Plan of Discourse.
The time lost in idleness or useless occupations will be a sore thorn in the side of the dying: such is the whole subject. That we may not feel this thorn when it is too late to amend, let us use the present time for the salvation of our souls. Such shall be the conclusion.
Grant us Thy grace thereto, O Lord! We ask it of Thee through the intercession of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.
The peasant who leaves his land until led has just reason for regret at harvest time. The most pleasant time of the year for peasants is generally harvest time, when they gather in with joy and gladness the fruits of their toil and labor. The greatest loss they can suffer in temporal things, the one which causes them most sorrow and anxiety, is an unfruitful year, which robs them of all they hoped to gain by unremitting industry. But even under that trial pious Christians are not without consolation. What matter? they say; it is not our fault; we have done our best; the Lord of heaven, who alone can give the increase to the seeds we have planted, has so willed it, and this year has been pleased in His all-just and all-wise decrees to give us nothing. May His holy will be done! May the name of the Lord be praised and blessed under all circumstances! But suppose, my dear brethren, that one who has much land in his possession neglects to till it through sheer laziness; what must be his feelings when at harvest time he sees his neighbors busy mowing and bringing home their crops, while he has not even a straw that he can call his own? Should not the sight cause him sorrow and pain?
And is almost in despair when be sees his neighbors reap abundantly.
And that all the more if the harvest has been an unusually plentiful one; such as we read of in Tartary, where one single seed produces five hundred, and the crops are so abundant that there are not barns enough to hold them, so that a great part of them must be allowed to lie on the fields for the birds and beasts. Or as Francis Lopez tells us of India; where in a certain province the harvest was so great in one year that two or three hundred fruitful ears of corn grew from a single seed. What state the lazy peasant would be in if he saw all this! Unhappy man that I am, he would say; what have I done! What have I not lost through my idleness! In one year I might have become rich without any more trouble than what it would cost to scatter a few handfuls of seed, for which I might now