“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).
In the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Probably many of us need to hear that. Our labor is not in vain. And we need to repeat it because it is not obvious or clear. Whether it’s the mom struggling to keep her household together and wrestle her young children toward holiness, the dad striving to keep his grown children close to the Church, the pastor exhausted by the confusion and corruption in the Church, the penitent who comes back to the confessional week after week with the same list of habitual sins. Be encouraged. In the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Why does St. Paul make this statement in a chapter all about the Resurrection? Because the Resurrection says that things matter. This world is passing away; it will not last. But that doesn’t mean that it will just disappear and fall into nothingness. The whole of salvation history is the story of God’s unwillingness to let his creation fall into nothingness. This world is the seed that will bloom into the glory of God’s eternal life. Our bodies are corruptible, mortal, but they will be “clothed in immortality.”
As Catholics, we understand that salvation is not merely some kind of legal trick by which God allows us to sneak into heaven. Salvation is real. We can actually be transformed, body and soul, into holiness. We can mature and produce fruit. God, like a careful and loving gardener, is tending us, pruning us, nourishing us with his own life. Perhaps we are impatient for our growth. Perhaps, as our Lord says in Luke, we find it much easier to look at other people and point out their fruit, good or bad. But we can do little to help others if we ourselves are starving or diseased.
The spiritual life is, to quote one author, “a long obedience in the same direction.” Like a tree, it has seasons—times of new life, times of death, times of struggle, and times of plenty. In the Lord, our labor is not in vain, because all of our labor is also his. We are his body, the Church. The promise of the resurrection is a promise that this world will not merely be a “vanity of vanities,” as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes comments; all things will be well, no matter how vain they seem at the moment, no matter how tired we become or how boring it may seem. Death will be swallowed up in victory.
As we turn to Lent this week, we enter a new season of work. Holy Church asks this work of us because she truly believes holiness is possible, that Christ really meant what he said about producing good fruit. So there’s no choice but to do it. Submit to the master gardener. Let him tend to your health. Sink in your roots, drink deeply of grace, and don’t be afraid to grow.