The Good Use of Time

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In Dublin many years ago there was a man who was a very prominent actuary, very prestigious, and he began to attend recollections of Opus Dei.

Little by little, he said that he began to see that he had thought his work was the most important thing in his life.

But through the formation he received, he began to realize that his family was the most important thing in his life. He had eight children.

He decided to set up his home and to approach his home a little bit like he approached his office. He installed a filing cabinet in the home; he opened a file on each one of his children; he had board meetings with his wife where they set quarterly goals and monthly goals and weekly goals.

He had reporting sessions with each one of his children, just like he did with his employees. He sat down with each child for five, ten, fifteen minutes each week, just to hear how they were doing, what was going on in their life, their friends, their pastimes.

He described how that gave him great consolation and fulfillment in his life. He learned how to focus on what was important.

This meditation is about our use of time.

Some of the saints have said that time is a treasure. Some people say my time is money, my time is my business. Some of the saints say time is a treasure, a gift of God, a talent that He's given to each one of us, which He wants us to use well.

Time is for glory, it's for grace, it's for eternity. And God wants us to sanctify time, to offer it to Him, to use it well.

It's an instrument in our hands for doing something with. Every instrument that we've been given—it’s to do something with it.

If you have a pen or a pencil or a laptop, we don't go around saying ‘I have a pen, I have a pen, I have a pencil, I have a laptop.’ It doesn't really mean anything.

It's what you're going to do with that pen that's important. Will you sign a contract? Will you sign a check? Will you give your autograph? The important thing about the instrument is what we do with that.

We have been given time in order to work, in order to serve, to develop ourselves.

Ultimately, we have time in order to give glory to God, which is the purpose of our existence. Is the glory of God the motive of all my actions?

When we go before God on the last day, He will ask us how we have used that talent.

The parable of the talents in the Gospel is very instructive. Some got five talents, some got three, some got one (Matt. 25:15). But each one that got talents was expected to make that talent grow.

We don't go looking for the instrument for its own sake. We look for it in order to do something with it.

We need to have a plan. Priorities. Maybe those priorities need to be numbered every hour, every part of each day, every week, every year—the goals that we have—in order to focus on the things that are really necessary.

Otherwise, we all can focus on the unimportant things, or the things that appeal most to us, which may not be our duty, which may not be important, which may not be the fruit that God wants us to bring.

Time has been given to each one of us very personally. It has to be used for that for which it was supposed to be used.

It has also been given. It's not ours. Time is a gift.

We can't add a single second to an hour. We can't shorten it or lengthen it. It's one of the gifts that God has given to us, and we have very little playroom. God gives His time, and at the end of it, He asks for it back.

It's interesting to see how when Our Lord talks about time in Scripture, He talks about short increments of time. Christ doesn't talk about millennium goals or Vision 2030.

He says, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21); “Woman, my hour has not yet come” (John 2:4); “Now has the hour come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).

Our Lord is inviting us to think of short periods of time and to plan those times so that we can use them well, because that time is also limited.

Most of us have a number of years. Some get twenty, some get forty, sixty, eighty. There are babies who don't even get a day of light. But everyone gets their time.

It's an area that we can look at a little more. If you look in the bookstores, you'll find plenty of books about management, management of self, and many of them are about management of time: how to get the most out of the time that we have.

We have to try and sanctify the moments so that our life is made up of many sanctified moments. An act of thanksgiving, an act of atonement, some little aspiration—it's all an act of a moment.

Sometimes in Scripture, we see a certain urgency in the use of time. We're told that “Mary went with haste into the hill country” (Luke 1:39). The shepherds, when they were announced the great tidings of joy, “went with haste” to Bethlehem (Luke 2:15-16).

People in Scripture, when they see what the Will of God is—they go quickly to fulfill the Will of God.

St. Josemaría Escrivá liked to do everything fast. He liked to move fast. He liked to do things in a hurry. He said that a job well done is a job that's done in the shortest possible time so that we don't waste time.

There's a story about how he went into a shop in Italy one time and he wanted to buy something like two handkerchiefs. But the shopkeeper said they only sold them in boxes of ten.

A few minutes later, he was walking out of the shop having got his two handkerchiefs at a very reasonable price, and with the shopkeeper having received some spiritual direction and having gone to Confession.

