How to Live a Holy Life: ‘How Should We Conduct Ourselves in Our Daily Work?’

Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) on How to Live a Holy Life: ‘How Should We Conduct Ourselves in Our Daily Work?’

Sometimes the weight of one day’s burdens seems enough to derail us spiritually. Often we feel as though we are slung from one trial to the next, slipping from one sin to another, rootless and without stability in our spiritual life. We ask, ‘How do I put into practice, in my life, Christ’s commandments? What is God’s plan for me? What does my job, my illness, my misfortune, my money (or lack thereof) have to do with God’s will for me?’ We all experience those moments when we wish someone would give us a ‘manual (Postnikov) on of piety’ to help us find salvation amidst the pitfalls of daily life in this modern world, to help us find daily health by way of wholesome spiritual habits.

There is a little book by a Russian bishop that can aid us in this way. Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg (1784-1860)’s book, How to Live a Holy Life, is full of practical advice for building spiritual habits in our daily life in Christ. Beginning with an appeal to live a more conscious and devout Christian life, Metropolitan Gregory explains how we should conduct ourselves in happiness, misfortune, wealth, poverty, illness and so forth. All this is described as we are taken by the hand through a normal day from waking up to going to bed. Our relationship with God and others is discussed in the context of prayer, work, meals and rest times.

Breathing a spirit of deep spirituality and watchfulness, it doesn’t simply offer instructions as to what to do, but guides the reader in the work of constantly living a life of purity before God, ‘Who is in all places, and fills all things’.

Since constantly living a life of purity before God means building spiritual habits, let’s look at just one of the topics Metropolitan Gregory talks about and consider some of his prescriptions for our daily spiritual health. Here are just a few of the spiritual habits he instructs us in while answering the question, ‘How Should We Conduct Ourselves in Our Daily Work?’:

1. If what you are called upon to perform in a day’s work is not opposed to moral law, acknowledge it as God’s work, as work entrusted to you by God Himself.

2. Whatever work you have to do, do it as if for the Lord Himself, as being the work of God, and with His blessing.

3. Do all your work from the soul, that is to say, gladly, with great pleasure, and without grumbling, faintheartedness, laziness, anger or impatience.

4. Work diligently and correctly, not with unwarranted slowness or carelessness. Do everything as well as you possibly can, with a clear conscience.

5. Enliven and strengthen yourself by remembering a) that your work is a means for your salvation (God does nothing without the most saving intentions for us), b) you will be judged for the work you do, c) no burden will last forever.

6. Support yourself while you work with edifying singing, or silent prayer.

Metropolitan Gregory assures us that whoever does his daily work in this way, implementing these spiritual habits while toiling to maintain his physical life, is working at the same time just as much or even more for the salvation of his soul. He works as he ought to work, for the glory of God. And the holy apostle commands us to do all to the glory of God (1Cor. 10:31). If we put these counsels into practice, our work will never serve as a cause for sin, but for blessings; we will never avoid our work, but will pray that God would help us to begin, continue, and finish it equably, and we will indeed do so.

-Fr. Matthew Snowden