“rest a while”
In the gospel reading, Jesus tells his apostles to rest awhile. Resting for all of us is essential. There are times to work, but there is also time for proper rest and leisure.
Why does Jesus tell his apostles to rest? “A fruitful apostolate is impossible without such refreshing pauses beside the Master, which are intended to reinvigorate not only their physical forces, but their spiritual ones as well: pauses for prayer, for interior recollection, in order to plumb the depths of the words of the Lord and to translate them ever more meaningfully into their own lives.” [1] This restful reinvigorating of their spiritual lives is leisure.
What is leisure? The origin for the word leisure can be traced back to the Greeks, which means “school”. [2] The origin of this word has lost its true meaning through the centuries, but it makes more sense in the context of the Gospel reading. The apostles, after a lot of hard work, come back to school to learn more and to report what they had put into practice from their training. There were many people running and gathering to find Christ. What does Jesus do? He begins to “teach many things”. Jesus is our leisure, our school, and we can learn a lot from Him if we allow ourselves to stop, rest, and learn from Him instead of working all the time. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” [3] Leisure is to learn from Jesus and take His yoke upon us. Catholic tradition, perfected by Saint Benedict in the 6th century, is to pray and work (ora et labora). Prayer is to “learn from me” and work is to “take my yoke”.
What are our labors? We can make a list of all the labor (work) we have.
What are our burdens? What are the stresses, anxieties, and crosses in our life?
Can we work too much? Yes. We can become addicted to work. First, work is a part of everyone’s life. God made this very clear after the fall of Adam and Eve, “In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life…By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” [4] There are a lot of benefits to working hard. However, work can become our idol, our God. Think of how many families and relationships are strained by someone who is a workaholic. When we are on our deathbed are we going to be thinking, “I only wish I could have stayed at work a little longer and worked a little harder.”? Of course not! Any priest who has been around people who are at their last moments of life on earth will say that people only wish they would have spend less time at work and more time with their friends and family.
In what ways do we “learn from Jesus” when we pray? What do we “learn from Jesus”? In the spiritual reading, Saint Catherine says that prayer is to “look into the quiet seas of the divine Being.” And what do we see when we look. Saint Catherine says that we see our dignity and the faults that mar our soul’s beauty. What an honor that Our Lord gives us the same opportunity as the apostles, to see at His feet and learn from Him. What an honor that Our Lord gives us to take on His yoke.
What is a yoke? “A yoke is a wooden beam, normally used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs.” [5] Why does Jesus use this analogy? Jesus enables the Christian to pull together with Himself the load, so that the Christian in all labors and burdens can work together with Christ. In our prayer, we learn from Christ. In our work, we pull the load, with Christ. In both prayer and work, we are centered in Christ.
What happens when we choose not to pray? We do not learn from Jesus and we drift away from being centered on Christ.
What happens when we do not put on the yoke of Christ, when we do not work with Christ?Psalm 127 says that apart from God our labors are worthless. “If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labor; if the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain does the watchman keep vigil. In vain is your earlier rising, your going later to rest, you who toil for the bread you eat: when he pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber.” [6] If we do not put on the yoke of Christ, we not only labor alone, but we labor in vain.
In this Gospel, Jesus is, “moved with pity” toward the crowds. He is also moved with pity toward us. He therefore invites us into His life, through prayer “teaching us” and work. What a pity it truly is if we do not except this invitation to pray and work in Christ.
How should we see leisure? Josef Pieper argues that leisure at its heart is like a festival because in a festival (or celebration) there is the same elements found in leisure: relaxation, effortlessness, and an ascendancy of “being at leisure” over mere “function”. [7] These elements are found in religious festivals like Madi Gras, Easter, and Christmas. While celebrating, they have a religious tone to them. Secular holidays can easily loose a sense of their transcendent meaning and thus loose the sense of leisure. Instead of learning from Christ in our life, we tend to “take a break” from life. A good example is the fourth of July. If the fourth of July is just about “a break” from work or school and all about fireworks, we lose the transcendent meaning of the holiday. We miss an opportunity to learn from Christ about the value of freedom, sacrifice, and independence. There is no greater leisure or bigger festival than the Mass, it is no wonder then that Mass is celebrated on the day of rest, the Sabbath. Like all festivals we should ask, what we can learn from Christ. At the Mass, what do we learn from Christ?
Why is it good to have leisure? Many think of leisure as a vacation or time away from work. However, leisure is separate from work all together. Leisure is for the soul because it is “a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.” [8] We cannot confuse leisure with entertainment. Often we work real hard and then take a break and entertain ourselves or “veg out”. Entertaining ourselves and “vegging out” is not leisure. The correct balance is a life in which we work and pray; not work and play. What is the difference between (work and pray) and (work and play)?
