The Call to Co-Labor

This post is based on Week Five of An Ignatian Prayer Adventure.

This faith thing takes labor, actual work. I can’t think, pray, study, reason, talk, or argue my path to God. I have to walk it, act it out, and labor. In my book, The Spiritual Path, I invite readers to set out on their journeys with God as their Walking Partner. This partner is a co-laborer or collaborator.

The journey is an invitation, not an expectation or a “should.” In the same way, Jesus invited Simon, Andrew, James, and John to follow him (Matthew 4:18–22). Responding to the invitation to co-labor with Christ doesn’t come only after we know exactly where we are going, what we will be asked to do, and what it will cost. None of the Apostles knew any of this. Perhaps if they had, they might not have accepted the invitation.

Co-laboring doesn’t require us to fit someone else’s mold of what we should do or only allow for certain types of labor or action. Jesus recognizes Simon’s skill as a fisherman and as a leader and invites him to use those very capacities in his mission. Collaboration begins with us exactly where we are, gifted as we are, right now. In time, journeying with our Walking Partner, we will indeed grow and change, often through applying those same innate capacities unique to each of us with a new orientation: in service to the greater glory of God, that is, the flourishing of others and creation.

We co-labor with Christ in all facets of our lives, in all moments of our days. We co-labor in our paid work and volunteer service; in our care for our families and our common home; and in our efforts to take care of our bodies and grow our understanding. The exponential power found in co-laboring comes when we recognize it is not just one person alone accepting the invitation to work on Christ’s mission. It is Christ laboring with us each as individuals on our own missions and flourishing. As we walk our spiritual paths, we come to realize those are one and the same.

In this Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises, what gifts and capacities might Christ be inviting you to bring to his mission? What feelings arise from claiming the identity of a co-laborer?