CHAPTER X.
THE VALUE OF A PRIEST'S TIME.
Next to grace time is the most precious gift of God. Yet how much of both we waste. We say that time does many things. It teaches us many lessons, weans us from many follies, strengthens us in good resolves, and heals many wounds. And yet it does none of these things. Time does nothing. But time is the condition of all these things which God does in time. Time is full of eternity. As we use it so we shall be. Every day has its opportunities, every hour its offer of grace. The Council of Sens applies the words, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock," to the continuous action of the Holy Ghost upon the heart. This is true of every living soul. The faithful have all through life and all the day long this constant invitation and aid to lay up for themselves a greater reward in eternity. As a man soweth so shall he also reap, both in quantity and in kind. All men have their seed-time and their harvest in time and for eternity. If we lose the seed-time we lose the harvest. Another seed-time and another harvest may be granted to us. Bat it is another. That which is lost is lost for ever.
Now if time be so precious to all, is it not most precious above all to a priest? And happy is he who can give account of his time. Some men seem to have no knowledge of its value. Some never think of it. Some are so inert that it runs away before they stir to use it. Some are so indolent that they consciously waste it. Some are so irregular and unpunctual that time wastes itself. They are always in a hurry, always late, never ready, never prepared.
There are two questions in Holy Writ which a priest will do well to remember wheresoever he goes. The one is the question of God to Elias when on Mount Horeb he was mourning without moving: Quid hic agis, Elia?—"What dost thou here, Elias?" This question would keep us away altogethe from many places, and would hasten our leaving many more. The other question is our Lord's: "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" This we may well bear in mind when kind and hospitable friends invite us to be with them, or when our own infirmity makes us turn to recreation or to human sympathy, or even to work lying out of the furrow in which we are, each one, set to guide the plough. Who can measure the value of a priest's time? If the time of all men is full of eternity, the time of a priest is full not of his own eternity only, hut of the eternity of multitudes both known and unknown to him. We will try, then, to measure its value.
1. The first measure of the value of our time is the Holy Mass. The first-fruits of a priest's time belong to God, and they are offered every morning in the Holy Mass. Half an hour of preparation and half an hour of thanksgiving ought never to be given up to any other use or purpose, for they are not ours to give away. This is the first measure of the value of our time. In it we speak with God, commune with our Divine Master, and give thanks to the everblessed Trinity. What should be the fervent use of the hours of a day that is so begun? The fragrance and the fervour of it ought to be upon us all day long, pervading it with a sense of our relation to our Master in heaven, and teaching us to be as avaricious of time, as impatient of its loss, and as watchful in guarding it from being stolen from us as the world is of its money. God so values time that He gives it to us only day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. And He never gives us a moment without taking the last away. We have never two hours or two moments at once. Every moment in the day we may, if we will, renew the intention with which we said Mass in the morning. We may revive our prayers and thanksgivings at least by an aspiration. Our whole day would then be virtually pervaded by our Mass and Communion.
2. A second measure of value is the knowledge a priest may lay up by a punctual use of his time.
Labia sacerdotis custodient scientiam. But how shall the lips of the priest keep the science of God and of souls unless he be a man of sacred study? The theology of our early days is soon obscured by the failure of memory, and by the dust of a busy life. And therefore how precious is every moment a priest can redeem from active work to return to his old books, or to go further and deeper into his earlier studies. It is a good thing to have certain books always open, to be read at any moment that can be seized. There ought to be even in the busiest life certain horæ subsecivæ. We call them vaguely leisure hours. They are the hours that are cut out, as it were, by stealth from the main duties and works of the day. No better test than this can be found to see whether a priest knows the value of his time. Some men do everything as if they did nothing; and some men do nothing as if they did everything. A priest who values his time seldom fails to find enough for everything. A punctual mind can so order the hours of the day as to take out of them, and to use the intervals between successive works and duties. Some books of close and continuous matter need an hour of quiet attention; some of a less precise kind may be read in times caught flying; and some may be taken up at any moment. A hard student once advised a friend to have "five-minute books." And many a book could be read through in a year by five minutes a day. All that is needed is the habit of attention, and a firm will not to leave what we read till we understand it, be it only a page, or no more than a sentence. Perhaps some one will say that this is taxing a priest's time too severely. But if we will ask ourselves how much time in the day is given to books that are not necessary, to newspapers, to prolonged conversation, to visits which are not either pastoral or beneficial, to lingering, and doubting what to read and what to do—if we were to cast up all this, the most fervent would find that much time has been stolen from him, much has been wasted, not a little misapplied.
