Dear Carol:

The goal of avoiding venial sins is a great goal. We all need to pursue that virtue as also to remove all attachments to sin, even venial sins.

The books you are reading are most likely, however, not directly applicable to you as a secular person living in the world with a family. The more severe mortifications and religious exercises cannot usually be done except by those in monasteries.

You need to pursue holiness not as a monastic does it, but as a secular person living in the world. The problem is that most books refer to monastic practices and we have to translate it to apply to our secular lives. There is one exception.

St. Francis deSales' book, Introduction to the Devout Life, was written specifically to the laity and shows how even in the midst of living in the world, changing dirty diapers with one hand, answering the phone with the other to make arrangements for car pooling your other children to school, and with a mystical third hand doing the laundry, and doing all that after coming home from a day at work, in the midst of all that, one can still pursue and attain holiness.

Now, this is still hard work, but those living in the world can attain holiness and should attain it.

There are a few saints who, by the way, were living in the world. For example, one canonized saint was a single mother with a pack of kids and founded the Catholic school system, was suffering from illness, and still had time to pursue holiness -- St. Elizabeth Seton.

Idle chatter I think refers to unproductive chatter that is meaningless and that usually tends to lead us to gossip or the avoidance of more substantive thoughts and discussions that help us improve as a human and as a Christian.

It is not that every word out of one's mouth must have deep meaning. It is rather that some people almost exclusively say nothing of meaningful content. I have a relative-in-law that will ignore you if you say anything remotely profound. For example, this person will not talk about anything she thinks is negative, such as the starving people and genocide in Dafar. By not talking about it she can avoid thinking about it and thus avoid feeling responsible to do anything about it.

Thus, idle chatter can become an avoidance technique.

As for puttering around the house, this again is not about taking a rest from substantive activities -- we all need rest, diversion, recreation, and just place doing nothing sometimes. That is healthy.

It becomes unhealthy if we putter to avoid doing the things we ought to do. So, it too is really about avoidance. Procrastination falls into this category. If that procrastination causes one to not get something done that one promised to do by a certain time, then that promise has been broken. If puttering or procrastination causes one to not pick-up the kids after school we have a REAL problem.

It is not so much about attending to responsibilities first, though that is probably the usual order of things, but it is about not getting something done that one ought to do when they ought to do it. Doing a little, rest a little, putter a little, go back and do some more, then putter some more, etc. can be okay if the job gets done.

Then there is another factor. While doing nothing can be healthy rest from the stresses of the world at times, if we putter to the point that we avoid attending to our relationships with others, and especially with God, then we have a problem. Perhaps some of those times that we work, then putter, work, then putter, we ought to work, then pray, work, then read the bible amongst a little puttering.

I hope all this makes some sense.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary