The Priest at Prayer for July 19, Love of Hard Work

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

The Love of Hard Work

Third Meditation - Excuses for not Working Hard


I. Many plausible excuses will occur to me for not get­ting down to hard work. Here are some of them:

"There's nothing for me to do." Is that possible? What privileged domain has the Church or your lucky star assigned to you where there is nothing to do? In the Kingdom Christ established by His blood and toil, can there be any such place?

Perhaps you have the cure of souls, you are a parish priest, an administrator, a curate, a chaplain to nuns or to some other religious institute?

"Yes, I have some sort of a job like that, but my predecessor left nothing for me to do."

That baffles me. You seem to me to imply only one of two things: either everything remains to be done and created anew: confraternities, associations, the visiting of the sick, the teaching of catechism, preaching, frequenting of the Sacraments, going in search of the sheep that have strayed, a serious effort to increase the Fold with converts, a re-calling and re-shepherding of those that have fled; in other words: nothing is being done and everything needs doing.

Or else, everything has been done: your predecessors were men of zeal who established Christian institutions and transmitted them to you in a condition of perfect life and vigour, leaving your catechism classes well organised, ample opportun­ities for preaching, sick people accustomed to seeing the priest at their bedside and with them at the hour of death, a confessional always ready to receive penitents, altar-rails crowded every day.

If this is happily your case, woe be unto you if you do not get down to real hard work, otherwise all the solicitude of your predecessors will gradually be robbed of all its fruits, everything will cool down, and eventually will die altogether. Can you think of anything that imposes more hard work than the cultivation of a fervent parish?

"In my case, I haven't a pastoral office of any kind; I just say Mass, and perhaps not every day."

I can only say that if you're not an old priest on the sick list or in retirement after many a long year and noble striving, you move me to tears; I seem to hear Christ say to you the words spoken by Isaias to Sobna, prefect of the Temple: What dost thou here? . . . the shame of the house of thy Lord! (Is. xxii, 16) You mean to tell me you are in constant idleness while there are still so many unbelievers to whom the Gospel has not yet been preached? so many penitents without priests to hear them? so many dying without the last Sacraments? so many parishes without catechetical instruction?

If the Lord's vineyard is nearly choked with thistles and thorns, it is not for scarcity of workers, but because there are hundreds like you whose wretched
lives God will condense, at the last Day, in that bitter remonstration of the owner of the vineyard:

Why stand you here all the day idle? (Matt. xx, 6)

II. "My case is different. My lot, for my sins, is work on a very stony patch of the Lord's vineyard, not a decent cluster ever grows there: souls so obdurate, so estranged from God, that no human strength, and I was going to say, divine Power as well, will bring them to their duties. A reprobate lot of straying sheep on whom the shepherd's callings are lost, as in a wilderness, however zealous the shepherd."

That is a possibility; but do you think the nations evangelised by St. Paul were any better disposed to receive the Gospel? And coming nearer to our own age, do you think those savage and most degraded American tribes in the sixteenth century were a more promising field? And yet, in little more than a century, there were priests who converted them in their millions.

But let us suppose that all your best efforts crash against the stone wall of indifference, that after years and years of labour the field remains as sterile as ever; discouraging and depressing it certainly is, but don't forget that St. James, for example, the Apostle of Spain, was in the same plight, and yet the time came when the seed brought fonh fruits of benediction so plentiful that even today the "Son of thunder" from his high place in heaven rejoices to see his field as one of the most beautiful and richest fields in the Church of God. But, whatever there may be in store for you, console yourself in your distress by thinking that God will reward you not for the number of souls converted but for the efforts you have made by His grace with the sole purpose of pleasing and serving Him.

III. "But I'm a sick man, I can't take up a lot of work; I've enough to do looking after my wretched health."

Yes, a poor specimen you are, indeed, if you have to devote your pitiful existence to the sole task of spinning it out a little longer, living just for the sake of living, with no wider prospects and no ulterior purpose; a lamp that feeds on its own light and sheds light on nobody. But, come to think of it, is your illness so severe that you can't do a stroke of work? Surely you can pray for souls and offer to God your aches and pains for their benefit; by your example you can stimulate those around you to do good.

But this sort of excuse is not usually heard in cases of totally disabling sickness. Examine yourself impartially, and see whether there isn't an element of exaggeration, egoism, inborn indolence, self-deception and squeamish­ness in your complaint: there is frequently so much of this in the ailments of the clergy!

To dig, to do hard manual labour, no, perhaps your health isn't strong enough for that, and your vocation doesn't require it; but look at all those farm and factory workers who in spite of severe bouts of sickness keep on with their jobs, until their health and very life break down in the process. . . .

A glance at Church history in every age, including our own, will give you the shock you need: the priests who carried out the most strenuous achievements were
usually men of indifferent health, and sometimes very sick men: St. Paul, St. Basil, St. Vincent de Paul, the Cure d' Ars, Cardinal Newman, Father Faber, etc. Far less bitter your life would be if, instead of keeping your mental and physical energies pent up for twenty-four hours a day within the narrow preoccupation of your aches and pains and their hypothetical remedy, you opened the flood-gates and launched out to do what good you can for your fellow men.