The shopkeeper, a bit startled by all of this, said to his secretary as he left the shop, ‘Your friend doesn't waste much time, does he?’ He was a fast mover. He did things. He achieved things.

We have this instrument for a very specific reason: to work, to develop ourselves. If God wants us to work, He's also set apart a time to do that, because He's given an appointed time for every matter.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says, “There's a time...to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to reap what has been planted”—a time to work and a time to rest (cf. Eccles. 3:1-2).

We have to make sure we find time in our busy day for our spiritual activities, to give time to God, our prayer, our Mass, our Rosary, our spiritual reading.

If you live a certain generosity, being generous with God with your time, you'll find that He will repay that generosity. He's told us that He will give us a hundredfold for everything we give Him (cf. Mark 10:29-30).

Time is something sacred. It belongs to God. That's why we have to be very careful about wasting time. For a Christian to waste time, it's almost like a crime.

We have so many things we can be doing. Sometimes we have to examine our time and say, ‘How do I spend it?’

To read a book, to relax, to watch a television program or a movie—that's not wasting time. But a good way to do those things is to watch things or read things that will help us to grow, that are not frivolous things, that somehow will help us to be a better mother, a better father, a better human person, a better friend, a better soul.

If you compare time and money, they're analogous instruments, but yet they're both instruments. They're different in what they're used for and in their source.

Time is from God. We cannot directly multiply it. We have no direct control over the total amount of time.

We do have a certain control over money. It is possible to multiply money. Some people can offer to multiply money for us.

But no one can offer to multiply our time. No one can say, ‘You only have two days to prepare for that exam or that deadline, and come, I'll multiply it for you.’

With time you can make money, but with money, you cannot buy time. Time is more basic. It's greater. It's divine. We need time for everything, but we don't need money for everything.

Our Lord has given us this talent, and He said, “Trade until I come” (Luke 19:13).

He says the same thing about time. Take these sixty years or these eighty years, and see what you can do with it. Develop yourself. Become a great human being. Develop your mind. Develop your will. Develop your talents. Learn a different trade. Plan your retirement. Plan those years that are ahead of you. Prepare for it.

You never know that your greatest contribution to society may come at the end of your life. The best wine comes at the end.

God has set apart a time for each thing. A time for us to spend in our spiritual life. A time for us to spend with our family, with our wife.

We can only use that time well. It comes, and then it goes, never to return.

Time is like a flowing divine treasure. We have to grab the opportunity, seize the moment—this birthday, that anniversary, this Christmas. This is an opportunity that God gives us that may not come again.

God is the real owner of time. It's holy because it belongs to Him. It should be treated as something sacred.

That's one of the reasons why we should have great respect for the time of others. Its why punctuality is a virtue. Meeting deadlines. Being on time for big things and small things in family life, in corporate life, in all sorts of ways.

If you're going to be a minute or two late for an appointment, try and send a message, because with that message also goes the hidden message: ‘I value your time, I respect your time.’

We can't just take it for granted that we always get delayed in traffic or we can be late for everything. Our Christian vocation is to give us a whole new approach to time: to be very professional and to live that in the family.

On time for meals. On time for different family gatherings. Training in punctuality, which is part of training in respect for other people's time.

We try to multiply our time by using it with order, by trying to improve what we can do in a given time.

You could ask the question, ‘What is the value of time?’ If you ask a Kenyan long-distance runner who wins marathons, he might give you very interesting answers. Eliud Kipchoge will tell you the value of a second, or any of the others who have won the great marathons around the world. That second can mean a million dollars.

We try to grow in our appreciation of that time.

One servant in the Gospel “hid his talent” (Matt. 25:18). He lost the opportunity of multiplying it.

We probably have few opportunities to kill time. Our problems may be the opposite.

But when we have little time, we might think that we can't use those little periods of time for anything. But if we plan them well, we could get through an article; we could read a book.

We could use those little—what somebody called the butts of time—to achieve little things here and there: a little repair in the house, a conversation with somebody, a phone call, a bit of attention to somebody.

There could be a temptation to bury that time, a couple of minutes in between activities. If we make the effort to use those small increments of time, some day we may earn to hear the words of Our Lord: “Well, done, good and faithful servant. Because you've been faithful in little things, I have great things to commit to your charge” (cf. Matt. 25:23).

