Vox Meditantis

30th December, 1262

Hear me, you who gather here in this crumbled place of ancient stones! Aye, these Roman walls – once filled with pagan clamour – now hold only winter wind and the echoes of my voice. I am bound to this amphitheatre, to these frost-hard benches where grass pushes through the cracks, because I would not rise when I walked among you. I would not labour when the hour called.

You know me by rumour, do you not? Whispers in the marketplace, tales told beside the hearth – how I gave freely when asked, how my purse was ever open, how I fed the beggar at my gate and clothed the widow’s child. They speak well of me in the town, or so they did. But what good is a generous hand when the back is bent to idleness? What worth has almsgiving when the fields lie unploughed, when the workshop stands silent, when every appointed task is put off until the morrow?

I tell you truly: reputation is a lock without a key. Men praised my open heart whilst I rotted within from sloth. They saw the bread I shared but not the obligations I shirked. My lord called me to account – aye, three times he summoned me to render service owed – and thrice I sent word of illness, of pressing matters, of any excuse that would spare me the labour. I held the key to my own bondage and would not turn it.

The priest spoke to me of the seven deadly sins, and I nodded, thinking myself safe. Pride? Not I, who gave without boasting. Wrath? I was mild as milk. Envy? What had I to envy when I gave so freely? But sloth – that subtle serpent – coiled round my soul and whispered: Tomorrow. Rest now. You have done enough. Let another bear this burden.

I knew good men, true men, who shaped me better than I deserved. My brother – God rest him – who worked from dawn till vespers in the fields and still found strength to visit me, to chide me gently, to sit with me when the darkness grew heavy. He was my anchor when I drifted. The guild master who took me as apprentice, who showed patience when I arrived late, who did not cast me out though I gave him cause. The priest who heard my confession month after month, who gave me penance I half-completed, who looked at me with eyes that saw both my failing and my worth. These bonds held me to the world of the living, though I fought against their pull like a man drowning who struggles against his rescuer.

And my wife – God preserve her – who bore my idleness as Christ bore His cross. She kept the house, tended the garden, worked the loom, whilst I sat by the fire promising that tomorrow I would mend the roof, tomorrow I would take the wool to market, tomorrow I would fulfil what was needed. Her love was the key that might have unlocked my prison, had I the wit to use it.

But see how sloth breeds sloth! I was generous because it cost me nothing – a coin given is but a moment’s work, whilst true labour demands hours, days, seasons of effort. I could spare a penny or a loaf more easily than I could wake at dawn and put hand to plough. My charity was the easier sin to commit, and so I thought myself righteous.

Now I wander these stones, these walls that saw men struggle and die for sport, and I understand at last: we are locked into the manner of our living, and death is but the sealing of that lock. I gave freely, aye, but I lived locked away from true virtue. The key was always in my hand – the choice to rise, to work, to fulfil my station – but I would not turn it.

So I speak to you now with the fervour of the damned: do not mistake the ease of giving for the difficulty of living well. Unlock yourselves from comfortable sin! The gossip you fear, the reputation you guard – these are nothing against the reckoning that comes when the final key turns in the final lock. I praised generosity and practised sloth, and now I am neither generous nor at rest.

Work, I tell you! Labour in your station, fulfil your oaths, rise when the bell rings for prime! Let your name be spoken well, not for what you gave away, but for what you built with your own hands. For I am the proof that a man may give all he has and still be found wanting, still be locked outside the gates, still be wandering these cold stones whilst others feast in the warmth of earned rest.

The keys are in your hands. Turn them whilst you may.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.