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Alfredo Crisanto N. Concepcion 03 September

2022

GSBS1-MBA1A-83A Prof. Carlo Tinio

Final Term Paper

“Ora et Labora for Graduate School Students”

Introduction

Life is a mix of contemplation and action, worship and work. Prayer can be as tedious and
difficult just as work but when work begins with prayer, work is sanctified and made meaningful.
When prayer precedes and follows work, that prayer becomes pleasing to God like the incense
offered up to him. We bring to God in prayer the work of our human hands, minds and intellect. In
the busy world of work and feverish activity, how often prayer has become a casualty, a dispensable
item. How frequently or periodically have we substituted work with prayer

But how can we find the balance, how to prioritize the things that really matter? Prayer
powers our work, work becomes sanctified when centered on prayer. Benedict, like most other
saints who followed his precepts of monastic life, knew the deep bond between the two. Stillness of
the heart strengthens the sinews of our hands. Work gets an extraordinary power when sanctified
by prayer. Without prayer work can be vexing, tedious, monotonous, mendacious, even purposeless.
But balanced, blended the two produce an extraordinary synergy and harmony.

It is easy to tilt the balance as we often do. The problem is we tend to tilt it in favor of work
than prayer. We labor under the illusion that we can rob time from prayer and spent it on work and
offer the work to God. It is a mistake especially in the early stages of our spiritual journey.

It is a big temptation to prioritize our work above prayer. We are inclined to do it because
work tends to satisfy us, its fruits are visible, measurable, others can see it, admire it. We get
adulation and appreciation, our ego is bolstered and in the height of our glory, we tend to think we
are indispensable, we are at the center of everything; in the process we might as well forget God.
Work is not a substitute for prayer, nor can we compensate the worship of God with work. Ora et
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Labora: true spirituality consists not of adding up the two but blending them to build a holy
communion centered on God.

Prayer

My school promotes prayer (Ora) as a major factor in our commitment as Catholics and
Benedictine students. It is taught to us that prayer must be an important part in a person’s existence.
When we eat, we pray. When we sleep, we pray. When we study, we pray. When we are troubled,
we pray. When we are grateful, we pray, etc. Prayer is a connection between yourself and God, and
therefore your own personal bond with Him. We have prayer encouraged through different religious
activities in my school. We also acknowledge prayers within the day.

Graduate students may take for granted prayer because of their stubbornness or distorted
understandings. Since graduate students are mostly adults, we tend to grow and fashion our own
opinions about various topics. Personally, as a working student, my mental state isn’t always at its
best, so I tend to forget to talk to the Lord about my problems. I found it hard to express such
thoughts to other people as well but in my years in the Catholic school, I found prayer to be an
impactful solution, no matter how much I found it useless in my misguided states. I remember being
depressed in my younger years, but I’ve always been fascinated by the words of the priest during the
homily every time I would attend mass. They have always inspired my way of thinking and eventually
made me believe I could be better and do better.

Prayer teaches students to be humble in recognizing power above them. It encourages

students to think about each other through communal prayers. It gives them a moment each day to
focus on those less fortunate, all helping them to become better citizens of the greater world.
Praying helps relax the body, mind, and soul, and can, therefore, help in taking well-thought-out
decisions. Prayer is a way to teach children to turn to God for wisdom and guidance. It helps to
remind the young minds each day that they must bring their concerns and worries to God so that
they gain clarity on the situation in a relaxed moment of prayer. It subsequently helps them sift and
sort out options to determine the best way out, and thus make wise choices in life.
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Work

Working hard is always an impactful value, even when you are a student. Skills and talents
are extraordinary gifts from God that must be shared and cherished. We must use these gifts to
reach our dreams and color the world with passion. With this, we must work hard to apply
knowledge within our minds to be aware, to create opinions, to fathom solutions and to understand
emotions. School is an education system that provides the students the opportunity to study and
develop understandings on certain topics. The school promotes work as the foundation of its
system. We take tests, exams, debates, essays, that furthermore helps us improve.
To work hard, to strive hard is to achieve or attain something. In my own experience, I’ve felt
that studying is always an obligation but at the same time we need to normalize it in our lives so that
we may be able to enjoy our youth further.
To elaborate, studying and working for me must be paid attention to, whenever it may come.
And for the rest of my free time, I’d also spend it having fun but also learning something within that
fun. But whenever you do fail, think of it as somewhat of a benefit, since you still learn something
from what you’ve lost, and it would still allow you to grow. Pressuring a student with so much work,
stress and obligations is too much. Stress and work are overall inevitable, but you need to have a
mindset that you’re learning something in return and that all your hard work will pay off.
Work should be the setting for this rich personal growth, where many aspects of life enter
play: creativity, planning, developing our talents, living out our values, relating to others, giving glory
to God. It follows that, in the reality of today's global society, it is essential that "we continue to
prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone," no matter the limited interests of
business and dubious economic reasoning. We were created with a vocation to work. The goal
should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be
detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to
growth, human development and personal fulfillment. Helping the poor financially must always be a
provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow
them a dignified life through work.
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Conclusion

“Prayer and work” are the best combination to success. Being a Bedan has taught me to
work hard and still put God first in everything. Ora et Labora is a Benedictine value which was
instilled to us Bedans from our very first stay in school simply means, prayer and work as road to
success. Many people became successful, but we do not actually see or notice what is behind every
success they are having especially to top notch Bedans in different fields and expertise.

Do you think that they could get on top without their weapons? Hard work, resources,
friends, family are not the only things in the list. You may be forgetting the number 1 on the list;
PRAYER. In school, we start our classroom and non-classroom activities with prayer and end those
also with prayer. Since we are a catholic school, we are trained to this kind of routine and value such
in honor of the founders or our patron saints where the name of our institution was based. This is
very important value because it actually reminds us that a God is there above us whom we should
thank and praise for always being with us, for his guidance, protection, enlightenment and for being
there with us all in every ups and downs, for every challenge we face, for the unending work and
tasks we have. We Bedans embraced this value and always don’t forget to call God in every
endeavors, success and failures.

In the workplace, having the Rule gave us a lot of confidence and self-assurance that we can
handle everything that are to be assigned to us, for the things that may be unfamiliar to us, and for
the new things we learn every day or in general, to actually surpass this On-The- Job Training
smoothly and productively. I learned that the value is not always praying for asking something but
most importantly is praying for appreciation and thanksgiving for every good thing that happens to
me and for all the graces and blessings that are yet to come. In life, being a person of prayer and
work is one of the most important or even can be the most important value one can have. We may
be successful; we may have everything but be reminded that nothing in the world is permanent; it is
only God who is always there which proves the context of forever. That we must always be thankful
for everything that we have, that we must always conjoin things we do with prayer because it is only
when we seek help from the Father that we are being enlightened and assured that everything goes
well.
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1
Nel Simon Lapore, “Applying Benedict’s Ora et Labora in School”, July 11, 2020

https://www.dominusest.ph/post/applying-benedict-s-ora-et-labora-in-school

2
Jhoanna Steffany G. Narag, “Relevance of The Benedictine Core Values Ora Et Labora”

https://dokumen.tips/download/link/essay-4-relevance-of-benedictine-core-values-ora-et-labora

3
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers”

https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/the-dignity-of-
work-and-the-rights-of-workers

Father George Plathottam SDB “Revisiting ‘ora et labora’: A spirituality for daily living”
https://www.licas.news/2020/08/21/revisiting-ora-et-labora-a-spirituality-for-daily-living/