3. A third measure of the value of our time is what we might do in it, if spent in the confessional. There is no surer sign of a fervent priest than the love of the confessional. It is the first duty that a lax priest avoids and evades. To sit for long hours day by day and night by night, without impatience and without loss of temper, is a sure sign of the love of souls. We need not attempt to measure the comparative value of preaching and of hearing confessions. They are incommensurable. Each has its own proper character. But many have a great zeal and promptness to preach who are slow and tardy to sit in the confessional. There is no manifestation of self, no natural excitement, no subtil allurements of a personal kind in sitting for long hours listening to the sins, and sorrows, and often the inconsiderate talk of multitudes, for the most part unknown. It is like fishing with a single line. Long hours of waiting are rewarded by one solitary gain. But it is, in the highest sense of the word, the pastor's work—that is, the care of souls. And it demands in a high degree an abnegation of self, a repression of personal infirmities of temper, and a generous love of souls, especially of the poor.
But what use of time can be compared to this care and guidance of souls?[1] Knowing that we have the power of binding and loosing, and that in the confessional souls that are perishing are brought to penance, and the penitent are led onward to perfection; that the innocent are guarded in their union with God, and that God is glorified both in them that are saved and in them that perish, it would seem to be the first instinct of a priest to give to the confessional as many days and as many hours as he can. Instead of finding it a weariness, it would be his consolation. Instead of shortening the hours or lessening the number of his days for confession in the church, he would extend them if possible, and encourage his brethren in the cure of souls to do likewise.
But it is not only in church that the patience and charity of a confessor are tested. All that has been said applies especially to the care of the sick, and to the willingness we ought to have to give time to instruct, to console, and to encourage them, above all when death is near. The sick and the dying can hardly think for themselves. The burden of a suffering or dying body dulls and deadens the mind. It is in that time of sorrow and fear that the voice of a true pastor cheers and supports the helpless. His words and whispers of faith and hope, and contrition and confidence, with the promises of God, and the holy names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, fill the mind that can no longer think for itself with light, and peace, and consolation. It is not enough to administer mechanically the last Sacraments. There are needed also the last consolations and the last compassion of the Good Shepherd, who knows His sheep and is known by them as their help and solace in the last passage to eternity.
4. Another measure of the value of our time is what may be done in it by prayer. When S. Paul said "Pray without ceasing,"[2] he did not use rhetorical exaggeration. He meant that we may be always and everywhere speaking with God, by our aspirations, desires, and will. They who live in union with God, conscious of His presence, and referring all their life to Him, not only pray when they speak with God, but when they work for Him. Laborare est orare. A pastor's whole life may be a life of communion with Him. The value of time spent in prayer may be measured in two ways: first, in the answers it receives; and next, in its reaction upon ourselves. As to the answers, who can say what they lose who pray little, and what they gain who habitually speak with God? The work of priests and pastors is so expressly supernatural that we look for supernatural results, and we ask them as such from God. The conversion of sinners and the salvation of souls virtually contain all the works of our spiritual ministry, and they are so distinctly divine in their origin and supernatural in their instruments that we ask them as gifts, not as results of our own agency. There can he little doubt that the fertility of the lives of some pastors and the barrenness of others depend upon, and are measured by, their prayers. They who pray most will receive most; they who pray little will receive less. But of all this I need not speak. There is nothing we may not ask, either absolutely or conditionally; and there is nothing good that He will not give us: for to pour out His gifts upon us is His bliss. But it is the reaction of prayer upon ourselves that gives us a prompt and certain measure. We are what we are before God, and nothing else, neither better nor worse. And we are what our communion with God makes us. Our faces shine, or are dim or darkened, as we are nearer or farther from God in prayer. A calm, recollected, joyous, hopeful mind is the reward of prayer. A restless, wandering, sad, and timid mind is the consequence of not praying as we ought. In truth, prayer measures our state; and what we are our work will be. A priest who prays much will do in an hour what a priest who prays less will hardly do in many days. The words of a priest always united with God have a life, a warmth, an energy, and a persuasion which no natural gifts can give. We do little because we pray little; and because we pray little we are what we are. If the time we lose, if the hours that are stolen from us, were spent in speaking with God instead of with the world, all we do would be higher in spirit, deeper in results, and more lasting in its effect.
