Ora Et Labora

 Ora et Labora

A loved one posted this saying on their WhatsApp status. It means Pray and Work, and is a Roman Catholic, Benedictine (order of monks) saying. As a professing Protestant, I immediately had question marks on this saying.

I don't know much about the Benedictines. From what I understand, before they came along, monks were more about the praying than the working. The Benedictines came along and said that monks should work and not just sit in their cloisters and pray.

My Protestant misgiving about this saying is that I know we cannot work to earn our salvation. So from a salvation point of view, the saying should be ‘pray and pray’, or ‘pray and believe’ or something. In fact, when people asked Jesus what they must be doing to do the works of God, he simply replied ‘to believe in the One whom he has sent’ (himself).

Moving on from my scanty knowledge of Benedictine ways (apart from the fact that Roman Catholics are trusting in their works rather than in Christ alone for salvation), I want to continue to examine this saying from (hopefully) a Biblical perspective.

‘Pray and work’ reminds me of James’s saying that faith without works is dead. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther struggled to reconcile this with the Apostle Paul's insistence that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone. He called James letter a letter of ‘straw’.

We need to understand that the faith James condemns isn't the faith Paul commends (remember with our quote that proper prayer is an expression of faith). The works James commends aren't the works Paul condemns. This sounds like a riddle, but let me unpack it.

As James says, faith without evidence is dead. If we have genuine faith, we will prove it by our works. As Paul says, ‘we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do’.

As Paul would say however, works don't save us. Our salvation is ‘not by works, so that no one can boast’ (Ephesians 2). 

So hopefully you can see how we can put a positive spin on ‘ora et labora’. I think the Benedictines probably meant it to say that faith isn't enough, that Jesus isn't enough, that we need to ‘top up’ our salvation with works. 

Thankfully, salvation is 100% of the Lord, as Jonah said. As Isaiah said, all our righteousness is like filthy rags, autumn leaves, or a gust of wind. We must trust in the perfect works of Christ for our salvation.

To come back to a positive reading of ‘ora et labora’, I read a Protestant article about it which was disappointingly lacking in the Gospel, but helpfully unpacked some of the etymology (word origins). Ora (which forms part of lab-ora) relates to the mouth, to speech. So to put this Latin phrase into colloquial English, the Benedictines could be argued to be saying ‘put your money where your mouth is’.

If we profess faith in Jesus, we will financially invest in his kingdom. I'm not saying we have to donate to Benedictines. I am saying that we should be generous with needy people, especially Christians. If we claim to be Christians but are stingy and greedy, we need to repent. 

So. ‘Ora et Labora’. It also reminds me of some of Solomon's proverbs, like the one where he says that a man enjoys the fruit of his lips. If someone works as a preacher for example, their heaters should remunerate him for his efforts.

Finally, I'm reminded of Jesus’s parable of the two sons. One says he will work for his Dad, but doesn't. One says he won't, but he does. Words are cheap. If we truly trust in Jesus, we will live for him, not for work or even for religious duties like prayer.