Value of time
“A little while, and now you shall not see me.”—John 16:16
There is nothing shorter than time, yet nothing more precious. Nothing is shorter than time, for the past is no more, the future is uncertain, and the present is but a moment. This is what Jesus Christ meant when he said: “A little while, and now you shall not see me,” speaking of his approaching death. And we may say the same of our own life, which, as St. James writes, is but a vapor that is soon scattered and gone. “For what is your life? It is a vapor which appeareth for a little while” (Jas. 4:14).
But the time of this life, though short, is as precious as it is brief; for in every moment, if we spend it well, we can lay up treasures of merit for heaven; while if we spend it badly, in each moment we may commit sin and earn hell. Today I mean to show you how precious is every moment of time that God gives us—given not that we should lose it, much less that we should sin and be lost, but that we should do good works and save our souls.
1. God speaks through Isaiah: “In an acceptable time I have heard thee, and in the day of salvation I have helped thee” (Isa. 49:8). St. Paul explains this text and tells us that the acceptable time is the time in which God has resolved to do us good. He then adds: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). With these words the Apostle exhorts us not to let the present time pass to no purpose—the time he calls the day of salvation—because once this day has passed, perhaps there will be no more salvation for us.
The Apostle goes on to warn us that this time is short: “The time is short; it remaineth that they that weep be as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that use this world, as if they used it not” (1 Cor. 7:29–31). Since, then, the time we have to remain on this earth is short, the Apostle tells those who weep that they ought not to weep, because their sufferings will soon pass away; and those who rejoice not to fix their hearts on their enjoyments, because these will soon come to an end. Hence he concludes that we should use this world not to enjoy its passing goods, but to merit eternal life.
2. The Holy Spirit says: “Son, observe the time” (Ecclus. 4:23). Son, learn to preserve time, the most precious thing and the greatest gift that God can give you. St. Bernardine of Siena teaches that a moment of time is worth as much as God himself, because in time well spent the possession of God is purchased. For, says the saint, in every moment a man may obtain the pardon of his sins, the grace of God, and the glory of paradise. Modico tempore potest homo lucrari gratiam et gloriam—“In a little time a man can obtain grace and glory.” And so St. Bonaventure wrote: “No loss is graver than the loss of time.”
3. But in another place St. Bernardine weeps to see that, though there is nothing more precious than time, in the esteem of men there is nothing more worthless. Nil pretiosius tempore, nil vilius reputatur—“Nothing is more precious than time, nothing is considered more worthless.” You will see one man spend four or five hours at play. Ask him, “Brother, why do you waste so many hours?” He answers: “To amuse myself.” You will see another stand half the day in the street, or leaning out of a window. Ask him what he is doing here, and he replies that he is passing the time.
And why, asks the same saint, do you waste this time? Even if it were only a single hour, why lose this hour, which the mercy of God grants you to weep for your sins and to acquire his grace? Donec hora pertranseat, quam tibi ad agendam poenitentiam, ad acquirendam gratiam, miseratio conditoris indulserit—“Until the hour passes which the mercy of the Creator has granted you for doing penance and acquiring grace.”
4. O time, despised by men while they live, how greatly will you be desired at the hour of death, and still more in the other world! Time is a blessing found only in this life; it is not found in the next, neither in hell nor in heaven. In hell, this is the cry of the damned: “Oh, that an hour were given to us!” They would pay any price for an hour, for a single minute, in which they might repair their eternal ruin; but this hour, this minute, they shall never have. In heaven there is no weeping; but were the saints able to weep, this alone would be their lament: that they lost in this life the time in which they could have gained greater glory, and that this time can never be theirs again.
A deceased Benedictine nun appeared in glory to a certain person and told her that she was in heaven and perfectly happy; but that, if she could desire anything at all, it would be to return to life and to suffer, in order to merit greater glory. And she said that, to gain the glory which answers to the merit of a single Ave Maria, she would gladly endure again, until the day of judgment, the long and painful sickness she had suffered at her death. For this reason St. Francis Borgia took care to employ for God every moment of time he had. When others were speaking of useless things, he conversed with God by holy affections; and he became so absorbed that, when afterward asked his opinion of what had been said, he did not know how to answer. He was corrected for this, but he replied: I would rather be thought dull of wit than waste my time on empty things.
