Contra Sloth: From Jacob to Christ

As Abraham went about the land of Canaan, the land to which the Lord had called him, he raised altars and dug wells. The universe is a cosmic temple, and man, whose end is to worship God, marks the world with places where fit offerings may be raised to the Almighty. He also works the earth, digging into its crust to strike the water that will sustain him and his flocks. Abraham modeled the pattern of praise and labor that would later be followed out in the Rule of St. Benedict and that is demanded of all those who walk with the Lord in faith.

To Isaac fell the task of unearthing many of the wells that his father Abraham had dug. And Isaac and his flocks multiplied greatly in the land of the Philistines. Jacob, Isaac’s son, having received Esau’s birthright and Isaac’s blessing, went forth to Haran in search of a wife. Jacob’s acquaintance with God had not yet become personal, but when he lay down to sleep one night, with his head resting on a stone, he dreamed of angels ascending and descending on a ladder stretching into Heaven, and the Lord spoke to him and promised that his descendants would be numerous and would inherit the land of Canaan. Jacob’s response on waking supplies a fitting model for man as he learns more and more to walk with God: “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, ‘Truly, the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!’ He was afraid and said: ‘How awesome this place is! This is nothing else but the house of God, the gateway to heaven!’ ” (Gen. 28:16–17).

Wherever we are, the Lord is in that place. So often, we know it not.

From that day, Jacob’s life became a model of the sort of labor which overcomes sloth. He set up an altar and continued to the land of the Kedemites. In the middle of the day, around the time when the noonday devil stalks abroad, Jacob came upon a well in the open country, with several shepherds gathered around it. The well was covered with a stone so large that it could only be moved when all the local shepherds had assembled to water their flocks. Jacob, moved by the sight of his kinswoman Rachel, who was approaching with the flocks of her father, Laban, shifted the stone aside himself and watered Laban’s sheep. He then entered his uncle’s service, choosing Rachel as a reward for seven years of labor — years that “seemed to him like a few days because of his love” for Rachel (Gen. 29:20). Laban, we know, refusing to let Leah be stripped of the elder’s birthright, secreted her within Jacob’s tent on the night of his marriage. Jacob, incensed at this deceit, nonetheless completed the seven days that were his bride’s due, and then demanded Rachel in exchange for seven more years of labor. During the day, he labored in the field among the flocks, and by night, he was husband to Leah and to Rachel as well as to their maids, bringing forth the twelve sons who would be Israel.

In Jacob’s story, we find two key components in the fight against sloth. The first is his astonishing recognition of the presence of God. His knowledge of the Lord’s presence becomes a font of that creative energy which neither tires in the noonday heat nor wearies in the service of the marriage bed. Jacob’s seven-year terms of labor, and the bridal week paid to Leah, recall the seven-year period of Creation in Genesis, and Jacob’s fruitfulness, which overcomes and even uses Laban’s deceit as a springboard to greater largesse, reminds us of the fruitfulness enjoined on Adam.

The second critical element is the manner in which time itself ceases to grip Jacob on account of the great love he has for Rachel. The desert monks afflicted by acedia, much like Achilles on the beach, much like many of us working desperately for Friday evening, are keenly aware of time’s tendency to crawl by. Jacob, keyed in to God’s presence and dedicated to service in love, feels that the years are as days. He is privileged with a taste of eternity, to which a thousand years are as the blinking of an eye.

Nonetheless, Jacob cannot escape the ravages of time or sin entirely. Much of the latter part of his life is fraught with the weight of his beloved Rachel’s death on the road to Bethlehem. We must travel to the end of that road, to the entry of eternity into time in the Person of Christ, if we are to witness sloth’s defeat. And we find guidance in our battle at the rim of Jacob’s well, where Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman in John 4.

We are told that, when Jesus stopped at the well, it was about noon: the time when acedia strikes. And Jesus, like the desert monks, was hungry. He was weary with His travels. The sun hung high overhead. A woman came alone, just as Rachel had. Christ, engaging her in a sort of spiritual battle, offers her the living water that only He can give. She scoffs — surely this man cannot be greater than Jacob, who provided this well. But the Lord prevails, and the woman goes off in haste to tell everyone of this man who so intimately knows her, who has rolled the stone of sin from her heart.

The disciples return and offer Jesus the food they had procured. But He is satisfied. Doing the will of His Father has refreshed Him. And this is the food which will make us proof against sloth as well. When the noonday devil strikes, the monk’s best defense is to remain in his cell, to carry on beneath the yoke of the Father’s will. When sloth takes hold of us, our victory is not to be found in flight, in rushing off to do a hundred distracting tasks, but in performing the work which is set before us — playing with our children, paying our bills, laboring with our spouses, and above all giving worship to God in the Mass.

Jacob raised altars and moved the stone from the shepherds’ well. Christ would be raised on the altar of the Cross at the hour of the noonday devil, and the stone would be rolled from the mouth of the tomb from which a flood of grace would well up to wash over the world.

This essay is adapted from JDV editor Danny Fitzpatrick’s new book Restoring the Lord’s Day, available now for purchase from Sophia Institute Press.