Working for Free and Earned Success: Striving for Love, Not Greatness

“You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them” (St. Thérèse of Lisieux).

My friend dropped off the Ziploc bag with the perfectly cut pieces to sew a mask for a health care worker. She belongs to a group of military spouses who had banded together to make masks to fill the gap during the ongoing personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage.

Now, I have a sewing machine that I kind of know how to use. But I was really overreaching with the idea that I could sew a mask that a health worker could use for anything else but a dust rag.

I felt so powerless; I wanted to be able to tell my children and grandchildren that I did my part during this bizarre chapter of history. Obviously, I’m praying all the novenas and offering up all the inconveniences for a resolution to the COVID-19 crisis. I know and believe these spiritual practices and devotions are effective. However, I simply didn’t feel like I was doing anything.

Working for Free

As a freelancer whose writing includes web and social content for small businesses, I now realize my “doing” looks different from my friend’s “doing.” Small businesses are hurting. As someone who writes for the very institutions hit hardest by the state closures, these days, I occasionally write for free.

I’m not unique or special in this way. Go on Instagram or look at your emails, and you’ll see businesses and creators offering free or reduced services right now.

This goes against the advice most freelancers give and receive. Don’t work for free, people will tell you. Don’t let people get something out of you for nothing.

I’m reminded of the parable of the talents. Do I want to stand before God saying I did nothing to advance His Kingdom with the gifts He gave me? When my literal neighbors are trying to keep their businesses going, who am I to hold hostage whatever meager ability I have to help them?

Earned Success: Different From Worldly Success

Harvard professor and happiness maven Arthur Brooks talks a lot about earned success, which can be different from financial success or notoriety. Earned success is the knowledge that you belong somewhere where people need you. It comes from knowing someone would miss you if you were gone.

We also know from Church teaching that work has an inherent dignity, because it is a way “of participating in God’s creation.”

I told a seminarian friend of mine that I didn’t feel like I was doing much for the community and people around me. “They’d notice if you were gone,” he assured me.

How Are You Being Called?

Unless you’re a health care worker, a trucker, a grocery store worker, or a delivery person, you may feel like you aren’t doing much for the “war” effort.

Offering your time and talents with little or no compensation may go against every business or financial instinct you have. Similarly, you don’t want anyone to take advantage of you or your goodwill. That’s where discernment comes into play.

Pay attention to your emotions and where they come from when you are deciding how to deploy your resources or services to help the vulnerable in your community. It may be that financially and for the good of your family, you can’t afford to do much at this time. If you find that you can afford to volunteer something of yourself, your skills, or your product, but are still unsure, pay attention to where resistance to the idea originates. If it comes from a place of pride, ego, or simple unwillingness, prayerfully go a little deeper to find solutions. Then, you’ll be on your way to identifying  a course of action that gives you peace and builds God’s kingdom.

Sometimes, we can feel like our work doesn't matter if it isn’t rewarded, recognized, or compensated. Right now, especially, we may experience frustration as we toil to flatten the curve or keep afloat a business that may not survive a prolonged economic shutdown. We’ve all seen some variation of the meme about how our great-grandfathers were drafted to serve in World War II, and all we’re being asked to do is watch Netflix.

God calls all of us, as human beings, to dignified work. He also asks all of us to be His Son’s hands and feet in the world. In a time and context where it may be unclear how to approach either pursuit — professionally or personally — we need to ask for guidance and then, we need to trust.

It can be difficult to have the patience necessary to trust that our small works, however infertile they may seem, will yield any fruit. Blessed Charles de Foucauld, for example, was a French priest and missionary who ultimately succeeded in converting and baptizing only one person in his lifetime. There are 20 orders inspired by his life and teachings today, all of them founded after his (sudden, tragic) death.

Love, Not Greatness

The example of Blessed Charles de Foucauld shouldn’t discourage us (Great, maybe I’ll get shot after years of unrecognized effort, and 15 years later, something will come of it.) Instead, we should draw hope from his story. Whatever we’re doing with our time and talents, whatever sacrifices we’re making for the good of our neighbor, it all counts.

I’ll leave you with these words from St. Therese of Lisieux: “You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions,nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.”

Amen.

Maggie Phillips is a freelance writer and military spouse with three small children and an incredibly patient husband. Follow her work at mrsmaggiephillips.com and on Instagram at @maggies_words.