September 6, 2025 - the Original Plan for Work

The conversation began with a prayer and delved into the theological perspective on work, emphasizing its purpose and meaning rooted in Genesis. The speaker highlighted the significance of having a good boss, likening God to a good boss who knows, appreciates, and empowers His people. The discussion also touched upon the dual purposes of work: the telos (ultimate goal) of worshiping God and the skopos (immediate goal) of supporting family and community. The conversation concluded with a reflection on the redemptive nature of work, even in its toil, and an invitation to pray together.

MC: Adam Hohn

Presenter: Joseph Gruber

Deacon: Rick Freedberg

Brought to you By: The Knights of Columbus

participantOne:(700-36560): Good morning. Anyone mind if we pray again? Good answer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Direct, O Lord, our actions by thy holy inspiration, and carry them on by thy gracious assistance, that every word and work of ours may begin in thee, and by thee be happily ended. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Gentlemen, who do you work for? Ourselves.

participantOne:(37180-60220): Yeah. Good answers, good answers. And why do you work? You don't have to answer that one out loud. Who do you work for and why do you work? These are two very powerful questions, necessary questions for us understanding our place in the world.

participantOne:(60820-89560): And we get the clearest answers for these questions by looking at the very beginning. When we look at Genesis, when we look at Genesis 1, 2, 3, even into Genesis 4, we get incredible insights about who we're working for and why we work. So most people, when they give a talk on work, they'll point to a particular verse in Genesis 2, Genesis 2.15.

participantOne:(90560-116520): The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And they say that is the work of man. And that summarizes everything you need to know about work. And I think in some way, shape, or form it does. We'll unpack it, though. To till it and keep it. To avad is the Hebrew for tilling and work in general. And to keep it, to shamar.

participantOne:(117320-131899): Shemar is a funny word. When I was a focused missionary, we would go on these mission trips. And if you were going to a particularly dangerous part of the world, the mission leader would tell the men in the group,

participantOne:(132260-151660): that their job is to shamar the women. They are there to protect the women. So if they're traveling through the busy streets of Kolkata or through any dangerous area of the world, even the streets of Galway, we told the men to do this to shamar the women, to protect them, to keep them.

participantOne:(153160-186299): That's just a side. That wasn't too integral to the story. I just wanted to tell you that I got to stride the streets of Galway once. That's... Well, the Hebrew. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shemar. Avad and Shemar. These are representative of what the work of man is all about. So who do you work for? What is the difference that your boss makes? Has anyone here had a really horrible boss? I'm so sorry.

participantOne:(187840-223340): Have any of you had a really incredible boss? And it made a difference? Did it make a difference? What difference does that make? What difference does it make having a good boss? Turns out one of the top reasons why people leave their jobs, why they quit, is because of their bad boss. And they'll express it a bunch of different ways, but it's usually this idea that a bad boss does not know their employee, they don't appreciate their employee,

participantOne:(223560-251720): and they don't give them the authority to act so that they may flourish. That's what a bad boss won't do those things. When we talk about the word avad, to serve, to work, to till, this is also a word that gets taken up in the book of Exodus because the people of Israel are slaves of the Pharaoh and they are slaves of him

participantOne:(252100-283640): in a really unfortunate way because in Exodus 1 we get this very chilling line and there came a pharaoh who did not know Joseph which means did not know Joseph nor his people so he didn't know them and he certainly didn't appreciate them he appreciated their great strength but he didn't appreciate who they were and the potential they had for doing good and he certainly wasn't setting them up for success he was literally having their their male children drown in the river

participantOne:(285260-315140): When you take a people and kill all of the men child, the babies, the male babies, what you end up doing is destroying that people. He was working for the destruction of the people of Israel. And this was the tension in Exodus. Do the Israelites have to stay and avad for Pharaoh? Or do they get to go to the desert and avad the Lord? That is the great tension in the beginning of Exodus.

participantOne:(318180-348740): Going back to Genesis, we see that God is a good boss. God knows Adam. God appreciates him. When he sees that man is alone, he says, it is not good for man to be alone. He sets him up for success. He gives him a helpmate and he gives him authority to act. This is something from Genesis 1 that contextualizes Genesis 2.

participantOne:(350920-378620): God said to man,

participantOne:(379720-417500): To shamar is to keep, and particularly to keep animals. God instructs man to do those two things, but he authorizes him to do it. He gives him total authority. He gives him, he trusts him. He entrusts the work to man. And original work in the Catechism, paragraph 378. The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives to till it and keep it.

participantOne:(417760-448640): Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation. God knows Adam. God appreciates him. God authorizes him. God sets him up for success. So the question that we can ask is, who do I really work for? Do I work for a bad boss who doesn't know me, who doesn't understand my situation?

