There is no surer sign of a fervent priest than the love of the confessional. It is the first duty that a lax priest avoids and evades. To sit for long hours day by day and night by night, without impatience and without loss of temper, is a sure sign of the love of souls. We need not attempt to measure the comparative value of preaching and of hearing confessions. They are incommensurable. Each has its own proper character. But many have a great zeal and promptness to preach who are slow and tardy to sit in the confessional. There is no manifestation of self, no natural excitement, no subtil allurements of a personal kind in sitting for long hours listening to the sins, and sorrows, and often the inconsiderate talk of multitudes, for the most part unknown. It is like fishing with a single line. Long hours of waiting are rewarded by one solitary gain. But it is, in the highest sense of the word, the pastor's work—that is, the care of souls. And it demands in a high degree an abnegation of self, a repression of personal infirmities of temper, and a generous love of souls, especially of the poor.
But what use of time can be compared to this care and guidance of souls?[1] Knowing that we have
- ↑ "For indeed this seems to me to be the art of arts and the science of sciences, to direct men, the most manifold and most variable of animals."—S. Greg. Naz. Orat. ii. xvii. tom. i. p. 21.
