Most of us waste a lot of time. We could all be doing a lot more good than we’re doing, but we don’t. We spend a lot of time doing far, far less than we should, and most of that focused on silly things of little ultimate worth. My own waste of time is abysmal. If I’m fortunate enough to be sent to Purgatory, a foreseeable punishment is having to be made to relive every wasted moment, and compare it with the good that could have been done had my priorities been better. It would be a horrible way to be punished, knowing that the evils around me were able to do what they did only because all of us who spend time and energy avoiding sin do not spend enough effort doing good. Feeling the consequences of our own sloth on our own souls is going to be agonizingly awful.
The wonderful thing about Catholicism is that there is no sin it does not recognize. The sins of omission are forgivable, and as we recognize how frequently we commit them, we should drive ourselves to our knees, and pray for the saints to share their zeal with us.
Once in a while, I think about spending an entire day without wasting a minute. My lack of success in even spending one entire day, out of the thirty or forty thousand that I may have, completely busy doing something important or useful has, so far, been too difficult.
