Chapter II: Advantages of a Life of Labor

LIFE of labor has always been considered, by spiritual persons, most favorable to the soul. To have nothing which we are obliged to do may seem very fine to our worldliness and love of ease, but it is most dangerous. You know the old saying: “The devil finds work enough for idle hands to do.” It is most true. Idleness opens the door for the worst temptations.

Suppose you had pretty much all your time to do what you pleased with, how likely it is that a great part of it would be misused! Habits of idleness would be formed, your time would hang heavy on your hands, and you would not know what to do. You would seek for amusement; you would soon be altogether taken up with it, and your whole life would become one given up to the world and to wickedness. You would, indeed, stand a great chance of going straight down to perdition.

The labor of the hands is, then, a source of blessing. It furnishes a great help to spending life in innocence. It fills up our time with honest industry, while it leaves the soul free to raise itself from time to time to God. The labor of the hands is not like that of the head. Head-work fills the mind, and takes up its attention, but hand-work leaves the mind in a great measure free.

St. Anthony was taught this by an angel from heaven. One day when he felt tired of uninterrupted prayer, and unable to continue it, he grieved over it before the Lord, and begged to be instructed how to get over this trouble, which was a hindrance to his salvation. After his prayer he went out of his cell, and saw a person, the exact image of himself, seated at work making mats out of palm-leaves, and from time to time rising up to pray. The saint perceived it was an angel who took this form and acted in this manner to make him understand how, by going from work to prayer, and from prayer to work, he could cheerfully and surely work out his salvation.

The old hermits of the desert all understood this. They did not dare to be idle, but made baskets, cultivated the ground, spent all their time in labor or prayer, and so worked out their salvation in the utmost security.

We cannot have the life of these old hermits of the desert over again nowadays, but, outside the walls of the convent, whose life is most like theirs? That of the good girl who earns her own living at some honest employment. She it is who enjoys, more than any others that I know of, the advantages which these old saints coveted so much — who can spend her days in work and prayer, and thus keep off the evil one, and work out her salvation with comparative ease.

Do not, then, complain of labor, but rejoice and thank God that He has given you not a life of idleness, but of honest and continual labor. It is a very great favor of His love, as you will see when this body of the flesh falls away, and you stand on the other side of eternity.