List of points

Let us now consider the parable of the man who 'went on his travels; he summoned his servants and entrusted his goods to them'. Each one is given a different amount to administer in his master's absence. I think it is appropriate here to consider how the man who accepted the one talent behaved. He acted in a way which in my part of the world we'd call 'playing the cuckoo'. His petty mind thinks and wonders, then is made up: 'he went off and made a hole in the ground, and there hid his master's money'.

What kind of work can our man undertake henceforth, now that he has given up the very tools of his trade? He has opted irresponsibly for the easy way out. He will simply give back what he has received. From now on he will just kill time, minutes, hours, days, months, years, his whole life! The others meanwhile are busy trading. They are noble fellows and keen to give back more than they have received, for the master has a right to expect a profit. His instructions had been very clear: negotiamini dum venio; look after the business and make it yield a profit, until the owner returns. Not so our man, and thus his whole life becomes useless.

What a shame it would be to have as one's occupation in life that of killing time which is a God-given treasure! No excuse could justify such behaviour. 'Let no one say, "I only have one talent, I can't do anything." Even with just one talent you can act in a meritorious way.' How sad not to turn to good account and obtain a real profit from the few or many talents that God has given to each man so that he may dedicate himself to the task of serving other souls and the whole of society!

When a Christian kills time on this earth, he is putting himself in danger of 'killing Heaven' for himself, that is, if through selfishness, he backs out of things and hides away and doesn't care. A person who loves God not only hands over to the service of Christ, what he has and what he is in life. He gives his very self. He is not small-minded. He does not see himself in his health, in his good name, or in his career.

'Mine, mine, mine,' is the way many people think and talk and act. How unpleasant an attitude this is! St Jerome comments that, 'truly the words of Scripture, "to seek excuses for sins" (Ps 140:4) are fulfilled by those people who, apart from having the sin of pride, are also lazy and careless.'

It is pride that constantly makes people think: 'mine, mine, mine'. It is a vice that makes men sterile and fruitless. It destroys their keenness to work for God and leads them to waste their time. As for you, don't lose your effectiveness; instead, trample on your selfishness. You think your life is for yourself? Your life is for God, for the good of all men, through your love for Our Lord. Your buried talent, dig it up again! Make it yield, and you will taste the joy of knowing that in this supernatural business it does not matter if in this world the results are not wonders that men can admire. What really matters is to hand over all that we are and all that we have, striving to make our talent yield, and constantly exerting ourselves in order to produce good fruit.

God may have given us just one more year in which to serve him. Don't think of five, or even two. Just concentrate on this one year, that has just started. Give it to God, don't bury it! This is the resolution we ought to make.

I'd like to remind you once more that we don't have much time left, tempus breve est, because life on earth is short, and also that, since we have the means, all that's needed is our good will to make use of the opportunities that God grants us. From the moment that Our Lord came into this world, 'the acceptable time, the day of salvation' commenced for us and for all men. May Our Father God never have to cast upon us the reproach he spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, 'the kite, circling in the air, knows its time; turtledove can guess, and swallow, and stork, when they should return; only for my people the divine appointment passes unobserved'.

There are no bad or inopportune days. All days are good, for serving God. Days become bad only when men spoil them with their lack of faith, their laziness and their indolence, which turns them away from working with God and for God. 'At all times I will bless the Lord.' Time is a treasure that melts away. It escapes from us, slipping through our fingers like water through the mountain rocks. Tomorrow will soon be another yesterday. Our lives are so very short. Yesterday has gone and today is passing by. But what a great deal can be done for the love of God in this short space of time!

No excuses will do us any good. Our Lord has been very generous with us, He has instructed us patiently. He has explained his precepts to us through parables. He has insisted tirelessly. As with Philip, he could ask us, 'here am I, who have been all this while in your company; have you not learned to recognise me yet?' The time has now come for us to get down to hard work, filling each moment of the day and bearing, willingly and joyfully, 'the day's burden and the heat'.

I have often said that we must not allow these periods of conversation with Jesus, who sees us and hears us from the Tabernacle, to degenerate into an impersonal type of prayer. If we want our meditation to develop right away into a personal dialogue with Our Lord (for which the sound of words is not necessary), we must shed the cloak of anonymity and put ourselves in his presence, just as we are. We must avoid hiding ourselves in the crowd that fills the church, or diluting our prayer into a meaningless patter that does not come from the heart and is little better than a reflex habit, empty of any real content.

To this I now add that your work too must become a personal prayer, that it must become a real conversation with Our Father in heaven. If you seek sanctity in and through your work, you will necessarily have to strive to turn it into personal prayer. You cannot allow your cares and concerns to become impersonal and routine, because if you were to do so, the divine incentive that inspires your daily tasks will straightaway wither and die.

As I say these things, my memory goes back to the journeys I made to the battle fronts during the Spanish civil war. I had no material resources but I went wherever there was anyone who needed my services as a priest. In the very special circumstances we were in, which might well have given a number of people cause to justify their moral negligence and slackness, I did not limit myself to giving purely ascetical advice. I was concerned then, as now, with the one thing which I would like Our Lord to awaken in each one of you. I was interested in the welfare of their souls, and also in their happiness here on earth. I encouraged them to make good use of their time by doing something worthwhile, and not to look upon the war as something of a closed parenthesis in their lives. I asked them not to give in to laziness, but to do all they could to avoid letting their trenches and sentry posts become like the station waiting-rooms of the period where people killed time waiting for trains that seemed never to arrive…

I suggested specific occupations (for example, study or learning a language), occupations that were compatible with their military duties. I advised them never to cease being men of God, and to try turning everything they did into operatio Dei, God's work. I was greatly moved when I saw how wonderfully those boys responded, for their situation was far from easy. The solidity of their interior spirit was remarkable.

There are two human virtues, industriousness and diligence, which merge into one, for they both help us in our efforts to make good use of the talents we have each received from God. They are virtues because they lead us to finish things properly. As I have been preaching since 1928, work is not a curse; nor is it a punishment for sin. Genesis had already spoken about the fact of work before ever Adam rebelled against God. According to Our Lord's plans work was to be a permanent feature of man who, through work, would cooperate in the immense task of creation.

A hardworking person makes good use of time, for time is not only money, it is glory, God's glory! He does as he ought and concentrates on what he is doing, not out of routine nor to while away the passing hours, but as the result of attentive and pondered reflection. This is what makes a man diligent. Our everyday usage of this word 'diligent' already gives us some idea of its Latin origin. 'Diligent' comes from the verb diligo, which means to love, to appreciate, to choose something after careful consideration and attention. The diligent man does not rush into things. He does his work thoughtfully and lovingly.

Our Lord, perfect man in every way, chose a manual trade and carried it out attentively and lovingly for almost the entirety of the years he spent on this earth. He worked as a craftsman among the other people in his village. This human and divine activity of his shows us clearly that our ordinary activities are not an insignificant matter. Rather they are the very hinge on which our sanctity turns, and they offer us constant opportunities of meeting God, and of praising him and glorifying him through our intellectual or manual work.