Saint Paul‘s advice to the Church at Thessalonica and to us on how to live one‘s life in this world as a follower of Jesus the Messiah is clear, and simple, and certainly sound:
“(…) aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, just as we directed you – so you may behave properly toward outsiders and not have need of anything.“
1 Thessalonians 4: 11
I would like to examine more closely the three basic principles that seem to be contained in this little passage concerning the way in which we should lead our lives: quietness, independence and subsidiarity, and manual labor. Besides this threefold instruction, Saint Paul gives two basic reasons for employing these principles: that we may be good ambassadors of Christ among the pagans, and that we ourselves may “not have need of anything“ – in other words: that we may be content… He seems to give us a little recipe for contentment and happiness, and even evangelism.
Leading a quiet life: to seek the way of Jacob, not the way of Esau
What does it mean “to lead a quiet life“? Does it mean to never talk like a monk or a nun who has made a vow of silence? Does it mean to shut out the noisiness of urban life? Does it, then, mean to live like a hermit in a remote mountain area?
There is a version of the “quiet life“ for everyone. The version of the lifestyle of a monk, a nun, or a hermit is not the only one. It cannot be the only one because the people of God in its majority consists of laypeople who are called to marriage, family, and work in the world.
The main aspect of “quietness“ is a life structured and formed by the commitment to a life of devotion to the one true God, practicing the spiritual disciplines.
Leading a quiet life produces “deep people“, people with deep roots, whose souls have been trained and nurtured by practices like prayer, poverty or simplicity, silence, solitude, chastity, contemplation, obedience, self-examination and confession, fasting and feasting, gratitude, service, almsgiving, works of mercy, hospitality and togetherness.
As the prophet Jeremiah says,
“Blessed is the one who trusts in ADONAI, whose confidence is in ADONAI. For he will be like a tree planted by the waters, spreading out its root by a stream. It has no fear when heat comes, but its leaves will be green. It does not worry in a year of drought, nor depart from yielding fruit.“
Jeremiah 17: 7-8
Saint Louis de Montfort in his Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin compares the twin brothers Jacob and Esau to make us understand the difference between a “quiet life“, the pathway of the “predestinate“, and the pathway of the “reprobate“. These are his terms for those whose ways will lead them either into the kingdom of God or make them perish. Before we look at his spiritual interpretation of Jacob and Esau, let us remember some of the verses written about them in Sacred Scripture:
“Isaac prayed to ADONAI on behalf of his wife because she was barren. ADONAI answered his plea and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. But the children struggled with one another inside her, and she said, ‘If it‘s like this, why is this happening to me?‘ So she went to inquire of ADONAI. ADONAI said to her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from your body will be separated. One people will be stronger than the other people, but the older will serve the younger.‘ When her time came to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. Now the first came out reddish, all of him was like a fur coat, and they named him Esau. Afterward his brother came out with this hand holding onto Esau‘s heel – so he was named Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when he fathered them. When the boys grew up, Esau became a man knowledgeable in hunting, an outdoorsman, while Jacob was a mild man, remaining in tents. (…) Now Jacob cooked a stew. When Esau came in from the field, he was exhausted, so Esau said to Jacob, ‘Please feed me some of this really red stuff, because I‘m exhausted‘ – that is why he is called Edom. So Jacob said, ‘Sell your birthright to me today.‘ Esau said, ‘Look, I‘m about to die. Of whatever use is this to me – a birthright?‘ Jacob said, ‘Make a pledge to me now.‘ So he made a pledge to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.“
Genesis 25: 21-34
“Esau, the elder, was strong and robust of body, adroit and skilful in drawing the bow, and in taking much game in the chase. He hardly ever stayed in the house; and putting no confidence in anything but his own strength and address, he only worked out of doors. He took very little pains to please his mother Rebecca, and indeed did nothing for that end. He was such a glutton, and loved eating so much, that he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. He was, like Cain, full of envy against his brother Jacob, and persecuted him beyond measure. Now this is the daily conduct of the reprobate. They trust in their own strength and aptitude for temporal affairs. They are very strong, very able, and very enlightened in earthly business; but very weak and very ignorant in heavenly things – In terrenis fortes, in ecelestibus debiles. It is on this account that they are hardly at all, or at least very little, at their own homes – that is to say, in their own interior, which is the inward and essential house which God has given to every man, to live there after His example; for God always rests in Himself. The reprobate do not love retirement, nor spirituality, nor inward devotion; and they treat as little, or as bigots, or as savages, those who are interior or retired from the world, and who work more within than without. (…) The reprobate sell their birthright; that is to say, the pleasures of paradise. They sell it for a pottage of lentils; that is to say, for the pleasures of the earth. They laugh, they drink, they eat, they amuse themselves, they gamble, they dance, and take no more pains than Esau did to render themselves worthy of the benediction of their Heavenly Father. In a word, they think only of earth, and they love earth only; and they speak and act only for earth and for its pleasures, selling for one moment of enjoyment, for one vain puff of honour, and for a morsel of hard metal, yellow or white, their baptismal grace, their robe of innocence, and their heavenly inheritance.“