participantOne:(448840-487740): who doesn't appreciate me, who isn't looking after me? Do I work for a boss that does not want me to succeed, that wants to frustrate what I want to do, that is setting me up for failure? Because I think a lot of us, when we think about our relationship with God, there is an uncertainty. Do I think that God knows me? Do I think that God appreciates me? Do I know that God has given me authority to act where he has given me a mission? Regardless of who cuts our paycheck,

participantOne:(488320-516320): we still get the choice to let God be our boss. St. Thomas More famously, one of his final words before he was put to death, St. Thomas More was unwilling to follow the King of England, Henry VIII, when the king separated from the church and started the Church of England. He wasn't willing to speak against the king, but he was not willing to follow the king. And for that, he lost his head. Literally, he was decapitated.

participantOne:(517000-556180): And so as he stood right by the chopping block, he said, I die the king's good servant, but God's first. St. Thomas More knew who his boss was. It wasn't the king of England. It was the good Lord himself. Why work? There are two reasons to work that we can see embedded in Genesis. You can think of these as the telos and the skopos.

participantOne:(556459-589460): if you want some Greek in addition to your Hebrew this morning. Which most of us, I think this is why we come on a Saturday morning, 7 a.m. It's for the Greek and the Hebrew. So the skopos and the telos. The telos you can think of as the, like the, you could think of it as the far-off goal. And the skopos as the more proximate, the closer goal. You could think of it that way. That's not quite right, but it's, it'll get you closer. Another way of thinking of it is

participantOne:(590020-623020): In archery, the scopos is the target that you're trying to hit. The telos is the intent to become a better marksman. Like the goal in shooting, one is to hit the target, yes. The other one is to become the kind of man who hits targets. So there's a telos to our work and a scopos to our work.

participantOne:(629980-665160): Let's start with the Talos, because I think this is the one that we miss the most, and I think it's really good to hit right now. And for this, we're going to take a look at Genesis 4. Genesis 4 is the story of Cain and Abel. Genesis 4, 2, I think. I didn't write it down. Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel was a keeper of the sheep. Cain was a tiller of the ground. He was there to avad the ground. And Abel was there to shamar the sheep. It's actually like a really...

participantOne:(665620-701400): The more you lean into what it means to keep when you read the story, the more things open up, but we're not getting into that right now. Why did they till the ground and keep sheep? What did they do with the fruit of their work? The only thing we see them doing with the fruit of their work, the only thing that scripture explicitly says that they do with their work, the reason they do it is to offer sacrifice. Abel offered the fat portions of the firstlings. So he keeps sheep.

participantOne:(702260-741440): The first lamb that is birthed, he offers up that lamb. So why does he keep the sheep? It's to offer sacrifice to God. It is to worship God. Why does Abel grow crops? He makes an offering of the grain. That is why they work. It is a deeply liturgical thing to work. Why do we work? It is so that we can offer sacrifice to God. It is the culmination of our work that we may be able to lay before God the best that we have to offer.

participantOne:(746360-779660): There's an author, John Senior, who talks about if we really understood what a community was, we would see that the church is the center of the community and that everything else exists to support the sacrifice taking place at the church. Most of us don't see reality that way because that's not how the world views the world itself. That's not how our culture thinks about anything right now. But...

participantOne:(781880-814000): That is what Genesis teaches us. The reason we work is to be able to sacrifice, to worship, to offer to God all that we have. Okay? So that's the telos. The skopos, practically speaking, what is our work for? And that goes back to Genesis 1. Hopefully you guys aren't getting bored by this. This is like the meaning of everything. So...

participantOne:(814540-855360): I really hope I'm not boring you with the meaning of everything. What is the Scopos? Be fruitful and multiply. Gentlemen, he's telling you, marry, have children, raise them well. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Gentlemen, we don't have a home so that we have a place to keep our stuff. We don't have a wife because she takes care of all the details we don't. We don't marry and have kids...

participantOne:(855560-894020): because I guess we have to endure kids if we want to have a wife. We do that because this is the point. On the natural level, there are supernatural goods that we've been given since the coming of Christ, but on a natural level, all of humanity is pointed toward family life as the realm that we play in, the realm that everything else is for. We go to our jobs, we do our work, we start our businesses, we join other people in other enterprises,

participantOne:(894780-923540): Hopefully doing good things, but it's for the sake of the love of wife and the love of children. And if we're not married or if we're not planning on being married, it's for the extension of spiritual life in our brothers and sisters in the faith or those who are not yet brothers and sisters in the faith to be fruitful and multiply not just biologically but spiritually.

participantOne:(924839-960100): Anyone who is multiplying biologically without multiplying spiritually, you're doing it wrong, by the way. You're supposed to do both. You can do one spiritually without the other. You should not do the other without the one. Does that make sense? Don't just start having babies and not raising them in the faith. But that is the point. Me coming to Mass with my... What did we say? I had a bundle of children? Was that what it was? A bundle? A bundle.

