: John Abbate
: Invest Yourself Daring to Be Catholic in Today's Business World
: Beacon Publishing
: 9781942611875
: 1
: CHF 10.70
:
: Christentum
: English
: 200
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
How can I be a successful business leader and also incorporate my faith into my business dealings? How can I make tough business decisions and still heed God's call to generosity, compassion, and empathy? How can I be a faithful Christian and still be successful in the real world? These are the unanswered questions many of us carry deep within. It's easy to talk about how business and faith can live in harmony, but when the rubber meets the road, we often find ourselves tempted to compromise. We need to be reminded, challenged, and inspired to live lives of authentic faith in the workplace. The book you hold in your hands will do just that. Invest Yourself is the story of one man's quest to live his faith boldly and authentically in the workplace. A real estate investor and the owner of multiple McDonald's franchises for over twenty-five years, author John Abbate has had his share of difficult experiences. As his personal faith grew, he began to think differently about how he could be a more effective leader. He began putting the needs of his employees first, using his resources to assist them with their hardships, and inspiring them to strive for excellence. Along the way he discovered that business success and a deep Catholic faith aren't mutually exclusive, but instead together form the basis of a life that is rich in what matters. We are all called to lives of abundance expressed in self-giving. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an engineer, a civil servant or a carpenter, a stay-at-home mom or a CEO, this book will inspire you to rise to the challenge put forth by St. John Paul II to place your intelligence, your talents, your enthusiasm, your compassion, and your fortitude at the service of life.
ONE
Choosing Prosperity
We make a living by what we get.
We make a life by what we give.
—Winston Churchill
The most extraordinary power we have been given as human beings is our freedom to choose. St. Thomas Aquinas eloquently called it “the dignity of causality.”1 Simply stated, this means that through the power of our free will and intellect given to us by God, we have the capacity to decide the direction of our own life and our own prosperity. We can choose whether to make a lasting difference that sees beyond a temporal world bound by scarcity and fear or simply toil through life seeking perpetual self-gratification, never reaching true fulfillment.
I believe most of us would agree that we all want three basic things out of our brief time here on earth. We all need hope; we all yearn for happiness; and we all crave the satisfaction of knowing that our life has counted for something. These three elements constitute a life well lived—an abundant life.
But living such an abundant life requires tapping into our essential purpose as human beings—a purpose that is far greater than realizing the fulfillment of our own desires or passions. Because we are created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:27), we can start by looking at him. And there we discover that the essence of our authentic humanity is in self-giving. This is our Christian inheritance, powerfully expressed by Christ and his teachings. Self-giving is the key that will free us from the burdens of a world dominated by the “scarcity mentality” we have inherited.
We all have the potential to live a life of Christian abundance now, regardless of the reality of our past choices. Yet this is possible only when we deliberately and courageously decide to think differently about our life’s vocation and are willing to exercise choices to live this higher calling. In this book, using my own journey as the backdrop, I will explore the concept of vocation as the medium to live out our God-given purpose, live a life that matters, and experience the true abundance we desire.
I am a very practical and logical thinker, and most of my life has been dominated by the norms of the business world. Deep down, I am a finance and economics guy. I love creating a good spreadsheet and analyzing the next opportunity. I truly enjoy the everyday challenge and unpredictability of maintaining financial, personal, and professional success.
Along the meandering path of my life, I have discovered a few things about how to balance my financial portfolio, and more crucially, my personal and faith lives as well. Of course, I still fail at times, yet the risk of catastrophic failure is mitigated when I am living my true vocation.
My Catholic faith is not an exercise in irrationality or credulity. It is a faith built first and foremost on God and the revelation of his son, Jesus, but also centered on the wisdom and intellect of thousands of men and women who have come before me. Most of these men and women have spent their entire lives dedicated to the rigorous scholarship of this discipline called theology. Catholicism is steeped in the rationality, wisdom, and practicality of being scrutinized, studied, and applied in our culture for two thousand years. Isn’t it time we stopped believing that our Catholic faith is built on foolish and nonsensical imagination or arcane mysticism? As you read this book, I will introduce you to a few of the brilliant thinkers who have dedicated themselves to Christ and worked selflessly to make these truths accessible to