The Priest at Prayer for July 17, Love of Hard Work

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

The Love of Hard Work

First Meditation - The Priest must be a Hard Worker

I. Church history testifies that the grave laxity which overcame the clergy during certain periods of decadence and which paved the way for tremendous catastrophes, such as Protestantism, was rooted primarily in the forced idleness consequent upon considerable wealth combined with frequent lack of worthy occupation.

And, speaking of the general history of the nations, it is indolence which breeds degradation and decline, especially in sexual morality; and this same indolence is corroding certain classes of society in modern times.

Very short hours of very easy work mean long hours of corruption. Only work has the power to stem the continual flow of ideas and desires that come bubbling up from our unruly instincts. With indolence and idleness come evil thoughts and worse desires, "donec navis cordis succumbens in peccato periclitetur" says St. Bernard, until the vessel of the heart founders and becomes stranded on the rocks of sin.

Does this account for many of my lapses?

II. The priest, today more than ever before, has to be a man of ability; through his personal good qualities he has to regain for Religion the respect which unbelief otherwise refuses to pay it. If a bad priest is a black stain on Christ's brow, the good priest is Christ's earthly crown of glory:

And thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. (Is. lxii, 3)

Will a priest who thrives on perpetual idleness be anyone's crown of glory? Only hard work will raise him above the average. And how will a lazy priest deliver St. Paul's stirring words to the faithful?

"We charge you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to have nothing to do with any brother who lives a vagabond life, contrary to the tradition which we handed on. . . .

"The charge we gave you on our visit was that a man who refuses to work must be left to starve. . . .

"We charge all such, we appeal to them in the Lord Jesus Christ, to earn their bread by going on calmly with their work." (2 Thess. iii, 6, 10, 12)

In obedience to these commands, the faithful ought instinctively to shun me if I spend my life in idleness, without earning my daily bread, being a parasite living by the fruits of others; and, for my part, giving ample cause for the taunts of the Church's enemies when they dub Her ministers loafers and regard them as "socially unproductive."

III. Even supposing that there is no likelihood of this, that the people's respect for the clergy is well estab­lished, and that you personally are indebted to God for a balanced temperament which knows how to control energies and tame unruly desires; you must remember that those active powers of yours, if left unexercised, will constitute so much frozen capital; whereas God's contract is to remunerate a hundredfold only those supernatural assets which are in active circulation, especially those of His ministers.

How many bad habits would have been rooted out from people's hearts, how many lives regenerated, how many souls conducted to their heavenly destiny, how many errors deleted from their minds, if only I had made a slighdy better use of my time during all the perhaps long years of my priesthood!

All that store of good, which God had a right to expect from me and which my wretched laziness refused to supply, will it not oblige Him to curse my fruitless existence with the words:

Cut it down therefore; why let it clutter the ground? (Luke xiii, 7)?

Resolutions
1. By the strength of God's grace I resolve to be a man of hard work, as though St. Paul had written to me personally:

"Aim first at winning God's approval, as a workman who does not need to be ashamed of his work."-(Il Tim. ii, 15)

By dint of constant hard work I shall gradually equip myself for the proper discharge of my ministerial duties, including a well-prepared announcing of the word of God. But for this I shall need to make profitable use of every day and every hour.

2. In order to accomplish this, I propose to bring a methodical approach to my occupations, seeking the most convenient time for each one, and drawing up a well thought-out timetable or schedule for each day, week, month, and year, making no alterations in it without necessity or some considerable advantage.

The Apostle's warning not to roam about in a discreditable and restless fashion, minding other people's business but not their own, and his recommendation of silent hard work, were and still are the secret of the Saints.

Thus, in the hands of the Saints, each day seemed of double length, like Josue's; there is no other explanation for those countless marvellous works and foundations which they brought to a successful issue; achievements that, to our reckoning, would be enough to fill and overcrowd the lives of several ordinary men.

3. Lord, I acknowledge that the lack of method and order in my affairs, allowing them to be governed by caprice instead of a definite rule, has been the reason that my work has yielded so little and my priestly years have been both in appearance and in reality a barren wilderness, without fruits of salvation either for myself or for others.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!