The field is large but few
are the workers

Differently of other movements, there is neither priesthood nor salaried functions in Spiritism. The duty of working and participating is a responsibility for everyone who defines themselves as Spiritists, from the simple act of locking up doors to the leadership of the most important institution.

It is verifiable, however, a generalized lack of workers in the Spiritist field, fact that prevents either many works to be developed or others to be performed with proper quality.

Participating of a work in the benefit of the neighbor or the community should be a common purpose for everyone, for the good it brings, especially to those who perform it, as the work is one of the means for both individual and collective progress

As opposed to what some philosophers have written, the work has nothing to do with penalty or divine punishment. If it did, there would be no reason for Jesus to affirm: “My Father works until today and so do I” (John, 5:17).

The Spiritist Doctrine shows us that the work is a natural law and it because of it that mankind owes its maintenance and its security to the work developed.

Let’s see a synthesis of what Spiritism teach us regarding the work and its importance in our lives:

– “Human beings elevate and purify their spirits through labor, and you know that it is only through hard work in the corporeal existence that the spirit acquires knowledge” (The Spirits’ Book, Prolegomena.)

– Should we understand by labor only material occupations? “No; the spirit  labors as does the body. Every useful occupation is labor.” (The Spirits’ Book, question 675)

– “Without labor, humans would remain in intellectual infancy. Thus, they must owe their food, safety and well-being to their own labor and activity.” (The Spirits’ Book, 676)

– “Everything in nature labors. Animals labor as you do, but their work, like their intelligence, is limited to their self-preservation. That is why labor does not to progress among them, while among human beings it has a double objective: preservation of the body and the development of thought, which is also a necessity and which raises them above themselves” (The Spirits’ Book, 677)

– Are those who possess plenty of assets to assure their subsistence exempted from the law of labor? “From physical labor, perhaps, but not from the obligation to render themselves useful according to their means and to perfect their own and other’s intelligence, which is also labor. If those to whom God has granted enough assets to assure their subsistence are not obligated to eat their bread from the sweat of the brow, their obligation to be useful to their fellow-creatures is all the greater. It is a portion they have received in advance that allows them more free time to do good.” (The Spirits’ Book, 679)

– “Voluntary sufferings serve no purpose when they have no value for the good of others. Do you believe that those who shorten their lives through superhuman hardships, like the bonzes, fakirs, and few fanatics of various sects, progress on their path? Why don’t they labor for the good of their neighbors instead? Let them visit the indigent, comfort those who mourn, work for those who are infirm, and endure privations to help the unfortunate; then their life will be useful and pleasing to God. When you only have yourselves in mind in the voluntary hardships to which you subject yourselves, it is selfishness; when you suffer for others, you practice charity. Such are the precepts of Christ.” (The Spirits’ Book, 726)

– “Morality without action is like the seed without the sowing. What use is the seed if you do not make it grow in order to feed you?” (The Spirits’ Book, 905)

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Given what has been stated above, it would be very useful to analyze what we have done of our time, remembering the serious warning that Abel Gomes gave us in a message within the book “Talking to Earth”, work psychographed by Francisco Cândido Xavier: “The more we evolve in knowledge and love, we consider the waste of minutes as being the most lamentable and destructive of all”. “We keep, each day, the crop of resources and emotions that we are really planting. There is no misfortune other than that one we have proclaimed to ourselves.”