Talk 2 is titled Significance because it discusses how to make your work meaningful— by making your sacred and secular be-come aligned.
There are two kinds of thinking or mindset: Plato’s dualism principle and Jesus’ holistic principle.
For Plato, the soul was good and the body was bad. For Jesus, both are good.
For many Catholics, priests and nuns are more pleasing to God than married people. Why?
First, married people engage in sex—and sex is supposed to be dirty.
But that’s dualistic thinking. Here’s real Catholic Teaching: God invented sex. And He doesn’t make mistakes. He thinks sex is very beautiful.
Second, we think that priests and nuns are more pleasing to God because their work is to save souls. On the other hand, the rest sell soap. The priests and nuns have sacred work. The rest have secular work.
The religious don’t work for money. The rest do. And as in sex, for many people, money is dirty too. So in our mind, priests are holier than plumbers, nuns are holier than nannies, and missionaries are holier than mechanics.
But that’s totally false. All work is holy. What makes the work holy is not the work but the worker. You are holy. You’re an Imago Dei. Therefore, your work is holy.