Why Keeping BUSY is Important for your Soul

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Jesus Christ employing for the glory of His Father and the salvation of men all the time which He passed upon earth not a moment given to pleasure, to personal satisfaction (Rom. 15:3). He did everything from the desire to please God His Father. (John 8:29) Let us thank Him for this great example, and render to Him all our homage.

FIRST POINT

The Obligation to Employ Time Properly is a Divine Precept

Even if we were the children of an innocent Adam, a divine precept would oblige us to utilize time by work, since it is written that God placed man in paradise that he might work therein (Gen. 2:15). How much more, then, are we obliged to do so. We who are the children of a guilty Adam, to whom it has been said: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” a general law which weighs upon the whole of the human race without distinction, upon the rich as well as on the poor, upon the great as well as on the little! And this law was confirmed by Jesus Christ declaring that the useless servant shall be cast into the abyss (Matt. 25:30), that the tree which is sterile shall be cast into the fire (Matt. 3: 10), that, lastly, all will have to render to Him an account of all the talents confided to them; and these talents, what are they if they be not their faculties, which idleness paralyzes, or which it abuses; if it be not time, of which each moment ought to bear fruit before God? “If any man will not work, neither let him eat;” says Jesus Christ by His apostle (2 Thess. 3:10) he is unworthy to live, and occupies a useless place in the order of creation.

SECOND POINT

The Obligation of Employing Time Well is a Precept of Natural Right

Natural right forbids us from dishonoring human dignity in our person, to abuse the gifts of God, and to compromise our salvation. Now the loss of time, First, dishonors human dignity in our person; for it is a shame for man to grovel in inaction, to drag along an existence here below which is of no use, and to be nothing more than a useless burden upon earth; Second, it is an abuse of the gifts of God, that is to say, first, of time, which is a gift of His munificence, then of our faculties, which idleness enervates and emasculates, numbs, and ends by stifling; Third, it compromises our salvation, for experience teaches us that idleness is the mother and mistress of all the vices; it engenders them, develops and strengthens them (Ecclus. 33:29); it was the cause of the immorality and the ruin of Sodom: so true is it that there are no faults which it cannot make man commit, no kind of chastisement which it cannot draw down from heaven (Ezech. 16:40). It has ruined the greatest men: Samson, David, Solomon, after having been saints whilst they were laboring, were ruined by idleness (Ad frat. erem. serm. vi. inter Op. St. Aug.). The reason is easy to conceive. As the body is developed by exercise and is strengthened by fatigue, whilst it is rendered effeminate by inaction and loses its vigor in a state of immobility, so in like manner the soul is enervated by idleness, loses its energy, and languishes in a state of inaction. When in this sad condition, the heart is dried up, the imagination wanders, the mind goes astray by occupying itself with useless thoughts. We look upon as a happiness all the means of which we can make use for getting rid of time of which we do not know what to do, and in consequence we take our weary idleness into dangerous society, and indulge in foolish conversations, which are sometimes free and devoid of decency. We use and absorb our faculties in vain curiosity, in frivolous reading, in reveries, and henceforward there is no counting upon virtue. We are accessible to all kinds of temptations, impressionable to all kinds of vices. The demons, who know this well, seize upon these wretched moments, and come in crowds to tempt the soul. There are the demons of pride and self-love, the demons of impurity and sensuality, the demons of cupidity and the love of riches, who all join together in making the assault, and we succumb. It was this which made Cassian say that for one demon who tempts the man that works there are a thousand who besiege an idle man (Cassian, Lit. Book 10,100:19). In presence of these facts, who is there that will not understand the obligation laid upon us of spending time well and never giving up the smallest portion of it to idleness? What reproaches have we not to address to ourselves on this subject! What moments have we not lost in idleness! Let us regret this sorrowful past of ours and let us resolve to make a better use of time in the future.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.