Of the Great Benefit and Gain to Be Found in Doing One’s Actions in the Manner Aforesaid

ACTIONS done in the manner aforesaid are called full actions, and they who live in this manner, according to St. Jerome and St. Gregory, are said in Holy Writ to live full days and to be full of days (Job xlii. 16: Psalm Ixxii. 10) ; and that, though they have lived but a short time and died young, according to the saying of the Wise Man: Being made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled many years (Wisdom iv. 13). How is it possible in a short time to live a long time and fulfil many years? Do you know how? By doing full works and living full days. Full days shall be found in them (Psalm Ixxii. 10). This second passage explains the first. From morning till night and from night till morning live as a good religious and servant of God; the servant of God lives a full day of twenty-four hours, since he occupies it all in doing the will of God. His very meals, recreation, and sleep are not empty and useless hours for him, since he directs and refers them all to the greater honor and glory of God and does them because it is the will of God that he should do them. He does not eat for appetite like beasts, nor seek his satisfaction and amusement in these things; rather he would be glad to do without any of them if such were the Lord’s good pleasure. O Lord, that we could go without eating, without sleep, and without these recreations and amusements! O Lord, that one could be always loving Thee and have no need to meet and supply these miseries of the body! Deliver me from my necessities (Psalm xxiv. 17) that I may be eternally taken up with Thee. I see that such is not the state and condition of this life; but the just man bears that with patience, though not without pain, saying to himself with Job and David: I sigh before I eat (Job iii. 24) ; I mingled my drink with my tears (Psalm ci. 10) ; Every night I will water my couch with my tears (Psalm vi. 7). So should we do, shedding tears when we go to take our rest, saying: ‘Ah, Lord, what a misery that I have to lie here such a long time without remembering Thee! Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged! (Psalm cxix. 5). When wilt Thou take me, O Lord, this poor exile? Woe is me; how long is this captivity to last? Lead my soul out of prison (Psalm cxli. 8). When wilt Thou draw me, Lord, out of the prison of this body, that I may be able to give myself entirely to Thee? Oh, when shall that be? Oh, how long is that hour in coming!” These are full works and full days. In this manner, the just lives long in a short time, and a few days of his life make many years of merits. But he who has not done good work, nor well employed the days of his life, though he has lived a long time and attained many years, is said to die void of days because he has spent his days and his years in vain, and he may say that his years are few and evil (Gen. xlvii. 9).

On those words of Isaias that King Ezechias spoke on recovering from his sickness: I said, In the midst of my days I will go down to the gates of the grave (Isaias xxxviii. 10), St. Jerome observes that just and holy men fulfil their days, as did Abraham, of whom Holy Writ says that he died full of days and in a good old age (Gen. xxv. 8) ; but the wicked always die in the midst of their days, and even do not get so far, according to the saying of the prophet: Men of blood and contrivers of evil shall not live out half their days (Psalm liv. 24), since they have let their years pass by to no purpose. So Holy Writ calls the sinner of a hundred years a child of a hundred years, and says that such a one shall be accursed. The child of a hundred years shall perish, and the sinner of a hundred years shall be accursed (Isaias lxv. 20), because he has not lived like a man, but like a child. Hence it is that in the case of the wicked, death always takes them unseasonably, without their being ripe or ready for it. So, when it comes, they ery: “Oh, that I could have at least another year of life to do penance!” In the same way it happens to tepid and slack religious that, though they have been many years wearing the habit, they can count but few days in religion. We read in the Chronicles of St. Francis that one of these holy religious was asked how long he had been a friar and he answered: “Not for one minute.” The other did not understand and was much surprised at the answer; ‘whereupon the servant of God said to him: “TI know it is for seventy-five years that I have worn the habit of a Friar Minor; but for how much of that time I have been a friar with my works, I do not know.” Please God that none of us may be able to say with truth what this holy man said out of humility. The matter does not lie in many years of religion nor in a long life, but in a good life. ‘Many count the years of their conversion, but often there is little fruit of amendment,” says Thomas a Kempis. A few days of a good life are worth more than many years of a tepid and slack one. Before God there are not counted the years of life, but the years of a good life; nor the years of religion, but the years in which one has lived as a good religious. In the Book of Kings it is said: A son of one year old was Saul when he began to reign; and he reigned two years over Israel (I Kings xiii. 1). Yet it is certain that he was king for forty years, as St. Paul says: God gave them for king Saul, son of Cis, for forty years (Acts xiii. 21). Why, then, is it said that he reigned only two years? Because in the annals and chronicles of God they count only the years of good life; and it is said that he reigned for two years, because it was only for that time that he reigned as a good king. And in the Gospel (Matt. xx. 8) those who had come last to labor in the vineyard, though they had labored only one hour, were preferred to those who had come in the morning, because in that hour they had earned as much as or more than the others all the day long. Do you reckon up at this rate how long you have lived in religion.

All this is said very well by St. Eusebius Emesenus: “We are wont to reckon up our years, and the periods of time that we have now lived; be not deceived, whoever you are, by the number of days that you have spent here since you bodily left the world; reckon that you have lived that day only on which you denied your own will, resisted your passions and appetites, kept your rules, and did your meditation and your spiritual duties well.” Make up years of these days, if you can, and measure thereby the time that you have been a religious; and fear lest that be said of you which is said in the Apocalypse of the Bishop of the Church of Sardis: I know thy works, that thou hast the name of being alive, and thou art dead: wake up, for I find not thy works full before my God (Apoc. iii. 1-2). I know your works, says God; though men know them not, I know them well. You have the name of being alive, and you are dead; you have the name of Christian, and not the works of a Christian; the name of religious, and not the works of a religious; your works agree not with the name you bear, since your works are not full, but vain and empty. They are not full of God, but void of God and full of yourself. All that you seek is yourself in them, your own conveniences, your own honor and esteem. Let us, then, watch over ourselves; let us strive to make our actions full and our days full, that in a short time we may live long and be very deserving before God.