Fleeing from idleness and from bad companions.
Don Bosco exhorts young people that “human beings were born to work and when they cease to do so they are off-centre,” whilst qualifying that he doesn’t mean that one “should be busy from morning to evening without a break,” for “one can enjoy oneself but also gain useful and honest knowledge” with special interests, domestic chores, legitimate amusements and recreation. For Bosco, enjoying legitimate pastimes and recreations also means enjoying them with good people, avoiding “like the plague” those “who are not ashamed of using obscene language in your company, or dubious or scandalous words, murmuring, lies, perjury, curses, blasphemy, or try to keep you away from church or ignore your duty.”
The Second Vatican Council takes a very similar approach to work; it explains that labour is the human being’s share in “the redemptive work of Jesus Christ,” and therefore it is both a person’s “duty” and their “right” to work. It also specifies that societies must ensure that workers "enjoy sufficient rest and leisure to cultivate their familial, cultural, social and religious life. They should also have the opportunity freely to develop the energies and potentialities which perhaps they cannot bring to much fruition in their professional work.” Like Bosco, the Council makes a link between the sharing in Jesus’ divine life through work and the sharing in God’s divine life through good companions, recognising “a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s children in truth and charity,” where “the progress of the human person and the advance of society itself hinge on one another.”
Thus, comparing our two sources reveals a theological relationship between work and charity, or the “labour of love.” John Bosco is famously quoted as saying to the young people at his oratory: “For you I study, for you I work, for you I live, for you I am ready even to give my life;” indeed, as the Council affirms: “man [sic], who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” For young people, today, most of their lives are consumed by study, which is often compulsory, and work, which is usually necessary. For many, the compulsory and necessary nature of these occupations renders them perceptible as means to an end - undesirable obligations which they are forced to do in order to obtain the qualifications and resources necessary for living “the life they really want.” For many still, this cycle of studying and working towards a “dream life” never ends; the demands for qualifications and resources never eases up, and their “life” never arrives. Young people today must resist the temptation to see study and work as obstacles to a life they’d rather be living, and appreciate, rather, that “by their labour they are unfolding the Creator's work,” and that “the Christian who neglects their temporal duties, neglects their duties toward their neighbour and even God, and jeopardises their eternal salvation.”