participantOne:(960360-996880): Me coming to Mass with a bundle of children is the fulfillment of all of the work that I do. That is the most important thing that I do in my week. It's bringing my wife and my children to Mass. To teach them to pray, to teach them to praise God, to teach them to work for a good boss who knows them, who loves them, who sets them up for success. So the telos is the right worship of God. The skopos plays out in the family. That's why we work.

participantOne:(998300-1029900): The fall didn't change who our boss is. We wanted it to change who our boss was. Who was in charge? Who decided to grab the fruit and eat it? We did. We decided we would be the boss. We decided we would work for ourselves. We decided to take our own destiny in our hands and reject divine providence. That doesn't work out well. We don't have to follow our stupid ideas.

participantOne:(1030500-1058460): We don't have to follow Pharaoh. We don't have to serve the dumb idols. We don't have to serve the material world. We are free to stand before God and to serve the source of all life and being, who is the only one that we should serve that dignifies us. Serving Pharaoh, we lose our dignity. Serving other people, we lose our dignity. Serving the material world, we lose our dignity.

participantOne:(1058720-1092840): The only dignifying person to serve is the Lord himself. The fall didn't change our boss. The fall didn't change the telos, that work is ordered to write worship. The fall did not change the scopos. We're still called to love wife and children and to raise progeny. After the fall, toil enters into our work. But something you have to understand, that God provides in the curses the cure itself.

participantOne:(1093820-1130860): The curses of God are the cure. The toil is a remedy for our broken nature. Work gets hard in order to soften our hardened hearts. Work requires overcoming resistance in the world around us that mirrors the resistance that we have to God. It humbles us. It teaches us perseverance. It provides a way forward, back to God, by forcing us to confront what is behind us.

participantOne:(1131080-1151040): If you've ever had to struggle to untie a knot, and if you're there for, you know, 30 minutes untying some monstrosity that your kids came up with, you realize that the untying of a knot is to undo, is to trace back every crooked way that was done to it.

participantOne:(1152400-1172300): God draws straight with crooked lines. He is willing to do so with us. He provides toil in our work. He provides a certain kind of fruitlessness in our work so that we can be ultimately fruitful. And ultimately, Christ takes on the toil of the curse.

participantOne:(1174040-1207760): In Genesis 3, we see that in the garden, man was told that by the sweat of his brow, he was going to bring forth bread, that he would produce thorns and thistles. And in the garden of Gethsemane, Christ sweats so much that he is sweating blood. He takes on a crown of thorns, and he becomes our living bread. He does that to show that the path is through the toil. How much good work...

participantOne:(1208180-1248020): do we needlessly put off? How many times do I say, I'll get to that later, I'll make that call later, I'll do that visit later, I'll get to it later. I'm not saying here that the goal is to work ourselves to death. I am saying that we need to we actually need to report to our boss and get our marching orders from him and then move forward. Ultimately, do you work for God or for someone or something else?

participantOne:(1250080-1296300): Does your work lead you to right worship? And does your work contribute to the multiplication, if not of biological children, does your work lead to the multiplication of saints in the world today? That is what work is for. It's there on the very first pages of Scripture, and it's just as living and present today as it was then. Gentlemen, I want to invite you to meditate with me on the great work

participantOne:(1296580-1334780): That is Christ's passion. If I can find my rosary ring in my pocket. I think I have a rosary ring in my pocket. I have a rosary ring in my pocket. Would you pray the first sorrowful mystery with me, the agony in the garden? So we're going to do that, and then afterward you can get some more coffee, then we'll go to the round tables for discussion. To mentally prepare, let's find some table leaders. Jonathan, I've been asking a lot of you. I'm going to continue. Adam, would you lead? I would.

participantOne:(1336280-1376140): Steve, would you lead? One, two, three. Mark, would you lead one? That's four. Let's see. Deacon Rick, five. And then I think we are okay with five leaders today. If we need a six, then we can do that. But I'd rather have more compact tables. Sound good? All right. Shall we pray? Okay. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The first sorrowful mystery is the agony in the garden.

participantOne:(1377800-1417000): Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. For heaven and the earth. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. God, pray for us sinners. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. God, pray for us sinners.

participantOne:(1419620-1463200): Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mary of God, pray for us sinners now,

participantOne:(1464980-1496480): Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. God, pray for us sinners now. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Mother God, pray for us sinners now. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. God, pray for us sinners now.

participantOne:(1498940-1531960): Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

participantOne:(1533060-1544520): All right. Discussion leaders, if you could head to the tables first, and then everybody else follow when you've refueled. Thank you.