This life, my dear friends, is often spoken of in Scripture as a day, both on account of its shortness and because the night of death follows. Now, there are certainly many persons who do stand all their lives idle; that is to say, they do not try to "_work_ out their own salvation"; they do not try to do anything in the Lord's vineyard, the church, by helping forward good works either by their means or by their active service. {123} There are a great number of men and women who never think of caring for the great business of their salvation. Day after day goes by, week after week, and they have done no good works, corrected no faults, made absolutely no advancement or improvement. It is too much trouble for them to examine their consciences, too tiresome to stir themselves to go to Mass and the sacraments. They have sunk into a state of spiritual drowsiness by the world's fireside; in a word, they are all the day idle. Oh! if there are any such here, let them take warning. For the night will surely come, and then it will be too late. Perhaps this is the eleventh hour for you. God has called you often before; now, by the voice of his priest, he speaks once more and says: "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" To-day you see again the purple vestments and hangings; they tell you that Lent is fast approaching, that a time of grace is coming round once more. Oh! then, you that have yet a few hours of the day of life left, go into the vineyard of your own souls, root up the weeds, till the soil, plant good seed, that the Father of all may be able in the end to give you the wages of everlasting life. Again, such among you as have means, or who are able to help your pastor by active service in the charge of the sick and the poor, who can teach the uninstructed, help along in sewing-schools and in forming sodalities and pious organizations of various kinds--to you also the cry comes, "Why stand ye all the day idle?" Why, when called upon to bear a little part of the priest's burden, are so many people like an old gun that hangs fire? Why is it often so difficult for the priest to get the active co-operation of the lay people? {124} Why does he so often get the "cold shoulder" as people say, when he asks a little help? Is it not because people won't go into the vineyard, won't work, won't take trouble? Because they would rather not be bothered? How often they say: "I have no time"; "What are the priests for, anyhow?" "Let _them_ look after these things." Thus they stand all the day idle, and the hard work falls on the priests and just a few self-sacrificing helpers. When you are called on, then, by your pastors to help in the parish, "don't be backward in coming forward"; make up your minds that you will not stand idle, but that it shall be "a long pull and a strong pull, and a pull all together."