Saint Louis de Montfort, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Esau therefore is the example of a man leading a sort of busy and noisy life, but forfeiting and even opposing the practices and habits of a “quiet life“ seeking God, and thereby forfeiting his “birthright“. On the other hand, there is the way of Jacob – the ladder towards heaven. Rebekah, Jacob‘s mother, is an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the perfect template for leading a “quiet life“.
“He was of a feeble constitution, meek and peaceful. He lived for the most part at home, in order to gain the good graces of his mother Rebecca, whom he loved tenderly. If he went abroad, it was not of his own will, nor through any confidence in his own industry, but to obey his mother. He loved and honoured his mother. It was on this account that he kept at home. He avoided everything which could displease her, and did everything which he thought would please her; and this increased the love which Rebecca already had for him. He was subject in all things to his dear mother. He obeyed her entirely in all matters – promptly, without delaying, and lovingly, without complaining. At the least token of her will, the little Jacob ran and worked; and he believed everything she said to him. For example: when she told him to fetch two kids, and that he should fetch them in order that she should prepare something for his father Isaac to eat, Jacob did not reply that one was enough to make a dish for a single man, but without reasoning he did what she told him to do. He had a great confidence in his dear mother. As he did not lean in the least on his own ability, he leant exclusively on the care and protection of his mother. He appealed to her in all his necessities, and consulted her in all his doubts. For example: when he asked if instead of a blessing, he should not receive a curse from his father, he believed her and trusted her, when she said that she would take the curse upon herself. Lastly, he imitated as far as he could the virtues he saw in his mother. It seems as if one of his reasons for leading such a sedentary life at home was to imitate his dear mother, who was virtuous, and kept herself removed from bad companies, which corrupt the morals. By this means he made himself worthy to receive the double benediction of his beloved father. Such also is the conduct which the predestinate daily observe. They are sedentary, and home-keepers, with their Mother. In other words, they love retirement, and are interior. They give themselves to prayer; but it is after the example and in the company of their Mother the holy Virgin, the whole of whose glory is within, and who, during her whole life, so much loved retirement and prayer. It is true that they sometimes appear without, in the world; but it is in obedience to the will of God, and that of their dear Mother, to fulfil the duties of their state. However apparently important their outward works may be, they esteem still more highly those which they do within themselves, in their interior, in the company of the Blessed Virgin. For it is within that they accomplish the great work of their perfection, compared with which all their other works are but infant sports. It is on this account that, while sometimes their brothers and sisters are working outwardly with much energy, success, and skill, in the praise and with the approbation of the world, they, on the contrary, know by the light of the Holy Ghost that there is far more glory, more good, and more pleasure, in remaining hidden in retreat with Jesus Christ their Model, in an entire and perfect subjection to their Mother, than to do of themselves wonders of nature and grace in the world, as so many Esaus and reprobates do. Gloria et divitice in domo ejus – ‘Glory for God and riches for men are to be found in the house of Mary.‘ Lord Jesus, how sweet are Thy tabernacles! The sparrow has found a house to lodge in, and the turtle-dove a nest for her little ones. Oh, happy is the man who dwells in the house of Mary, where Thou wert the first to make Thy dwelling! It is in this house of the predestinate that he receives succour from Thee alone, and that he has disposed the steps and ascents of all the virtues, to raise himself in his heart to perfection in this vale of tears. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua!“
Saint Louis de Montfort, Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Jacob is the example of the spiritual man seeking his Father‘s blessing – wrestling with God saying “I won‘t let You go unless You bless me“ (Genesis 33: 27). And he is the man who labored seven and another seven years for obtaining his wife Rachel, right after he had dreamed the strangest dream:
