Art and Love

Extract

I.

According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and this teaching is necessarily true, for the Catholic Church teaches with the authority of God Himself, the reason of man’s existence is that he may know, serve and love God. Every activity of man must be directed to those ends, otherwise man is false to himself, for he is acting against his nature, and false to God, for he is acting against his Maker.

For such a creature as man, then, the work he does is not primarily that he may earn the food he eats, the shelter he needs and the food and shelter for the children he begets. Food and shelter are not the ends for which man works. On the contrary, man’s work is the end to which food and shelter are the means. We say that man’s work is the end. That is to say, it is the immediate or proximate end. The ultimate end, the final end is God. All food and shelter are things to help man in his work; all work is to help man to his God.

Now under the stress of an irreligious and therefore an ill-organised society, these things are forgotten or denied; God Himself is forgotten or denied, and men think of themselves as working merely in order to live. Food and shelter are proclaimed to be the ends for which men work and, being reduced to the level of a means to merely earthly existence, work is degraded and derided. This is indeed the curse of Adam; for Adam sinned when he ceased to contemplate his God.