LOVE OVERCOMES LAZINESS AND LEADS US TO MAKE GOOD USE OF OUR TIME.
Look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise. How persuasive is this advice of St Paul! Throughout his intense, tightly-packed life he was motivated by love, which moves one to action and mobilises all one’s energies. As St Augustine says, Charity cannot be idle. Show me, if you can, a love which is passive or inactive. Such a love is not to be found.
Love prompts us to work, to spend ourselves for others, just as laziness is a sign of the absence of love, of not living life to the full. St Gregory the Great says: When we stop wanting to do good, little by little we lose the habit of correct thinking. Therefore it is rightly said: “an idle person will suffer hunger.”
When the soul does not aspire eagerly to lofty things, it abandons itself lazily to base desires; and by the fact that it dispenses itself from subjection to discipline, it surrenders itself to pleasures. Therefore Solomon again says: “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep.” A life of idleness has no purpose or aim; it seeks ungodly things to satisfy the heart’s desires. As St John Chrysostom says, idleness is the mother of all vices. In our case our lives are steeped in love, a love which invigorates and moves us and doesn’t let us fall asleep. Christ’s love is urging us. When we realize the urgency of the work to be done we certainly can’t afford to be lazy: time is so short.
When I reflect on this, St. Josemaria said, how well I understand St Paul’s exclamation when he writes to the Corinthians, tempus breve est.How short indeed is the time of our passing through this world! For the true Christian these words ring deep down in his heart as a reproach to his lack of generosity, and as a constant invitation to be loyal. Brief indeed is our time for loving, for giving, for making atonement. It would be very wrong, therefore, for us to waste it, or to cast this treasure irresponsibly overboard. We mustn’t squander this period of the world’s history which God has entrusted to each one of us.
Taller de San José, detail of reredo of Shrine of Our Lady of Torreciudad (Huesca, Spain)
We need to make the very most of every hour and minute at our disposal.You might tell me, “Why should I make an effort?” It is not I who answer you, but St Paul: “Christ’s love is urging us.” A whole lifetime would be little, if it were spent expanding the frontiers of your charity. The urgency of loving God and of accomplishing all he asks us, leads us to put the Norms of our plan of life in first place and not let ourselves be drawn into hastiness or activism. When spiritual duty calls, no other activity can take precedence. It has to receive our complete and undivided attention. We need to work at making the most of our time. A single hour, or even a few minutes, can be very full, or empty and meaningless: dead. And what we want is to have life, supernatural life.
SOURCE: Excerpt from the Book of Meditations (private collection). BOLD LETTERS MINE.
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