“He dreamed: All of a sudden, there was a stairway set up on the earth and its top reaching to the heavens – and behold, angels of God going up and down on it! Surprisingly, ADONAI was standing on top of it and He said, ‘I am ADONAI, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your seed. Your seed will be as the dust of the land, and you will burst forth to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed – and in your seed. Behold, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not forsake you until I have done what I promised you.“
Genesis 28: 12-15
Upon this image of Jacob‘s ladder, the stairway to heaven, Saint Francis de Sales remarks:
“Consider Jacob‘s ladder (which is a faithful representation of the devout life): the two sides between which we ascend, and which support the steps, are prayer, which brings the love of God, and the Sacraments which confer it; the steps are but the various degrees of charity by which we advance from virtue to virtue, either descending in action to the aid of our neighbor, or ascending in contemplation to a loving union with God. Observe, further, those who tread this ladder: they are men with angels‘ hearts, or angels with human forms. They are not young, yet they seem youthful, being full of vigor and spiritual activity. They have wings whereon to mount up to God in prayer, but they have also feet whereon to tread the path of men in all holy and loving converse; their countenances are open and mild, for they meet all things with gentleness and meekness; their heads and limbs are uncovered, inasmuch as their thoughts, their affections, and deeds have no aim or motive but to please God; their bodies are covered with light shining garments, for they of a truth use this world and its good things, but after a pure and holy fashion, and no more than is requisite. Such are the truly devout.“
Saint Francis de Sales, Philothea or An Introduction to the Devout Life, TAN Classics, p. 7
Minding your own affairs: to live as free stewards
We shall mind our own affairs. In other words: We shall know the exact realm of our responsibility, and shall neither meddle with other people’s affairs nor wish that they meddle with ours. We shall be good stewards within given boundaries, concerning the affairs that are our very own.
We must take care of ourselves and of those entrusted to us. The advice is to always remain a free man or woman, and to be independent of others and of the state, as far as possible.
A very basic principle of Catholic social ethics is the principle of subsidiarity: Whatever a man or a woman can do for themselves in terms of provision and of ordering their affairs, they shall be both allowed to and willing to do for themselves. The natural family and the brothers and sisters in Christ, the immediate neighbors, are the ones to step in and help with things, if one has lost the capability to do so.
Society or state should never be dissociated from individual autonomy or self-governing, freedom, and responsibility. They should never impede us minding and tending to our own affairs. We, in turn, should never mindlessly and simply for the sake of convenience and comfort “delegate“ our freedom and responsibility, as if it were something we were ever allowed to hand over to other men, trading it for something else, selling our birthright for a dish of lentils. Our freedom is given us from our Creator and we ought to keep it alive before our Creator, to whom alone we ultimately have to answer and give an account of our lives and our decisions.
Living freely, independently and responsibly is in line with a major striving of our human nature and therefore conducive to our contentment – to a “feeling of self-efficacy“, as modern pyschologists often call it. This principle – which is opposed to any refusal to live upright and to stand up to one‘s calling as a steward of many given loans, and therefore opposed to something we could roughly call passivity, laziness, or “learned helplessness“ – can be seen in several passages in the letters of Saint Paul:
“But if anyone does not provide for his own, especially those in his own house, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.“
1 Timothy 5: 8
“No we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, to keep away from every brother who behaves irresponsibly and not according to the tradition they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, for we did not behave inappropriately among you. And we did not eat anyone‘s bread without paying for it, but worked night and day with labor and hardship, so as not to burden any of you. (…) For even when we were with you, we would give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that some among you are behaving irresponsibly – not busy, but busybodies. Now such people we command and urge in the Lord Messiah Yeshua to work in a quiet demeanor, so they may eat their own bread. But as for you, brothers, do not grow weary of doing good.“
2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13
If one is perfectly able to take care of one‘s own affairs, to work in order to earn one‘s own bread, and to make responsible decisions concerning one‘s own life, it is a vice to not labor “in a quiet demeanor“ in all these things. But each and every vice and sin will only amount to our unhappiness – because it is contrary to our human nature and our God-given calling. A life of virtue is a continual expansion of our freedom, while vices are like the ever more tightly binding chains of slaves.