Leisure allows us to learn and understand better of the things of Christ. “Leisure is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go, and ‘go under,’ almost as someone who falls asleep must let himself go.” [9] In Psalm 127 mentioned above it says, “he pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber.” God pours gifts on us, His beloved, when we rest, when we are at leisure. Almost all religious orders have recreation built into their schedule either daily or weekly.
What is recreation? If we look at the word it becomes clear, recreation is to re-creation, to create again. True recreation is to allow God to re-create us, to create us again in His image and likeness. We, whether religious or not, must give time daily or at least weekly to all God to re-create us. This re-creation can come in many ways: reading, exercise, etc., but it must be a time in which we allow our creator to work on His creation. We cannot be distracted from the creator but rather in dialogue and awareness of Him.
St. Thomas Aquinas was able to connect leisure with the third commandment, keep the Sabbath holy. We are to rest on the Sabbath. This means to practice leisure. Leisure is not watching a football game or sleeping in, but stilling our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls in order to hear God. By practicing leisure we can live the Responsorial Psalm when it says, “In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul…Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come.” [10] There are two prayers that are prayed daily in the Church that remind us of this rest. We pray, “And may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace” and after Night Prayer we pray, “My the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.” Leisure is our goal, our end, and we do not have to wait until death to practice it.
Can we abuse leisure? If we are truly practicing leisure properly, then it would be very difficult to “abuse” it. However, it can be twisted, corrupted, or misunderstood in its practice just like with everything. Two ways of twisting leisure is sloth and over working.
What is sloth? “sluggishness of soul or boredom because of the exertion necessary for the performance of a good work. The good work may be a corporal task, such as walking; or a mental exercise, such as writing; or a spiritual duty, such as prayer. Implicit in sloth is the unwillingness to exert oneself in the performance of duty because of the sacrifice and the effort required. As a sin, it is not to be confused with mere sadness over the inconvenience involved in fulfilling one’s obligations, nor with the in deliberate feelings of repugnance when faced with unpleasant work. It becomes sinful when the reluctance is allowed to influence the will and, as a result, what should have been done is either left undone or performed less well than a person is responsible for doing. Sloth may also mean a repugnance to divine inspirations or the friendship of God due to the self-sacrifice and labor needed to co-operate with actual grace or to remain in the state of grace. This kind of laziness is directly opposed to the love of God and is one of the main reasons why some people, perhaps after years of virtuous living, give up in the pursuit of holiness or even become estranged from God.” [11]
Search: Pessimism of Working
What is idleness? To be idle is to be lukewarm. It is a refusal to go one way or the other, and this is dangerous. Why? It says in the book of Revelation that God spits out those who are lukewarm. [12] Being idle means “that the human being had given up on the very responsibility that comes with his dignity: that he does not want to be what God wants him to be, and that means that he does not want to be what he really, and in the ultimate sense, is.” [13]
How can over working be a sin? The Nazi’s ultimate goal was the extermination of the Jews and all those who were inferior to the Arian race. One of the many lies they used was the saying on the sign at the Auschwitz death camp , which greeted all those who entered, said, “Work Will Set You Free”. Of course this was a lie. In a spiritual context, Satan’s ultimate goal is to kill souls. One of the many lies he uses is to make us think we can achieve all of our hopes and dreams by our work. In our society there is a huge emphasis on working. The world has told us if we work really hard we will get everything we want. However, this is not the case at all. What do we want more than anything in the world? God. To over work is to neglect God. Work can replace our devotion to God. We should work in order to have leisure in our lives, but in leisure we find our true self and by leisure we are able to fulfill our Vocation in life. It is very easy to work so much that leisure has no place.
This is the hymn sung at the processional of the Mass in the Latin Rite celebrated ending the 2008 National Conference. This hymn was written by St. Louis de Montfort.
We Want God, Oh men, ungrateful
The Supreme Father, The Redeemer
The Foolish Laugh at the Faith
In Vain They Rise Against the Lord
Bless, Oh Virgin, the Proclaiming of Our Faith
We Want God, Who is our King
We Want God, Our Father
We Want God, Who is our King
We Want God, Our Father
[1] Divine Intimacy pg. 135-136
[2] Pieper, Leisure, The Basic of Culture pg. 4
[3] Matthew 12:28-30
[4] Gen. 3:17,19
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoke
[6] Psalm 127; Liturgy of the Hours; Week III; Wednesday, Evening Prayer
[7] Leisure, The Basic of Culture pg. 50
[8] Pieper, Leisure, The Basic of Culture pg. 31
[9] Pieper, Leisure, The Basic of Culture pg. 32
[10] Psalm 23:2-3; 6
[11] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary pg. 509
[12] Revelation 3:16
[13] Pieper, Leisure, The Basic of Culture pg. 28