- by Monsignor Edward V Dailey- by Monsignor Edward V Dailey
Sloth, although last in our treatment of the seven deadly sins, is not the least. It is probably more deadly than the others because it provides easy ground for the indifferent to lie back and doze away while the devil maneuvers about seeking a juicy soul to devour.
God's threat in the Apocalypse against the people of Laodicea mentions lukewarmness as a particular object of His rejection. The Laodiceans were "neither hot nor cold." Apparently the Apostles had a hard time denting the surface of their indifference. The modern pastor finds a startling percentage of his own people in the same predicament. They just cannot get themselves to church on Sunday. They will send their children oftentimes with a weekly envelope in support of the church they know they should attend. But they are too lukewarm to make the effort of going themselves. Too often their energies have been diluted by staying up most of Saturday night with a martini in hand and a half-hearted resolution to try to make Mass one of these days. So, step by step their religious life begins to founder completely in the lukewarm waters of no resolve.
The omnipotent God is frustrated by the slothful because He does not choose to force the free will of man. He gives him abundant graces; He conspires to land him in His net of mercy. But He will not force love, because the end result would be something else than love.
We can imagine the sorrow in Christ's heart when His beneficence, His compassionate understanding. His gifts of grace are spurned by the person who has sunk in that inordinate love of ease and rest which is the hallmark of the slothful. He is just too downright lazy to turn to God.
Christ can work with the sinner who is tossed about in the waves of temptation but frantically reaches for rescue. But the indifferent man is snoring away the time which can mean his salvation.
He may be convinced that he is doing nothing wrong. "I haven't robbed anyone, I haven't sinned against purity, I haven't slandered anyone, I haven't turned my back on God."
But he has turned his back on God by his sluggish, negative spiritual prostration. He will suddenly find himself overwhelmed by torpidity, cowardice, bitterness at those who speed by in search of grace. He is overwhelmed by despair because he lacks the strength to crash into difficulties with a stout heart, by resentment of his neighbors who are getting up early to go to the parish church to receive the positive guarantees of their salvation in the Blessed Eucharist.
This last neglect is perhaps the gravest omission of all. The slothful one is not getting the lifeblood of his soul because he is just too downright lazy to drag himself out of bed for the Eucharistic banquet which is set for him on every altar in the world. He would not think of skipping ham and eggs, steaks, double martinis, his daily vitamin pill which promises him bodily balance.
But the food of the Eucharist leaves him cold, because he doesn't get spiritual hunger pains except in adversity. He doesn't see his soul withering away for lack of nutriment or his spirit rattling about like a skeleton in his closet of neglect.
Unfortunately, the ever-present body, with its tendency to pamper itself with every possible comfort, has dimmed the concept of why we were all created. We were born, of course, to know, love and serve God in this life and be happy with Him in the next. The first step in knowing God is to recognize the principle that anything that distracts the creature, man, from his final destiny is to be rejected. Wealth, power, beauty, health are desirable only if they serve as stepping stones toward eternity. If they become the objective of all living, they are snares and delusions. Saint Ignatius turned from the worldly life of a soldier to profound sanctity by looking with shattering honesty at the axiom: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his soul?"
The pity is that slothful people do not summon up enough energy to open their eyes and face the most fundamental fact of life. We are here to love and serve God, and service cannot, in the wildest flight of imagination, be just in lying on our backs beneath a tree waiting for a golden apple to fall in our laps.
There is hope, of course, for the slothful, as there is hope for the wild, disorganized sinner who gallops about in search of illicit pleasure. Both could use a little of each other's spirit. Both could meditate on the use and misuse of time. Both could start to meditate in the shadows of approaching "night when no one can work." The slothful could get up by God's grace and strike off in the direction of God; the sinner could slow down to a walk and allow himself to bask in the sunshine of a clean decision.
One thing is certain. We'll always be pulling ourselves out of the quicksand of capital sins. Whether we sink or not depends upon our willingness to reach for the hand of Christ and let Him lead the way.
- from the book Seven Roads to Hell and 'Ave Maria' magazine