“To everyone who has will more be given. And he who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (cf. Matt. 13:12). God multiplies time when we use it well. The hard-working person manages to do more with his time.

God may have given different people different abilities, but time is the same for all of us.

In the first line of The Way, St. Josemaría says, “Don't let your life be barren. Be useful. Blaze a trail.” Those are very inspiring words; a great invitation to use our time well.

There was a snail once who was going through a field, and the snail was leaving a dirty, slimy, filthy trail after it.

As the snail made its way through the field, it came across a stone slab commemorating some event in human history. It was a flat stone slab, and so the snail continued on its journey across the slab.

When it came to the other side, the snail looked back, and it saw the dirty, slimy, filthy trail it had left on the stone slab. The snail said to itself, ‘Fantastic! I have left my mark on human history!’

When we think about what mark we're going to leave in human history, what mark does God want me to leave? That of a good husband, a good father, an honest man, a person of virtue, a great human being?

It’s important that we apply ourselves to those great goals.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says: “Again, I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all” (Eccles. 9:11).

We all have our time. The management textbooks talk about the importance of a to-do list, of planning, having priorities, of applying ourselves to those things that might take sacrifice, that we might find difficult, not giving in to our likes and dislikes.

To keep a timetable of study and keep to it is not so easy. Or to visit a sick friend, especially when there may be something very attractive going on, like Manchester United playing Arsenal. But yes, we try to give priority to our friends.

In the Confessions of St. Augustine, he tells how before his conversion he used to visit St. Ambrose, and St. Ambrose was very conscious that he had to study.

Often when Augustine went to see him, he found him studying and had to wait a long time. On other occasions, he had to leave and come back some other time. That was virtue on the part of both.

There was a story of a man once who had to go hunting to feed his family. He had three bullets in his gun.

He saw a rabbit, he shot, and he missed. Then he saw a fox and he shot, and he missed. So, he had only one bullet left.

Then he saw a big fat turkey up in a tree. He lifted his gun to shoot the turkey. But then he heard a voice deep inside him saying: ‘Aim high, pray first, stay focused.’

Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a deer. And the deer had more meat than the turkey, so he lowered his gun to shoot the deer.

As he was about to shoot the deer, he heard this voice inside him again saying: ‘Aim high, pray first, stay focused.’

Then he saw there was a poisonous snake between his feet, and that posed the greatest danger to life and limb, so he lowered the gun to shoot the snake. But again, he heard the voice deep inside him: ‘Aim high, pray first, stay focused.’

He decided to listen to this voice of conscience, which was like the voice of God deep inside him. He lifted his rifle. He shot the turkey.

The bullet ricocheted off a bone in the turkey, hitting the deer and killing the deer. And the impact of shooting the gun made him lose his balance. He stood on the snake, killing it, and fell backward into a pond that was full of fish.

When he stood up out of the pond, he had a dead turkey, a dead deer, a dead snake, and plenty of fish with which to feed his family.

The moral of the story is that we have to aim high, and then stay focused, and pray first.

Creation was done in time. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).

Pope St. John Paul II likes to say that by the Incarnation, Christ bridged the gap between eternity and man (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, March 4, 1979).

Time and history are no longer a useless and meaningless turnover of events, but rather the plan of God in which to carry out the redemption. The Son of Man came with the fullness of time (cf. Gal. 4:4).

Time makes sense when a Christian sanctifies it. The history of the Church is like the history of the Holy Spirit working in the world.

For a Christian, time is glory, a precious treasure that he can't afford to waste. We have to try and declare war on procrastination. Things have to be done now. Now or never.

‘I have to try and fulfill my duty today. I have to try and do what I'm supposed to be doing, be where I'm supposed to be.’

John Paul II said the time we're living in now, after the Incarnation, is a time of jubilee. “Eternity entered into time,” he said, “with the Incarnation” (John Paul II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 1994).

Every Christian has a chance to live the life of God. That's an eternal meaning of time.

Time is free, but it's also priceless. You cannot buy it. It's very valuable.

“He has made everything suitable for its time. Moreover, He has put a sense of the past and future into their minds. Yet they cannot find out what God has done from the very beginning to the end” (Eccles. 3:11).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “To God, all moments are present in their immediacy. When therefore, he establishes his eternal plan of predestination, he includes in it each person's free response to his grace” (Catechism, Point 600).

