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The World Needs Your Son to Be Professionally Ambitious
The following essay first appeared as an article in Alvaro de Vicente’s Substack publication, Men in the Making. For more articles like this one, you can visit his page here. Subscribe to the publication to stay up-to-date on Alvaro’s writing.
The creation story of Genesis, as many know, is not so much a story about how the heavens go but about how to go to heaven. It is not a scientific description that explains the formation of the universe but a poetic story that shows us something essential about ourselves. Two lessons stand out from this story.
First, all of creation is oriented toward sabbath. Each day ends with a sort of mini-sabbath, in which God beholds the goodness of his work. And the week culminates in God resting on the seventh day, contemplating the beauty of creation and, again, declaring its goodness.
Second, creation is in a certain sense incomplete. Though it is good, indeed very good, God desires man to help him bring it to perfection. Thus, God places man in the garden ut operaretur—that he might work (Genesis 2:15). Though toil is a consequence of the fall, work per se is not. Work is a part of man’s original vocation.
These two lessons of Genesis ought to inform the goal of education. The job of a school is to form the kind of people who are capable of both leisure and diligent work. Though it is easy to sway too far one way or the other, educators ought to attend to whether their education forms students capable of being contemplative—able to leisure, to rest, to behold beauty and enjoy it for its own sake—and who, in being contemplative, do not neglect their duty to serve God by serving their fellow men.
Last week’s article focused on leisure—wasting time well. This week, I will consider the other side of the coin, work, focusing especially on professional work.
What Is the Point of Work?
Most people, I would argue, see professional work as a tool for personal success; it is how one makes it in the world. The details of what success means may vary. For some, success means attaining a comfortable life. For others, it means supporting a family. For still others, it means obtaining as much power or fame or glory—recognition—as possible. Though the details differ, the orientation is the same: that professional work is a means of personal gain.
Two worldviews often go along with this view of work. First, the world is an open field to be utilized for one’s own advantage, and professional work is the way we squeeze that gain out of it. Second, the world is a dangerous place filled with evil, and professional work is a tool for protection, providing one with the means to ward off that evil world.
These views of work and the world, I would suggest, are incomplete. The world does contain evil—we live in a fallen state—and many professions are geared toward protection. But the world is fundamentally still good; it is God’s creation; and protection is ultimately ordered toward rehabilitation. The world contains many resources that man can use for his sake; indeed, even in Genesis God makes the garden for man. But, he also makes man to care for the garden. Supporting a family is good and noble. Of all the above views of work, this most closely hits the mark. Still, the family has an apostolic dimension to it; the family ought to be open to the good of the broader community, just as the broader community ought to support the family. Taken as a whole, then, the above conceptions of work and the world miss the mark.
I propose a more complete view of professional work, one that parents themselves ought to embody and communicate to their children.
Work as Gift
God creates man and gives him the universe as a birthday gift. God also gives man the wisdom to know how to care for the gift and use it in the best possible way. Unfortunately, when he committed original sin, man broke the gift and diminished his wisdom. Because of this, the gift itself changed, no longer functioning as smoothly as it was designed to. Nevertheless, God’s decision to give man the universe did not change and, therefore, man’s original mission of taking care of the gift remains. Accordingly, God still mandates man to steward the whole earth, to know the universe and enjoy it by using it well.
We care for the gift, healing the world, through our professional work. Work is a tool not for personal gain but for personal care of the world. Work allows man to take a chunk of the universe and steward it for good use, for the purpose God intends for it. Effort, dedication, and skills are required in order for man to do this well. Becoming an excellent professional really matters because professional work is not primarily for one’s own benefit; it is for the benefit of the whole world.
Worth noting, this understanding of work embraces caring for a household as a real form of professional work. Indeed, what makes a given work “professional” is not the mere fact that one receives monetary reward for it. What makes it professional is the professionalism—the intentionality, skill, and care for details—with which the work is done. As St. Josemaría Escrivá put it in an interview: “Even housework is professional work! The manager of the home combines talents, creativity, and skills that are comparable to any formal employment.” Such professional work, like the work of a lawyer or a teacher or a doctor, is a means of caring for a part of God’s creation, helping him redeem and perfect it.
Professional Ambition
This view of professional work should lead us to be ambitious in our professional work. Because it is my tool for stewarding the universe according to God’s design, I should grab as much of the universe as God wants me to. Because the universe is in need of repair, I should want to help God heal as much of the world as possible.
Of course, we couldn’t do any of this without Christ first obtaining the graces for us to make our work powerful. But once he obtained the grace for us through his death and resurrection, it is our good, disciplined, generous, sacrificial work that puts the world back together, that repairs God’s gift.
If this is what professional work is about, then shame on me if I could grab a big piece of the world but shy away from it out of selfishness or laziness—even selfishness or laziness masked as humility and prudence. The truly meek obtain the world; if you are afraid of the world, are you truly meek?
Granted, there may be good overriding reasons for which I seek professional employment that restricts my reach of the world—because of my ambition to attend diligently to my family obligations, for instance. But, even in such a case, the restriction is not due to a lack of generosity but to a properly ordered ambition.
Working as Children of God
God’s gift has to be cared for properly, and we who see ourselves as God’s children have the important duty to do so. Truly, we ought to take over the world through our professional work. We have to be ambitious—not for personal glory, or power, or fame, or wealth. We have to be professionally ambitious because we owe it to the gift-giver.
What does this mean as parents and educators?
First, we should be ambitious professionals, both in the office and at home. Having this view of professional work matters because the world truly depends on it. As it happens with many other lessons, we can’t teach well what we don’t first live.
Second, we should instill ambition in our students. Studying well in high school, pursuing the best possible university or trade education, and seeking employment that gives one the opportunity to exercise the greatest influence in the world is what our students ought to do.
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For more on what this means for schools: https://heightsforum.org/article/secular-catholic-schools/
About the Author
Alvaro de Vicente
In addition to his responsibilities as headmaster of The Heights, Alvaro acts as a mentor to high schoolers, and teaches senior Apologetics.