The crucifix in your cubicle

BY CHRISTINA CAPECCHI

NBC’s Emmy-winning comedy series “The Office” portrays work in all its mind-numbing dullness, punctuated by a slow-moving clock, lame insult swapping and a know-it-all co-worker. Many viewers relate.

Work is the pursuit that defines us, informing an introduction with a handful of assumptions and an invariable follow-up question. Work is the place we spend the majority of our waking hours. And Pope Benedict XVI warned that when the “9 to 5” that Dolly Parton lamented begins well before 9 a.m. and extends to 6 or 7 p.m., work can be the source of “hardness of heart.”

Hardness of heart happens when a job splinters a person’s skills and values, the pieces of a personality that beg to be integrated. We bring more than a skill set to a job; we bring a belief system, too.

“The whole person, body and spirit, participates in [work], whether it is manual or intellectual,” Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1981 encyclical On Human Work.

Faith informs work in various ways. It keeps us from cussing when the computer crashes. It compels us to credit a co-worker for a successful project. It drives us to seek a solution to a difficult task. It prods us to be honest with the time sheet, to resist office gossip, to practice patience.

Faith inspires us to preach the Gospel at all times – even on the job – and, as St. Francis of Assisi put it, to use words if necessary.

Whether scientific or artistic, entrepreneurial or managerial, every career has the capacity to be Catholic when we execute it with earnestness and tap into our God-given gifts. Whether we sit in a corner office or a crowded cubicle, we can each illuminate God’s glory.

I’m struck by Pope Benedict’s words upon his election: “The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with insufficient instruments comforts me…”

That fact also should comfort young adults embarking on careers, wrestling tangled ambitions, unscathed ideals and unpredictable reality. There’s no how-to manual to follow, just the sense of a blank screen, an empty slate waiting for our signature.

Amid the haze of uncertainty, I can grasp one truth: A career can be steeped in spirituality. The pursuit of a paycheck and success also can be a personal offering to the Lord.

Even if newsmakers like Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling separate work and values, we can intertwine them. And we’ll feel better – and work better – when we do.