In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.

Anyone who has ever worked has felt the force of God’s words to Adam. Work, an inescapably human reality, can seem like mere toil and trouble, blood, sweat, and tears, cursed by God ever since the Fall of Man. Is work itself a consequence of the Fall and the source of all our ills, or is there a divine dimension to work awaiting discovery in the pages of Scripture? What did the Church Fathers mean by the famous monastic dictum ora et labora, “pray and work”? How does St. Thomas’ account of leisure illuminate the Church’s understanding of work? Does the Catholic account of works in relation to faith as articulated in the Council of Trent withstand Protestant critiques? How did the Church respond to the new kinds of work ushered in by the Industrial Revolution, and how will the Church respond to the challenges AI poses to the future of work?

Join us for Collegium Institute’s 2025-2026 Graduate Fellows Colloquium titled Work Is Love Made Visible: On the Theology of Work as we ponder these questions through Scripture, the Fathers, Doctors, Councils, and Encyclicals of the Church. In the words of a 20th century saint and theologian of work: it is in the simplicity of your ordinary work, in the monotonous details of each day, that you have to find the secret, which is hidden from so many, of something great and new: Love.

Dates: Monthly on Thursdays. 7:00 - 8:30 pm.

Loca

Fall sessions: September 18, October 23, November 13

Spring sessions: Dates TBA

Click the button below to sign up. Please direct any questions to Joe Perez-Benzo (jperezbenzo@collegiuminstitute.org).