The way we use our time well is by responding well to the calls of God. ‘What is He asking of me now? What is my duty as a professional man, as a husband, as a father, as a mother?’

We have to try and fulfill our duty, the little duties of each day. God gives us time to respond to His grace.

Every minute that passes is a grace that has flowed. We have to try and respond to that grace by doing in each moment what we're supposed to be doing.

The workers in the marketplace were told they were idle in the marketplace “because no man has hired us” (Matt. 20:6-7). But the reality is that there was plenty of work to be done.

Just up the road, there was a big vineyard crying out for workers. They had no initiative. They didn't think out of the box. They didn't plan their time well. They were lazy.

In Friends of God, we’re told: “When I reflect on this, how well I understand St. Paul's exclamation when he writes to the Corinthians, ‘time is short’ (1 Cor. 7:29). How short indeed is the time of our passing through this world.

“For the true Christian, these words ring deep down in his heart as a reproach to his lack of generosity, and as a constant invitation to be loyal. Brief indeed is our time for loving, for giving, for making atonement.

“It would be very wrong, therefore, for us to waste it, or to cast this treasure irresponsibly overboard. We mustn't squander this period of the world's history which God has entrusted to each one of us” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 39).

There's something very haunting about those words: “We mustn't squander this period of the world's history which God has entrusted to each one of us.”

He wants us to contribute, to see what I can contribute. So, we can ask Our Lord for the grace to use our time better.

In The Way it says, "Turn your back on the tempter when he whispers in your ear: ‘Why make life difficult for yourself?’” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 6).

“Get rid of that ‘small-town’ outlook. Enlarge your heart until it becomes universal, ‘catholic.’ Don't flutter about like a hen, when you can soar to the heights of an eagle” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 7).

“Get rid of those useless thoughts which, at best, are but a waste of time” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 13).

We can ask Our Lord for many graces to do it a little better in all these areas: to spend time a little more on the things that He places before us, living out those priorities.

I was talking to a teenager once and recommending a timetable for the weekend. He thought I was destroying his freedom. The school had taken up all his time during the week. He wanted freedom for the weekend.

But he finally agreed that a schedule helped him to use his freedom to the maximum, and he could do many more enjoyable things in one weekend, and even practice skills and visit places he never dreamt of.

With a plan, with a schedule, we can do a lot. It's often hard to submit to a schedule that we've set. But often success comes from this.

The Catechism says, “The Annunciation to Mary inaugurates the ‘fullness of time,’ the time of the fulfillment of God's promises and preparations. Mary was invited to conceive him in whom the ‘whole fullness of deity’ would dwell ‘bodily.’ The divine response to her question, ‘How can this be since I know not man?’ was given by the power of the Spirit: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you.’” (Catechism, Point 484).

Our Lady began this fullness of time that we are now in. Right after the Annunciation, she teaches us two big lessons:

One is how to use the time to do what we have to do; in this case, to serve.

The other is how to start doing what we have to do immediately. “She went with haste into the hill country.”

Great men in history did so much in little time. They obeyed their timetable without fail.

We have to try and make it bear fruit for God through industriousness and diligence, living what are often called heroic minutes: being on time, starting things properly, living hours of responsible, intense, well-fulfilled, serious work. Hours of sixty minutes.

Work with intensity for the love of God, even when there is no urgency of deadlines or exams.

In The Way we are told, “Do what you should do and put your heart into what you are doing” (cf. J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 815).

That also means we have to know when to stop. It's a very useful thing, to stop doing what we’re doing in order to get the proper hours of sleep, of rest, of exercise, of family life.

We have to know how to get to bed at a fixed time. It's as important as knowing how to get up at a fixed time.

It's interesting that when Our Lady went to visit Elizabeth, she “remained there for three months” (Luke 1:56), but only for the required time. She didn't stay there until the birth of the Baptist.

There was a moment when she had to leave. She knew when to cut.

And in this meditation, we also have to know how to cut.

We can ask Our Lady to help us to understand that we are here not just to do things, but to sanctify ourselves doing things, and to use well this God-given talent, so that God may be happy with the way that we use it.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

PKN