5. Some of you will say: But what harm am I doing? What harm? Is it not harm to waste your time in games, in idle talk, and in useless occupations that profit the soul nothing? Did God give you this time that you should lose it? “Let not,” says the Holy Spirit, “the part of a good gift overpass thee” (Ecclus. 14:14). The laborers of whom St. Matthew speaks did no evil; they only wasted time, standing idle in the marketplace. Yet for this they were rebuked by the father of the family: “Why stand you here all the day idle?” (Matt. 20:6).
On the day of judgment Jesus Christ will demand an account not only of every month and every day that has been lost, but even of every idle word: “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it on the day of judgment” (Matt. 12:36). And so he will likewise demand an account of all the time that has been wasted. According to St. Bernard, all time not spent for God is lost time. Omne tempus quo de Deo non cogitasti, cogita te perdisse—“All the time in which you have not thought of God, consider yourself to have lost” (Conference 1, ch. 7). Hence the Lord exhorts us: “Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly: for neither work nor reason… shall be in hell, whither thou art hastening” (Eccles. 9:10). What you can do today, do not put off till tomorrow; for tomorrow you may be dead, and may have passed into the other world, where you shall have no more time to do good, and where you shall only enjoy the reward you have earned, or suffer the punishment due to your sins. “Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 94:8). Today God calls you to confess your sins, to restore what you owe, to be reconciled with your enemy. Do it today; for tomorrow it may be that there is no more time, or that God calls you no longer. All our salvation depends on corresponding with the divine calls, and at the time that God calls us.
6. But some of you will perhaps say: I am young; later on I will give myself to God. But remember, my son, that Jesus Christ cursed the fig tree which he found without fruit, even though it was not yet the season for figs, as the gospel notes: “It was not the time for figs” (Mark 11:13). By this the Savior meant to show us that man at all times, even in youth, ought to bear the fruit of good works; otherwise he shall be cursed and shall bear no fruit for the time to come, as was said to that tree: “May no man hereafter eat any more fruit of thee forever” (Mark 11:14).
It is written in Ecclesiasticus: “Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day; for his wrath shall come on a sudden” (Ecclus. 5:8–9). If you find yourself in sin, do not delay to repent and confess, and do not put it off even till tomorrow; for if you do not obey the call of God, who today calls you to confession, it may be that death will overtake you today in sin, and tomorrow there will be no remedy for you. A great thing this! The devil counts the whole time of our life as little, and therefore he loses not a moment in tempting us day and night: “The devil is come down unto you having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time” (Rev. 12:12). The enemy, then, never loses time in seeking to make us perish; and shall we waste the time which God gives us to be saved?
7. You say: Later on I will give myself to God. But St. Bernard answers you: “Why, wretched man, do you presume on the future, as though the Father had placed time in your power?” Why do you presume to give yourself to God later, as if he had granted you the time to turn to him whenever you please? Job trembled, saying that he did not know whether another moment of life remained to him: “For I know not how long I shall continue, and whether after a while my Maker may take me away” (Job 32:22). And you say: I will not confess today; I will think about it tomorrow.
What? answers St. Augustine: Diem tenes, qui horam non tenes—“You who do not hold the hour, do you hold the day?” How can you promise yourself another day of life, when you do not know whether you shall have even another hour? Therefore, says St. Teresa: If you are not ready to die today, fear to die an unhappy death.
8. St. Bernardine weeps over the blindness of these careless souls, who let the days of their salvation pass by and never think that each day they lose will never return to them. Transeunt dies salutis et nemo recogitat sibi perire diem ut nunquam rediturum—“The days of salvation pass by, and no one considers that a day is perishing for him, never to return.” At the hour of death these wretched men will long for another year, another month, another day; but they shall not have it, and they shall hear it said to them: “Time shall be no more.”
What would each of them not then pay for another week, another day, at least another hour, to settle the accounts they must render to God! St. Lawrence Justinian says that to obtain a single hour of time a man would give all his goods, his honors, and his pleasures. Erogaret opes, honores, delicias, pro una horula—“He would spend his wealth, honors, and delights for one little hour.” But that hour shall not be granted him. Soon the attending priest will say to him: Depart, depart at once from this earth; there is no more time. “Go forth, Christian soul, from this world.”
9. What will it then profit the sinner to say: Oh, that I had made myself a saint! Oh, that I had spent my years in loving God!—when he finds that he has led a wholly misspent life? How great is the anguish of a traveler who realizes, when night has already fallen, that he has lost his way and that there is no more time to correct his mistake! Such will be the anguish at death of one who has lived many years in the world but has not spent them for God. “The night cometh when no man can work” (John 9:4). Therefore the Lord warns us all: “Walk whilst you have light, that the darkness overtake you not” (John 12:35). Walk in the way of salvation now, while you have the light, before the darkness of death surprises you, in which nothing more can be done; then nothing remains but to weep over the time you have lost.
