he trend of religious indifference is an

undeniable fact today. It is true that vast and

increasing numbers of men looked upon God

as dead and gone. A post conciliar document

of the II Vatican Council says that, “very many people gradually

fall into religious indifference or run the risk of preserving a faith

which lacks the necessary dynamism and real influence in their

lives.”i The document stresses that the problem also affected

many baptized people and affirms that many baptized people

became detached from religion that they profess religious

indifference or, almost atheism.ii

T

This indifference towards faith can also be seen in the

workplace. Spirituality is seen by many as inconsistent with work,

time consuming and extracurricular activity which involves a lot

of resources. There is no need of any spirituality as long as people

do their job and deliver what is demanded of them.

Both employers and employees who detach faith from

work run the risk of dichotomy in their life. In fact many

workplaces separate the sacred from the secular. Many workplace

people believe that spirituality and the workplace are mutually

exclusive.

How did we come to this situation? Religious ignorance is

rampant, and particularly damaging among educated people who

are becoming the majority.iii The workplace is dominated by the

educated people. And they hold contempt against spirituality. The

rapid growth of materialism in the way people live and think is

another reason.iv People who are materialist in life and in practice

take material values as the supreme values in life, such as wealth,

strength, comfort, career and health. Because workplace people

are so engrossed in the concerns of this world, this material

obsession can make it harder to approach God. Vatican II

recognizes this difficulty too.v Too much concern and

identification of man with the world often develop into

prolonged, permanent, spiritual separation of man from his God.

That is why, once an individual is lost in the love of the ever-

present and splendid universe, the creature comes to possess

himself, his society and his world as if they were exclusively his

own.vi

The refusal of someone to give himself in spirit to God leads to

a refusal to holistic maturity. This implies then that his inner

dynamics are not in full force. He is lacking. He is not whole.

Refusal to spiritual development is a refusal to be creative and

find meaning in life. It is a refusal to integral development.

Conscious of all these, Pope Benedict XVI has declared a

Year of Faith that will start on October 12, 2012 the 50th

Anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and

will end on November 24 next year, the Solemnity of Christ the

King. This Year of Faith according to the Holy Father is an

avenue to rediscover the journey of faith so as to shed clearer

light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with

Christ.vii He also affirms the profound crisis of faith caused by

much concern of Christians for the social, cultural and political

consequences of their commitment while denying the

presupposition of faith.

A crisis is both a danger and at the same time, an

opportunity. And the Holy Father wants that this crisis be an

opportunity for rediscovery, renewal and maturity of faith. The

people of today can still experience the need to go to the well,

like the Samaritan woman, in order to hear Jesus, who invites us

to believe in him and to draw upon the source of living water

welling up within him (cf. Jn 4:14).viii

What can we offer for the rediscovery and renewal of our

faith in crisis?

First, the renewal of the Church can be achieved through

the witness of the believer in the face of the upsurge of

materialism and secularism. The believer’s existence in the world

is one that is expected to illumine and radiate the word of truth of

the Gospel.

Second, the call to be committed to is an avenue for

rediscovering the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for

communicating the faith. Through this commitment to love the

faith, makes this very same faith grow as much as lived as an

experience of love.

That is why the Holy Father also calls for the New

Evangelization so that each Catholic can deepen his or her own

faith, have confidence in the Gospel, and possess a willingness to

share the Gospel. In a special way, the New Evangelization

focuses on offering again the Gospel to those who have

experienced a crisis of faith. Pope Benedict XVI called for the re-

offering of the Gospel "to those regions awaiting the first

evangelization and to those regions where the roots of

Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of

faith due to secularization."ix

AWS program is a response to this call which aims that

Christians may grow from devotional spirituality to mature

spirituality without neglecting the importance of devotion by

fostering religious literacy especially in the workplace, so that

members of this community can make religious sense out of their

every life – successes, struggles and challenges in the areas of

corporate relationship, business operations and management.

Furthermore, it will give people in the workplace a holistic

environment, to fully exercise their inner dynamics, to be creative

and find meaning to what they do. Spirituality in the workplace

allows him to go beyond merely doing his job towards making

what he does intelligible in the midst of many ambiguities in

order to find meaning and significance in it.

Endnotes

i A. Flannery, ed. Vatican Council II: More Postconciliar Documents, Vol II, Paulines Publishing House, Pasay, Philippines, 2000, p.534.

ii ibid., p. 534

iii ibid. p. 6.

ivibid, p. 6.

v GS 19vi

V. Miceli, S.J., The Gods of Atheism, Arlington House, New York, 1971, pp. 1-2.

vii Porta Fidei, 2

viii ibid, p. 3.

ix Pope Benedict XVI, "Homily of First Vespers on the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul," The Vatican, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20100628_vespri-pietro-paolo_en.html.