Examples of Diligence from Nature to encourage us to avoid Sloth and labor for Heaven

November 25, 2021 • 2 min

From The Sinner’s Guide, page 369
By Venerable Louis of Granada

Turn your eyes towards nature, and you will find nothing idle.

The heavens, by their perpetual motion, unceasingly proclaim the glory of their Creator.

The sun, moon, and stars, with all the brilliant planets which people almost infinite space, daily follow their courses for the benefit of man.

The growth of plants and trees is continual until they have attained their appointed strength and proportions.

Behold the untiring energy with which the ant labors for its winter’s food; with which the bees toil in building their hives and storing them with honey.

These industrious little creatures will not allow an idler to exist among them; the drones are all killed.

Throughout nature you find the same lesson. Will not man, therefore, blush for a vice which the instinct of irrational creatures teaches them to avoid?

To what labors do not men condemn themselves for the acquisition of perishable riches, the preservation of which, when they are obtained, is an ever-increasing source of care and anxiety!

You are striving for the kingdom of Heaven. Will you show less energy, will you be less diligent, in toiling for spiritual treasures, which can never be taken from you?

If you will not profit by time and strength to labor now, a day will come when you will vainly seek these present opportunities. Sad experience tells us how many have thus been disappointed. Life is short, and obstacles to good abound.

Do not, therefore, let the promptings of sloth cause you to lose advantages which will never return, for “the night cometh when no man can work.” [St. John ix. 4.]