And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 1 Thessalonians 5:14
“The cradle of all temptations and all useless and unhealthy thoughts is idleness. Idleness contains all sin. The idle are never servants of God. Those who do not do what they must with fidelity and fervor, those who do not do it with the intention of serving God, are idle when they come to act.
And it is ridiculous to look for idle works to escape idleness. An idle work is one that has no usefulness or is done with no intention of becoming useful: useful in the first place to one’s own conscience, enriching the heart’s treasure.
Do you want to know what you should busy yourself with? Over and above daily prayer you need to work — in such a way, though, as to preserve, or rather, to increase your spiritual happiness.
Certainly, some kinds of heavy work distract the soul and weary it. All the more reason for you to have a sense of your own weakness and to have humility of heart.”
Bernard of Clairvaux in Letters to the Brethren 21 (PL 184, 321) in Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World, ed. by Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1994) 133-134.
Prayer and practice helps us nurture our fidelity and fervor. Why warn the idle? God does not need us to do works. We need to do them to increase our spiritual happiness. I pray your Lent is off to a strong start.
Today I flew to Amman, Jordan, with Ereny Monir and Andrew Mahfouz to lead a governance training on Saturday and then to have a prayer and fasting retreat by the Dead Sea. I’m excited for this.
Our hosts treated us to some tourism seeing ancient ruins in Amman (pictured above), a Roman Amphitheater, and a trip to Mt. Nebo, from which Moses looked into the Promise Land.
The ruins made me think. If you visit the “Who are we?” page of the GTP website, you see that we are builders of trust. Pray with us that tomorrow’s seminar accomplishes this objective for the 40+ planning to attend.