5. A last measure of the value of a priest's time is in the end for which he exists.
He is to be a witness for his Divine Master in teaching and testifying to the truth; but chiefly by the visible example of his life, and by the conscious and unconscious influence of his mind. Woe to him if he be found a false witness in the least of the commandments of God, or in the influence of his mind and life. And great is the peril and unfaithfulness if he be an ambiguous, or equivocal, or obscure witness. He would be like a warning by the wayside which no man can read. And for those who perish by his fault he will be held to answer.
He is also to be a light in the world. But if his mind and life show only a dim or unsteady light, who will trust his guidance?
He is also to be the salt that purifies the mind, and the life and the society of other men. But if he be not pure in deed, word, or thought, contact with him will rather harm than help those that are about him. His influence is never negative. He is always giving or taking away, gaining or losing for himself and for others.
How great is the danger of a priest living and labouring in the world all men can see. His field of work is the world, in the midst of the wheat and the tares. The evil-minded are often less dangerous, for they are open enemies: but the good, who are often unwise, or light, or lukewarm, throw him off his guard by their goodness, and lower him before he is aware. They waste his time by their visits: they devour it by their invitations: they entangle him by their talk: they encompass him by what is called society—that is, by people of all kinds, and by recreations which, though without sin, are out of all proportion and out of all harmony with the gravity of the priesthood. Intimacies easily and unconsciously at first spring up; fascinations and personal attractions disturb the calm of his mind: and the equilibrium of his spiritual life is lost. The conversation and the presence of some one becomes so alluring as to be a part of his thoughts, and a daily need. A false relation is insensibly formed, free perhaps from all sin, but fall of an unbalanced attachment, which draws him from our Divine Master, the priest's only Friend, to whom his whole heart was given. What nets for his feet lie in his path, what pits are open in his way. How insensibly he goes onward, not measuring the distance, till a gulf opens behind him, and his past is almost out of sight. All this is also a measure of time: not that time has done it. But he has done it in time, and in the time he has wasted and given away, or the time that has been stolen from him.
Against this the truest and surest remedy is a wise and resolute use of our days and hours. No man ought to be without a twofold Horarium. The first part is for his day: fixing the hour of rising and of going to rest, of Mass and office, of study and writing, of the work of souls in the confessional, and in the homes of the sick and of the poor. And such a Horarium ought to fix the measure and quantity of time allotted to each of these divisions of the day. There is here no head left for the world or for society, for a priest's life is out of the world; his home and his Divine Friend are in the sanctuary; the Saints, and the teachers who speak to him through his books, are his society. When the sun is down, the evening is the most precious part of a priest's day. It is the only time he can call his own. Happy the priest who knows its value, and unwise the priest who wastes it in the world.
The other part of the Horarium is for a calculation of the way in which our life speeds away. Most men give one-third of every day to sleep, with its circumstances of rising and lying down: about three hours are due to Mass and office: who can say how much to private prayers and spiritual reading, to study, to the confessional, to the care of souls? and of all this who can fix the measure? To the world and to society some priests give little; many give too much. If, then, we live to seventy years, we shall have spent more than three-and-twenty years in sleep: about seven years in Mass and offices—that makes up about thirty out of seventy years. How are the other forty years bestowed? It would be well for us if in every place we heard the words, Quid hic agis, Elia?[3] and in every hour of our day, "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?"
- ↑ "For indeed this seems to me to be the art of arts and the science of sciences, to direct men, the most manifold and most variable of animals."—S. Greg. Naz. Orat. ii. xvii. tom. i. p. 21.
- ↑ 1 Thess. v. 17.
- ↑ 3 Kings xix. 9, 13.