Saint Josemaria Escriva relentlessly telling it like it is:
If you say that you want to imitate Christ… and yet have time on your hands, then you are on the road to lukewarmness. (The Forge, 701)
The first time I read that it really stung. It stung so bad that I printed it out and hung it on my wall. Time to get serious, Mary. What are you doing today to further the work of God?
It worked really well for that one day. Then I got really busy with school and kind of forgot about it. Hey, my homework is reading the Bible and writing papers on it. Translation: God and me are totally good.
Except that I once again found myself in the midst of a battle. School: a means of growing closer to God or just a giant to-do list to check off before I can enjoy my summer? Thus began a ten-week struggle with many twists and turns, only to finally finish my work and once again be reminded of Saint Josemaria’s words:
If you say that you want to imitate Christ… and yet have time on your hands, then you are on the road to lukewarmness. (The Forge, 701)
Oh…so that applies even on summer break, too? …So work isn’t just a means on the way to achieving the final goal of idleness?
Thank goodness.
Don’t get me wrong. Everyone deserves a break from hard work. But no one deserves to be idle, and no one should want to be idle, because it’s miserable. We’re only about a week into summer break and already I’ve seen friends on Facebook complaining about being bored. It’s a fate worse than finals week. Give me something that makes me run around like a chicken with my head cut off, but don’t let me be bored.
Of course, Christ desires that we rest in the middle of these two extremes. He desires that we have peace. And truly, filling our time with things that build up the Kingdom is exactly the way to do that.
So here I am, at the start of my two-week summer break (year-round course work, people. It’s a thing.), and once again faced with the question: “What are you doing today to further the work of God?” If you want a non-boring summer—whether yours happens to be two months or two days, it’s a question you have to ask yourself, too.
