theft are the well-known vices, he said. The list of moral risks also includes debilitating despondency and thoughts of suicide.
"Our body has a will to live and we need to dispel such thoughts immediately and seek the help of others if they persist," said Father Schultze, who has an academic background in industrial labor relations and publishes articles on such topics as labor organizing and Catholic values and the spiritual nature of work.
He recounted a personal story about his father, George Schultze Sr., a forklift operator who worked in a shingle factory in Redwood City until he lost his job due to injury in his early 50s.
"My own father, who was forced to retire at an early age, within a year's time had passed away," Father Schultze recounted in a later phone interview. "In reflection I think part of it was a loss of direction and meaning in his own experience, and also just the anxiety of being without work at a relatively early age in his life."
Father Schultze spoke of joblessness as an opportunity for spiritual growth - "to reflect on what one really wants to do or where one wants to work and what relationships are important."
He predicted that the economy is at the beginning of a prolonged period of readjustment that could last 30 to 40 years.
"It could be two generations before we find ourselves back onto the same course of things we've experienced until this time," he said. "Where are we going to place our trust? We have to place it in God. We don't stop working but we have to be aware that everything depends on God, which behooves us to be good disciples."
Father Schultze likened excessive consumerism to a false idol and said the world has a need to return to Christian asceticism.
"While material things are part of God's creation, we have abandoned our contemplation of God," he said.
Some 15 unemployed and underemployed people attended the meeting. Two said the transition to unemployment has been beneficial in helping them reconnect with their children. Two others said they are not interested in taking just any job but are being careful to find work that fits their skills and values. Others spoke of having to do what is necessary - working as a security guard to support children attending college, stepping out of the work force to care for a dying parent.
"When you go out with your efforts and work, do it with a sense of calm, a sense of faith," Schultze said. "So you're not all wound up and angry and frustrated. Maintain your companionship with Jesus."
He appealed to the job seekers to stay true to their values.
"If you have the character to do what is good and right, that's all that God asks," he said. "The rest is superfluous."
By Rick DelVecchio
Catholic San Francisco, May 8 2009
