Work and Love, by Monsignor Giussani

We must always remind ourselves that our first work does not arise from the capacity to create new structures, but rather it is... a sensibility to the common and singular needs that exist: the use of your intelligence and energy to assist in the creation of a more human environment in the situation where you are. Only if the imagination is awakened can new forms of work be invented. This can only spring forth from an amazement, a devotion, a love for what man is. The factory remains a factory, but it's not like it was before. Wherever a presence -- determined by this passion for man -- expresses a generosity, steadfastness, and imagination, and meets with a certain openness, the work environment is not like it was before. I have heard you tell me a hundred times, "Now I go to work with a passion that I never expected, that before I never even dreamed possible," which means that you don't go to the job you used to go to, but you perform a "new work," a more human work that doesn't leave out any aspect, any particular. Nothing is more concrete than love. Outside of love, concreteness is established by developing a preconceived idea into a program, a program into a preconceived idea. That is, by an ideology that is determined to find its own way and exploits everyone it encounters in the process. Instead, a group of people gathered together who try to keep in mind the true sense of man as a creature of God becomes capable of inventing the truly new. Beyond any scheme, it doesn't remain prisoner of the ordinary programs and always finds a space in which a new flower or new leaf may come to life. In those places where people get together in this way they become truly creative, they become real protagonists in the world. This is why we want to become protagonists in the working world, not as the representatives of categories or roles or interest groups, but representatives of man.

Monsignor Luigi Giussani (died 2005) was a priest from Milan, Italy, who was the founder of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.