IV. "I can't say I work terribly hard, but my remunera­tion is a mere pittance."

That may be quite true. The casual labourer, the road-mender, the porter, any unskilled mechanic, is often better paid than the priest, who, with his pittance, is nevertheless looked upon as rolling in money. His sup­posed wealth is sometimes a charge against him; he is represented as the prototype of spivs (slackers) and drones - one of the hardest insults we priests have to bear. If this is your case; if injuries and meanness of this kind come your way and you have to live almost continually a beggarly existence; I ask you to lift your eyes to God, and in your desolation remember the blessing announced to us by the Prince of the Apostles:

"If, after all, you should have to suffer in the cause of right, yours is a blessed lot. . . .

"It may be God's will that we should suffer for doing right; better that, than for doing wrong." (1 Peter iii, 14 and 17)

Besides, the work of a priest is not a commodity that can be priced, like the work of a road-mender; all the millions in the world cannot purchase a single act of supernatural zeal. So never tolerate the question: "How much do I owe you?" You have a right to a decent maintenance; it's only just that "he who serves at the altar should live by the altar".

But you are not like the doctor or any other professional man, your priestly work does not come under the category of "do ut des", it must remain for ever intact and unremunerated, here on earth. Only God can reward you in terms of strict justice. Are you going to debase the value of your priestly ministry to the level of any chattel at an auction sale?

Rich or poor, stipends large or small, I shall keep on toiling for Thee, O God, with the eternal reward ever in my sight. I would not have Thee, at the end of my working day, utter those words: "Believe me, you have received your reward already."

V. "If I attempt anything out of the ordinary, my fellow priests will bring me to heel, they'll spy on me like a dangerous criminal, they'll give a twist to my best inten­tions, they'll point a finger of scorn at me and make me a laughing-stock."

Sadly enough, such may be the case. . . oh, there are so many cases! . . . Don't do a thing; neglect your most sacred and obvious duties; don't preach or teach catechism; leave your sick to die like dogs; let your whole life glide softly away in peevish inactivity; allow your vineyard to clutter up with weeds and thistles and even become infested with poisonous reptiles. . . . Worse still, surrender to vice, let your conduct be a by-word in the neighbourhood and the ignominy of priestly circles. . . you may yet be allowed to live in peace. And if eccle­siastical justice is bent on providing a remedy for your misdeeds, its hands will be tied, there will be no wit­nesses to inform against you; your fellow priests, although among themselves and in the privacy of their own little gatherings they may lament your straying, when called upon to give evidence to your ecclesiastical Superiors about you, they will stand up for you and almost canonise you. . . . There has been more than one case of this!

On the other hand, if you make up your mind to be really zealous, to spend talent and energy on the work of God, to attain distinction in preaching and in constant vigilance for the salvation of souls; and should God show His Good Pleasure by showering His blessing upon your watchful efforts, making the fear of God and Christian works flourish all round you through your zeal. . . ah, get ready! they'll fix a scrutinising pair of eyes on you; you'll be the target of scorching criticism; you'll be accounted a hypocrite and a pest; they may even try to find chapter and verse in the Code for your indictment, and then, "in a spirit of humility and charity", they will denounce you to the Prelate.

Grossly exaggerated as this may appear, it has hap­pened; the saintly Cure d'Ars is a case in point; and there have been others, if not so resonant, no less unfortunate.

This is all very heart-rending, but, far from forcing you to throw in the towel, it should goad and spur you to greater things still. You have the hallmark, the identity seal, that God imprints on the works most pleasing to Him. Rejoice, your works are the works of God; they are indelibly marked with the divine approval.

Blessed are you when they shall revile and persecute you and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven; for so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. (Matt. v,11-12)

Resolutions
1. There is a type of work which no priest can ever afford to omit: study, books. Without study, without books, I shall not be long in falling back to my native uncouthness. The intellect is not a fountain-head of ideas, it is a reservoir; and if these ideas are not renewed frequendy, they will leak through the cracks and crevices of the forgetful mind; and thus, I shall come to be an empty barrel: words without ideas, phrases bereft of judgement and discrimination, formulas stripped of affections, platitudes stale and stodgy.

The priest without his books will never rise to great heights; but he can, due to his aversion to study, sink to the depths; more than one such priest has ended up a poor dolt or thrown up everything to become an industrialist-on-the-­make or a peddler of common wares.

2. I shall devote an hour or so each day to the following studies: Holy Scripture, devoutly read and meditated upon, especially the New Testament; Moral and Dogmatic theology, in its catechetical form rather than its Scholastic presentation, which seeks an under­standing, and as far as possible a clear and definite grasp, of the truths of our holy Faith and of the command­ments of God and the Church in their vital and practical import, even though I omit a host of controversies among theologians, of little practical benefit either to myself or to my people of the parish.

3. I shall not disdain to revise Christian philosophy, Theology's pedestal, nor the study of the Humanities, so necessary to the priest who needs to know how to use the spoken and written word efficiently. The Humanities most needed by the priest are, according to Leo XIII, the Greek and Latin classics and the good writers in the priest's native tongue.

4. I shall try to keep on a level with those people who are in the front ranks of general culture; because if I lag behind in these matters I shall be out of touch with good society and shall be dismissed as an ignorant bumpkin.
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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!