Besides the willingness to give oneself to hard work and even the endurance of hardship for the sake of keeping one’s freedom, minding our own affairs includes to live deliberately, to not live life “by accident“, but to be mindful of the present and the future and to make conscious decisions about the ways one takes. And it means to strive for competence and excellence in all our undertakings.
Yet Saint James warns us of two things while minding our own affairs: friendship with the world, and boasting.
“Don‘t you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.“
James 4: 4
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.‘ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.‘ But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.“
James 4: 13-16
Working with your hands: to join Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin, to join carpenters and mothers
So far we have looked at two commitments we shall make in our lives: the commitment to a spiritual life – to a “quiet life“, a “deep life“ – , and the commitment to take the fullest possible responsibility for our lives and its affairs, to live as free men and women, and not as slaves.
It should not surprise us that deep and responsible people might be good ambassadors of Christ among the pagans, who throughout the course of their lives meet many shallow, irresponsible and low minded people. For all of us tend to become shallow, irresponsible and low minded – without Him who is the one true depth and heighth of all creation and of our lives.
The third and final advice given to us by Saint Paul is to “work with our hands“. What is up with that? Why with our hands, and not with our minds, our brains?
Certainly it does not mean that the only type of labor we should engage in must always be manual labor. But it seems to mean that there should be a high dosage of it in our lives, and maybe it should even be the main trunk of our livelihood.
Saint Paul himself was a “tentmaker“ by trade, and Saint Joseph, the carpenter and patron saint of all workers, was a craftsman, too. And his wife, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady? If one looks at the etymological origins of the title “lady“, which from days of Old English was applied to Mary, it seems to be derived from a composition which literally means “one who kneads bread“…
The books of Sacred Scripture are full of farmers, craftsmen, artists, and mothers – full of people working with their hands. Even the kings of Israel, at least the good ones, can be safely counted among at least one of these categories: King David, the former shepherd boy, played the harp, composing songs.
Just like leading a quiet life and minding our own affairs, so working with our hands will make us content and happy because it appeals to something deeply rooted in our human nature.
Human beings are born to be creative: they love to envision something and then make it happen, bring it forth materialized in the physical world. And quite often our creativity is stimulated while we are doing manual tasks, while our hands are busy, deeply stuck in the ground or the kitchen sink.
This act of creativity might be so natural and rewarding for us because it is kind of akin to man’s and woman’s procreative capacities of fathering and bearing a child. And Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that the “sense of touch“ were the basis of all our senses, and even of our intellectual life. We human beings are touching addicts beyond repair. The more we touch, the better we think, and reason, and understand. We are not the bodyless “cognitive machines“ Descartes (and our current academia-prone school system) would have us.
“So what is it about working with our hands that brings us human beings so much purpose and joy? Is it the tactile sensation? The physicality of manipulating materials? The reward of seeing a solid, tangible result upon the completion of our work? (…)
Gaynur Strachan Chun, The Health Benefits of Working with Your Hands, published on craftmanship.net
(…) our brain chemistry actually changes when we work with our hands (…) In fact, working with our hands can be a great stress-reliever. People dealing with issues such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks or post-traumatic stress are encouraged to focus on working with their hands.“
At the same time, manual and physical work can be regarded as the very essence of work per se, if we only remember the definition of work as it occurs in the famous physics formula: work equals force times distance (displacement or replacement). Work is a forceful manipulation – etymologically deriving from manus, the Latin word for hand – of objects in the world we live in. In this way, work is an activity that brings us into contact with the world outside of us, and thus reduces our subjectivity and increases our objectivity, as we encounter something – nature, we could say – which we cannot fully control and command, but only – in the language of the book of Genesis – “subdue“ with skill and craftmanship, as we are mastering the art of enhancing the world, of sowing labor and reaping benefit. True work worthy of its name has to do with reality – and stands and falls with it.
