Dear brothers and sisters in Mary,
In times past the demand of the workplace forged refined citizens. Not a demand necessarily of physical toil but of refinement. The carpenter had a costume of decorum and the merchant as well not merely to express the tasteful flare of his profession but also a symbolic elucidation of its deeper meaning.
The same goes for any artisan or any trade. The etiquette they followed in times past would turn gauche men (i.e. awkward and ungraceful) into men of urbanity (confident and graceful in social settings). The merchant was temperate and lively avoiding all flattery and the carpenter was deeply practical and at once possessing high spirit in his tastes— they both were something of artists. The workplace was not banal and prosaic but a studio of refinement both for the characters and their artifacts.
The lower classes are in charge of uplifting the material substratum of society— they are called to transfigure the small and lowly. This is what made the organic society of our Catholic forefathers great.
Therefore you aspiring artisans sagaciously enterprise! Take on a field, only what you can chew, start small, and create imitating the best of the past. Supply your neighbors with sacral furniture and wittfully undermine consumer prices; or make lace elucidating the character of your region and its best people; produce symbolic pastries with textures and flavors that have something of old and something of new. I can add more ideas but I will leave that to you and your Guardian Angel.
Now is the time to create an alternative economy ruled not by money but Refinement itself— Christ. In the process, the new elites of the Reign of Mary will arise.
In Domina,
Michael Alejandro Aguilera
Sources
Painting: Anton Domenico Gabbiani - Firenze, Galleria Palatina (Museo degli strumenti musicali), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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