Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/143

Rh insensibly formed, free perhaps from all sin, but fall of an unbalanced attachment, which draws him from our Divine Master, the priest's only Friend, to whom his whole heart was given. What nets for his feet lie in his path, what pits are open in his way. How insensibly he goes onward, not measuring the distance, till a gulf opens behind him, and his past is almost out of sight. All this is also a measure of time: not that time has done it. But he has done it in time, and in the time he has wasted and given away, or the time that has been stolen from him.

Against this the truest and surest remedy is a wise and resolute use of our days and hours. No man ought to be without a twofold Horarium. The first part is for his day: fixing the hour of rising and of going to rest, of Mass and office, of study and writing, of the work of souls in the confessional, and in the homes of the sick and of the poor. And such a Horarium ought to fix the measure and quantity of time allotted to each of these divisions of the day. There is here no head left for the world or for society, for a priest's life is out of the world; his home and his Divine Friend are in the sanctuary; the Saints, and the teachers who speak to him through his books, are his society. When the sun is down, the evening is the most precious part of a priest's day.