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Connecting God to our work

Helping people find ways to connect the Gospel stories we hear Sundays in church to what they do at work has been the longtime goal of a pastoral associate at St. Mary Magdalene Parish in Waupaca.

"Most people don't see the work they do as having a whole lot to do with what they profess in church on Sunday," said Vinal Van Benthem. "There is a big disconnect between what happens on Sunday morning and what happens on Monday morning. How do they bring those together?"

Van Benthem's interest in the spirituality of work and its connection to stories about the Good Shepherd, Martha and Mary, Jesus feeding the 5,000 and the woman caught in adultery can been seen in column she writes for parish bulletins and a book Twenty-Third Publications will publish next spring.

She said she began exploring the spirituality of work while working in a downtown Chicago law office. Van Benthem, a secular Franciscan, was a lector and Eucharistic minister at St. Peter Church in the Loop, which has a ministry to working people.

"Folks started to stop by my desk to talk about God," she said, and about how "their work and their spirituality interfaced."

As she talked to them, she "became more and more committed to the idea that the work we were doing was holy."

Meanwhile, she earned a bachelor's degree, then a master's in pastoral studies at Loyola University in Chicago. She served five years as pastoral associate at her home parish, then as director of ministry initiatives at St. Peter, where she asked people about their lives and about how "church could fit into them."

That led her to Mayslake Ministries, which concentrates on the spirituality of work, and to the National Center for the Laity and its interest in Catholic social teaching. She served on the National Center's advisory board. Her bulletin column grew out of these connections and is carried by five parishes.

For three years, Van Benthem taught a course on the spirituality of work at St. Mary of the Lake University, Mundelein. In one assignment, she asked the seminarians to pick a story from Scripture and connect it to daily life - rather than the usual approach of connecting an incident from daily life to the Gospel.

Van Benthem pointed to the story of the woman caught in adultery to show how she approaches these stories in her classes, column and book. After hearing the story, listeners might ask themselves about the stones they throw at work. "Who are the people we judge in the workplace?"

One workplace issue people are especially concerned about, she said, is how to make decisions ethically and still be successful.

Van Benthem and her husband moved to Waupaca three years ago. She said the area has a large turnover in population with some people coming only for the summer and others staying through the winter. Plus, there are many retirees.

But, she said, they all have the same concerns - instability in society and the workplace, fears of terrorism, the threat of war.

Still, Van Benthem said she sees hope in the e-mail networks she belongs to, as groups focus more on the spirituality of work.

As part of her ministry at St. Mary Magdalene, she wants to visit parishioners in their workplaces.