Reaching each person’s heart

Lucia Vinco

Tags: Love of God, Service, Work I have worked for several years in different catering and hospitality schools and at the same time in the service sector. I am currently studying for a degree in dietetics, because I see thorough scientific training as essential if I am to do my work to a professionally high standard.

In today’s world, where people often seem to understand and manage everything in terms of efficiency and economics, I have found, thanks to Saint Josemaria’s teachings, the need for a path to the satisfaction of the whole person by taking their care and attention seriously.

In my work I feel responsible for reaching each person’s heart, by the specific route of doing all I possibly can to show the madness of love, love without measure, that God feels for each and every one of us. This desire translates into simple, habitual things that take on a third dimension and have an effect on the person who receives them and on the person who offers them as well.

The effects are not always apparent, but I am certain that with my work I can help to change the direction of events; I can work marvels in the depths of each individual; in short, I can “give back to matter and to the most trivial occurrences and situations their noble and original meaning” (Cf. Josemaria Escriva, Conversations, 114).

Every job responds to a real need of society, and for me, taking attentive care of all the components of a pleasanter life has become my profession. The underlying motivation is to make each person feel welcome, and that welcome is made up of all sorts of different elements, that I would like to look at from three viewpoints. The first point, closely connected to the way I see life, is an inner attitude of surprise at the wonder of a human being. The second is connected to the places where the person should feel welcome: order and tidiness, harmony, cleanliness, etc. The third refers to each person’s fundamental needs: food, rest, clothes, and so on.
It fills you with enthusiasm to be able to discover something every day with which to surprise those around you, so that they marvel at all the attractive, cheerful little details. Normally what surprises us is an attitude, an expression, a simple thing of merely relative importance, but which we see as aiming to benefit us as a person.
In my day’s work I have plenty of possibilities of making people marvel, and I think the same is true of other jobs. It’s a matter of learning to discover and make the most of those possibilities to bring happiness to the person who is the object of our work, our care and attention. But, above all, because by doing so we come to be a continuation of the hand of God, who commits himself to all that he has created and especially to those created beings whom he loves most: men and women.