The Grandchild of God

Yes, this post is about the grandchild of God. No, this is not some Da Vinci Code conspiracy theory. It is just a little thought to help me get out of bed every morning. Now that I have finished school and joined the work force permanently, I can’t help but miss my old schedule. Working all day, every day—and probably quite a few nights and weekends—is a big change from my last year of school with classes only two days a week. I need to work to pay the bills, but it is more than just a necessary evil, it is a necessary part of personhood.

In the third round of the seventh circle of Hell, Dante meets those who were practiced violence against Art (which includes all industry). In Canto XI of the Inferno, Virgil explains why Usury is an act of violence against Art:

that Art strives after her by imitation,
     as the disciple imitates the master;
     Art, as it were, is the Grandchild of Creation.

By this, recalling the Old Testament
     Near the beginning of Genesis, you will see
     That in the will of Providence, man was meant

to labor and to prosper. But usurers,
     by seeking their increase in other ways,
     scorn Nature in herself and her followers.

Our Art is a child of nature and therefore a grandchild of God. This relationship is also found in John Paul II's Laborum Exercens:

When man, who had been created “in the image of God.... male and female”, hears the words: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”, even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world. Indeed, they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.

But even if I see that "the primary basis of the value of work is man himself" and understand that "work is 'for man' and not 'man for work'", there is still the concrete problem with my job: being away from my family all day. Sure, I get to spend time with my wife at night, but I am absent for most of my son's waking hours. A recent article in Touchstone Magazine puts to rest any dilemma I have over my place in life:

For God has created us men to be the ones who do not give birth, and who therefore are, as a brute biological fact, dispensible. . . . A man is indispensible, so to speak, only insofar as he assumes the danger of leading in faith and love. Such a man knows that the breath in his lungs is of no consequence. . . .
. . .
Women, as a brute biological fact, are indispensible. They bear children, wherein their glory lies and also, if we may trust Paul's mysterious words, their salvation. In humility the woman is called to acknowledge that indispensibility and to bind herself to it, in physical or spiritual motherhood. In humility the man is called to recognize that he matters as a man only if he knows that he does not matter at all, and to allow himself to be severed, if need be, from those he loves the most.

Leaving my family and going to work is a far cry from laying my life down for them, but it is what I can do right now to be an indispensible man.