Not long ago, our homes and farms were places of production.  To some extent, we grew our own food, built our own furniture, sewed our own clothing, and raised animals on which we rode into town.   Now we are strictly consumers, and the people who make the things we buy are far away. We never ever see them.  When she was seventeen, Lydda Gonzalez began working in a factory in Honduras that sells their shirts to Old Navy and Polo Sport. The shirts sell for as much as $40 each, but she is paid only 75 cents per hour. She had hoped to pull her family out of poverty. Instead she found herself working 12-hour shifts six days each week with mandatory unpaid overtime, sexual harassment, factory air filled with textile particles, and drinking water that smelled of sewage. When she and a group of co-workers asked for better working conditions, they were fired and later received death threats.  One 19-year old girl literally worked herself to death at a sweatshop in China. The Chinese now have a word for “death by overwork”. As responsible and compassionate Christians, we must always be asking questions about the products we choose to buy – where do they come from, and how they are made? Somewhere, someone may be suffering. - - - Fr. Jim

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote some of the world’s most beautiful music, and nearly all of his compositions were for use in church. He spent his career as a church organist and choir director in various churches in his native Germany. He believed that the Word of God could most effectively penetrate the human soul via the ear as it listened to heavenly music. For Bach, the work of creating music was not just a form of creative expression, but also an act of praise and devotion. He began his composition by writing at the top of the page In Nomine Jesu (“in the name of Jesus”) and at the end of the composition he would write Solo Dei Gloria (“to God alone be the glory”). When I was a student in Catholic elementary school, we would sign at the top our homework page “JMJ”, Jesus Mary Joseph, to ask the Holy Family to make holy the work that we were doing. What if we made the work that we do an act of praise and devotion? Perhaps we could offer up the work that we do – running our business, taking care of an elderly family member, completing our lessons for school – as acts of praise and devotion. Maybe our work, too, like the music of Bach, will turn the hearts of people around us to God, in whom alone is the glory. - - - Fr. Jim