Local Catholic husband and father Wade Gaynor speaks in the February 2025 “The Workplace & Wider Community” episode of the Acts 2:42 video series, which this year has focused on sharing the faith journeys of people around the Diocese of Owensboro. Other interviewees this year have included Fr. Frank Ruff, GHM, of Todd County; Kristin Dorth of Owensboro; Bayardo and Susana Solorza of Henderson; and Andrew Mung of Bowling Green. These videos can be viewed at www.youtube.com/@dioceseofowensboro7623. SCREENSHOT

BY DR. JEFF ANDRINI, OFFICE OF EVANGELIZATION AND DISCIPLESHIP

Whether you are fully retired or just beginning a career, what are some of the Gospel values that you have seen in your workplace?

“On earth, as it is in heaven” are the values we pray for in the “Our Father” every time we recite the prayer that Jesus taught us. What are the values we think are in God’s kingdom, that we would like to see present here? Let’s list a few: compassion, mercy, peace, unconditional love, fairness, justice, and the list goes on.

Lest anyone think the secular workplace is devoid of Gospel values and working in the Catholic Church is the holy grail, sorry to burst your bubble. I have worked in the Church full-time for 35 years and it has not always reflected Gospel values. In fact, I now serve on the board for the National Association for Lay Ministry, and we interview lay ecclesial ministers in the Church and some of the stories are not very different from corporate America.

In a recent document called “The Church as a Field Hospital – Caring for our Own – The Catholic Church and Lay Ecclesial Ministers in the United States,” we suggest that “creating and sustaining a healthy ministerial workplace is both a theological and practical task. The doctrine of the Trinity, as the perfect model of communion, is the lens through which the ministerial workplace is imagined. It concerns God’s life with us – and our life with each other” (pg. 5).

How we live as missionary disciples of Jesus should be clear in the actions we take in the workplace and in our parishes. Our love for God should be manifest in our love for one another and how we manage, serve, and care for and welcome others.

In our Acts 2:42 Small Groups this month, our theme is the “Workplace and the Wider Community.”  We are being challenged to understand that our faith must be lived in every area of our lives and that promoting and protecting human dignity is the role of every disciple of Jesus! Pope Benedict XVI put it this way in his encyclical “Caritas in veritate” from 2009: “The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, or inherently inhumane or opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner.”

We can only work within our scope of influence and entrust our circle of concern to the Lord. And within our influence there is much we can do to bring Gospel values into the workplace and society. How can we care for colleagues, those in our society that have no voice at the table (how we support and protect them?), and how do we treat our enemies?

Following the teaching of Jesus is not easy, but in union with God’s heart through prayer, the sacraments and in Christian community, we can witness to a way of life that works, making present the kingdom of God on earth! 

God bless you!   

Jeff

Dr. Jeff Andrini is the director of the Office of Evangelization and Discipleship, and can be reached at [email protected].

Originally printed in the February 2025 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.