10. “He hath called against me the time” (Lam. 1:15). At the hour of death, conscience will remind us of all the time we had to make ourselves saints, and which we spent in heaping up our debts before God; of all the calls and all the graces the Lord gave us that we might love him, and of which we would not avail ourselves; and then we shall see the way to do any good closed against us forever.
In the midst of those remorses and that tormenting darkness of death, the wretched dying man will say: O fool that I have been! O my wasted life! O lost years, in which I could have gained treasures of merit and could have made myself a saint if I had willed it, but I did not—and now there is no more time to do it! But, I say again, what use will these laments and these thoughts be, when the scene of this world is about to close, when the lamp is on the point of going out, and when the dying man stands at the threshold of that great moment on which eternity depends?
11. “Be you then also ready; for, at what hour you think not, the Son of Man will come” (Luke 12:40). The Lord says: “Be ready.” He does not tell us to prepare ourselves when death is upon us, but to be already prepared for whenever it comes; for when we least expect it, the Son of Man will come to demand of us the account of our life. And then, in the confusion of death, it will be most difficult to settle our accounts so well as not to be found guilty before the tribunal of Jesus Christ.
This death may perhaps be twenty or thirty years away; but it may also be very near, a year or a month from now. Suppose, then, that a man feared that the case on which his very life depended might shortly come to trial: he would certainly not wait for the day of the decision, but would do all he could, as soon as possible, to secure a good advocate and instruct those who were to plead his defense. And what do we do? We know for certain that one day the cause of our greatest concern must be tried—the cause not of our temporal but of our eternal life—and that this day may already be near; and yet we waste our time. And instead of settling our accounts, we go on increasing the crimes that deserve the sentence of eternal death.
12. If, then, we have until now had the misfortune to spend our time in offending God, let us strive to weep over it in the life that remains to us, as did King Ezechias, who said: “I will recount to thee all my years in the bitterness of my soul” (Isa. 38:15). The Lord gives us life for this very end: that we may now make amends for the time badly spent. “Whilst we have time, let us work good” (Gal. 6:10). Let us no longer provoke God to punish us with an unhappy death; and if in the years that are past we have been foolish, and have displeased him by acting against his will, let us listen to the Apostle, who exhorts us to be wise for the time to come, and to redeem the time we have lost.
“See, therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil… understanding what is the will of God” (Eph. 5:15–17). “The days are evil.” St. Anselm explains that the days of this present life are evil, that is, beset with a thousand temptations and dangers to our eternal salvation, so that the greatest care is needed if we are not to be lost in them. And what is meant by “redeeming the time”? St. Augustine explains: “What is it to redeem the time, but, when necessary, to accept some loss in temporal things in order to gain eternal goods?” We must live only to fulfill the divine will with all diligence; and if it be necessary, says St. Augustine, it is better to suffer some loss in temporal interests than to neglect our eternal ones.
Oh, how well St. Paul knew how to redeem the time he had lost in his life! St. Jerome writes that, though he was the last of the apostles, he was nonetheless the first in merits for all that he did after God called him: “Paul, the last in order, but the first in merits, because he labored more than all.” If for no other reason, let us consider that in every moment we can lay up greater gains of eternal goods. If you were granted as much land as you could walk round in a day, or as many gold coins as you could count in a day, tell me, would you waste time, or would you not rather hurry to walk over that ground and to count that money? And you can gain in every moment eternal treasures in the other life—and will you waste your time? What you can do today, do not say that you can do tomorrow; for this day will be lost to you and will not return; today you have it, and tomorrow perhaps you will not.
Points for Reflection
1. “What you can do today, do not put off till tomorrow; for tomorrow you may be dead, and may have passed into the other world, where you shall have no more time to do good” (§5)
2. “If you find yourself in sin, do not delay to repent and confess, and do not put it off even till tomorrow; for if you do not obey the call of God, who today calls you to confession, it may be that death will overtake you today in sin, and tomorrow there will be no remedy for you” (§6)
3. “Whilst we have time, let us work good. Let us no longer provoke God to punish us with an unhappy death; and if in the years that are past we have been foolish, and have displeased him, let us listen to the Apostle, who exhorts us to be wise for the time to come, and to redeem the time we have lost” (§12)