Prayerfully Yours on Labor Day

I know so many people --fathers of families, and young people just emerging on to the job market -- who need to find work, or better work.    Perhaps Labor Day is a good time to pray for these intentions.   We could offer up our ordinary work of today for those who want to work but can't find suitable employment that will provide for selves and family. 

Let us work. Let us work a lot and work well, without forgetting that prayer is our best weapon. That is why I will never tire of repeating that we have to be contemplative souls in the midst of the world, who try to convert their work into prayer. -  Josemaria de Escriva

Other quotes on work from Josemaria de Escriva

I found two novenas to Saint Josemaria in PDF form (below).  You can see some testimonies here. 

• Shorter Novena for Work (PDF)
• Longer Novena for Work (PDF)

IF you want to read more on the value of work in the Catholic life:

• An article on John Paul II's Gospel of Work
• Holiness for Housewives (a book by Dom Hubert van Zeller)
• All You Who Labor:  Work and the Sanctification of Daily Life (a book by Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski)
• There is a collection of the writings of St Josemaria Escriva here, and the Opus Dei site has an option to receive daily meditations in your email.   Much of Escriva's writing has to do with finding Jesus in the duties of everyday life. 

Our Lord's whole life fills me with love for him, but I have a special weakness for his thirty hidden years spent in Bethlehem, Egypt and Nazareth. That period, so long in comparison with his public life and which the Gospels hardly mention, might seem empty of any special meaning to a person who views it superficially. And yet, I have always maintained that this silence about Our Lord's early life speaks eloquently for itself, and contains a wonderful lesson for us Christians. They were years of intense work and prayer, years during which Jesus led an ordinary life, a life like ours, we might say, which was both divine and human at the same time. In his simple workshop, unnoticed, he did everything to perfection, just as he was later to do before the multitudes.  Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God