Dear Friends,
I love summer in the Midwest. I love long days and warm sun on my face. I love the sunlight waking me up in the morning. I love a schedule that is not so rushed, where I can pause and enjoy the moment at hand. I suppose if I had the pleasures of this season year-round, then I would not appreciate it so much when I do have it.
Most of us live our lives at a pace which makes it difficult to appreciate the gifts and wonders God puts into our lives. It is the regret I hear from people when they are approaching the end of their life. They always wish they would have slowed down and enjoyed the beauty of the world around them and the presence of their loved ones more. Now they find it too late. Life is ending and there is no longer the time or ability to embrace what they so much desire.
I think that is one of the reasons that God gives us a commandment to honor the Sabbath. Once a week we need to stop, to refrain from the regular busyness of our lives, to look, to listen, to rest, and to encounter God. We need a whole day once a week.
The Church, in her two thousand years of experience, says that the Sabbath rest alone is not enough for those who have the responsibility of guiding others. At least once a year, the Church instructs that those who are ordained need to take a week to rest in God and so get in touch with the divine on a little deeper level. Those longer times of rest and quiet bear the name retreat. A retreat normally requires getting away from the temptations of our home and office because we are prone to fill our days with busyness.
However, simply because God commands a time of rest and the Church encourages a time of retreat, that does not mean that work is bad. Work was first employed by God himself. And, God assigns the Man and Woman to tend to God’s garden. In telling the people of Israel to remember the Sabbath, God was also reminding them of the divinely-inspired gift of work: the joy of putting one’s hands to something to make it move, of creating something that has never before existed, of solving problems that benefit the community, of marveling at incredible art, of conquering uninhabitable lands, of irrigating deserts, of feeding a child. People are given the capacity to play the role of the divine to the extent that we are able.
To flourish as God intends, we are to revel in both divine rest and co-creator work. Work is a righteous pursuit; rest is an equally righteous pursuit.
This year, our parish is trying something new. We are offering a retreat for parishioners for a weekend. This will be a time to rest, to enjoy nature, to have some quiet, to hear some new insights from a wise spiritual guide which will send us back home with a greater appreciation of where God has put us. We have reserved the Creighton Retreat Center in Iowa and asked Fr. Andy Alexander to give us a few presentations. The retreat will be the weekend of September 15 to 17. We are limited by the capacity of the retreat center and we are nearing that number. However, if you are at all tempted to join me and fellow parishioners on retreat, please call Ann Lenz at 402-990-3296 and reserve a space for yourself in the next week or so. You will be glad you did.
Let me end by giving you an insight from discussions among scholars. They would say that perhaps the Sabbath was the greatest day of work because it served to work on people’s souls, served to bind a community together with divine ineffable and intangible things. The day was not intended for the work of humankind, it was set aside for the work of God — or rather, the rest of God, in which the human family could play and run free. The ease of a Midwest summer does the same for me. It works on my soul. I hope it is working on yours.
Peace,
Fr. Damian