There are 168 hours in every week.
Assuming that one was to actually sleep 8 hours per day (most of us sleep much less), that would leave 112 hours in every week.
Our ability to live a virtuous, productive life requires us to make the best possible use of those hours.
We have no time to waste.
Think of your day thus far. Can you give an account for every hour of your day? How many hours were used well? How many were wasted?
I have always found that transitions between activties was often the greatest source of lost time. Making a lazy, disorderly move from one actvity to another can waste hours every day.
Moreover, our natural inclination to idleness can leave us staring into space in the middle of the day.
The wasting of time is what costs us real achievement. The difference between failing to do what we ought to do in a day, doing what we ought to in a day, and exceeding what we ought to have done in a day is the careful use of time.
Think, for example, of St. Thomas Aquinas. Imagine the work required to compose the Summa Theologica. It’s hard to imagine. This was not, however, the life’s work of 90 year old man. St. Thomas died at age 49 (my current age).
How did he do it?
Many will attribute it all to grace, as if God’s grace requires no human collaboration, but this is false.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclial Aeterni Patris explained:
“There was founded by Our fathers, men of eminent wisdom, the Scholastic theology, which two glorious doctors in particular angelic St. Thomas and the seraphic St. Bonaventure, illustrious teachers of this faculty, with surpassing genius, by unwearied diligence, and at the cost of long labors and vigils, set in order and beautified, and when skilfuly arranged and clearly explained in a variety of ways, handed down to posterity.”
The saints were not merely robots with better batteries than ours. They worked with “unwearied diligence”. They sacrificed free time and avoided idleness and devoted themselves to “long labors and vigils”.
They made the most of the time they had.
For us to restore Christian learning, we need to make much better use of our time. We must eliminate idle time and make careful use of all of every hour. We cannot follow the schedule of unbelievers or live with the lazy spirit they do. Time is our most precious resource and we have to spend it as wisely as possible.
As an exercise, I recommend is to use the simple chart below to mark whether you use each hour well or badly.
May God help us to make better use of the time we’re given.
God bless,
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
