Practical devotion of the day: the value of time, of an hour

How many hours are lost. Are the twenty-four hours of the day and the nearly nine thousand hours of each year well used for tea? Those hours that are not spent in sight and in gain of a happy Eternity are lost hours. How many do you lose in too long a sleep! How many in immoderate pastimes! How many useless chatters! How many in an ugly and vicious doing nothing! How many in sins! How many jokes and trifles! ... But don't you think that it is lost time that you will realize?

In an hour you can damn yourself. There are many who walked holy for many years; an hour of temptation was enough, and they were lost! In just one hour, not a kingdom is played, but an eternity. An instant of consent is enough, and all the virtue, the merits, the penances of long years are lost! Paul trembled for fear of becoming a reprobate one day. And you, presumptuous, do not care, you challenge the dangers and waste the hours as if they were nothing!

The good of an hour. The salvation of the world was accomplished by Jesus in an hour, the last of his life. In the last hour of his life, the good Thief was saved: in one hour the conversions of the Magdalene, of St. Ignatius, were accomplished, for an hour the sanctification of Xavier, of St. Teresa depended. In an hour, how much good, how many virtues, how many indulgences, how many degrees of glory can be earned! If you had more faith, you would be stingy with your hours, and only prodigal for Heaven. Be it at least in the future ...

PRACTICE. - Do not waste time: offer every hour to the Holy Trinity.