Chapter LXI: On Spying and Listening

IT is not merely a thing of the utmost importance to be faithful in respect to the property of your employers, but also in regard to their character and reputation. In order to do this, in the first place, you must be on your guard against idle curiosity and keep your mind from desiring to know their secret affairs, as well as your eyes and ears from spying them out or listening to them.

It is not merely improper and unbecoming to do so, but it is a sin. Their private and family affairs are their own. They expect no one to meddle with them. It is the same thing with regard to conversation with their friends and acquaintances, the letters they write, and so on. They would feel offended if they knew that you were curious enough even to pay attention to such things; and much more, if they knew you had taken any means to spy them out. It stands to reason, then, that it is wrong to do so; and I know it is against the voice of your conscience, which warns you that you have no business with such things.

Scripture tells us the same thing in the strongest language. St. Paul says: “For we have heard that there are some among you who walk disorderly, working not at all, but curiously meddling. Now we charge them that are such, and beseech them by the Lord Jesus Christ, that working with silence they would eat their own bread” (2 Thess. iii. 11, 12).

It is no wonder the holy Apostle begs and entreats, for where there is this vain itching spirit of prying into other people’s business there can be little piety. When one is taken up with affairs of this world which are none of his business, what time or heart can he have for the great affair of his salvation? When his head is full of the most useless and hurtful trash of other people’s, what room is there for the quiet and peaceable spirit of God? The “eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth,” says the Holy Scripture (Prov. xvii. 24).

This vain, idle spirit of curiosity leads to numerous sins. It leads to idle gossip; it leads to detraction; it leads to quarrels and dissension; it leads straight to the ruin of the soul, as it led our first mother, Eve, as we all know, to eat the forbidden fruit. Do not follow, then, your first mother Eve’s example, but put away all this itching curiosity.

When you go upstairs to sweep lay no curious eyes on anything which seems to contain a secret. Pry into no drawers or closets that are kept closed. Take no inventories of articles which you have no concern with. When letters are lying about do not read them. If they are open before you, rather tear out your eyes than do the mean, low-lived trick of reading them.

Do not creep up, like a guilty thief, to listen behind doors when conversation is going on. And, more than this, if you are where you can overhear anything private, go away or make some noise which will give warning of your presence, so that such conversation may be conducted more privately.

Do as you would do if you were where you were likely to overhear a secret of the sacred tribunal of Confession. Stop your ears to all such things; pay no attention to them when they are overheard. Have no time for such things, as the Apostle admonishes: “But we entreat you, brethren, that you abound more and that you use your endeavors to be quiet and to mind your own business, and work with your hands as we have commanded you, and that you want nothing of any man’s” (1 Thess. iv. 10, 11).

So will your time and all your mind be clear and free to abound more and more in the science and knowledge of Jesus Christ, who is a well of knowledge and of love and goodness sufficient to occupy all your thoughts and satisfy all your desires. Ah! this is the curiosity, this is the study which has no limit, which has nothing but what is lovely and pure and good in it.