As the philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford writes in his book Shop Class as Soulcraft,
“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, because he has no real effect in the world. But the tradesman must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away. His well-founded pride is far from the gratuitous ‘self-esteem‘ that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.”
Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft. An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
Both in this book and in an article entitled The Case for Working With Your Hands, published in The New York Times Magazine in 2009, Crawford tells his biographical journey from “finishing a Ph.D. in political philosophy at the University of Chicago“ to setting up his own motorcycle workshop, and puts his own personal story inside the broader context of socio-economic developments and the psychological and ethical implications of what we, day in and day out, do with our bodies and minds – of what kind of work we do:
“Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. (…) High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become ‘knowledge workers.‘ The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. (…)
Matthew Crawford, The Case for Working With Your Hands, published 21 May 2009 in: The New York Times Magazine
A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this. Nor can big business or big government – those idols of the right and the left – reliably secure such work for us. Everyone is rightly concerned about economic growth on the one hand or unemployment and wages on the other, but the character of work doesn‘t figure much in political debate. (…) Yet work forms us, and deforms us, with broad public consequences. (…) There is good reason to suppose that responsibility has to be installed in the foundation of your mental equipment – at the level of perception and habit. There is an ethic of paying attention that develops in the trades through hard experience. It inflects your perception of the world and your habitual responses to it. This is due to the immediate feedback you get from material objects and to the fact that the work is typically situated in face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.“
Crawford is telling us that there is a connection between work and virtue, between work and our character. Work – just like each and every other daily habit – “forms us, and deforms us“. And he makes a case for working with our hands as the avenue to the good life and to becoming a virtuous man or woman.
Because among the many things we can learn when we are working with our hands – when we are building, repairing, farming, doing all types of handicraft – are at least the following, and surely many more, which all have consequences for the essential make-up and growth of our character: Our perception of reality is trained, the encounter with objective reality can correct and humble us, personal responsibility is maintained, our body is disciplined and our tendency toward the most convenient route cut back, as the most convenient way of doing things in reality often turns out to be the least rewarding.
The good life: “to root out vice and to plant virtue“
Leading a quiet life, minding our own affairs, and working with our hands: these three pillars of the good life according to Saint Paul are able to both contribute to our growing into deep and virtuous men and women and to us becoming the most content and happy we can be, as they are applications of important truths about our human nature and our vocation.
One day the pagans might ask any one among us adhering to practicing these things: “How come you are so calm and wise? How come you are so free, and strong, and brave? And how come you are only a gardener, a farmer, though you seem to be more intelligent than the head of the bureaucracy that tries to stifle your personal initiative and creativity with mind-boggling regulations?“
What are the answers to these questions? All of them are shoots from the seed of the good news about God’s kingdom: True peace and true wisdom – and indeed “every good gift and every perfect gift“ (James 1: 17) – come from above, from “the Father of lights“ (James 1: 17), who sent his Son to save us from the slavery of sin, and who makes his Holy Spirit dwell in us to renew us time and time again like the fresh morning dew. Our freedom is ours to keep, and no man or state can ever take it away from us, and certainly never licitly, whatever he or it may fancy. And “God has made you a gardener, to root out vice and to plant virtue“, as Saint Catherine of Siena said. And to sow and to reap for other‘s enjoyment and blessing.
Aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands – just as Saint Paul handed down this secret about the good life to the Church at Thessalonica, we should make sure to pass it on to our children, both in word and deed, so that they “may behave properly toward outsiders and not have need of anything“.
So how do we climb Jacob‘s ladder as we tiredly clutch our rosaries, how do we take good care of ourselves and do not let big business or big government bother us too much, even though they try so hard to bug us, and how do we get in touch with the tangible realities of life using our bare hands – hands that bless others? We shall find out.