Working at Resting

Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time                                      July 22, 2018
Fr. Albert                                                                                            St. Peter’s, New Iberia

Are you tired? I don’t mean wanting to crawl back into bed. I’m talking about a deeper weariness; a sense of being frayed and unable to find peace. Are you too tired to love? Loving someone can be exhausting, but when you have a primal resistance, a sense that you need to run away from love… then you are not just tired, you are truly weary.

And when that happens, what do you do? When you are worn out, stressed, and overwhelmed? Do you rest, or just merely escape. Television, idle conversation, scrolling through the internet and letting our focus just slip away. And does that work? How many times do we come back from a day off, a weekend, or a vacation just as tired as we started, worn out and too irritable to return to our work with love?

Or perhaps you just keep working, always reaching for the next useful thing to do: going from task to task never stopping to notice that the world, your relationships, and your very self is changing all the while, never realizing you’re tired because you never stop to notice.

Whatever the case, it should ring true to most people that our culture does not know how to rest. We have forgotten how to be genuinely renewed, empowered to persevere not just in our daily jobs, but in the much greater work of love.

So, hear what Christ says. “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” The Apostles’ preaching and miracle working has made them famous and that fame has begun to take its toll on them. Here, they don’t even have time to eat because the crowds were so insistent, so non-stop. The Lord wants His Apostles to rest.

But what does it mean to rest? The answer to that is in God’s own example, the seventh day, the sabbath, the day of holy rest. Saturday for the Jews and Sunday for us, honoring the sabbath is a commandment for a reason. It is there to remind us of the need to rest and to show us how.

We tend to view rest as “me time,” but is that the Scriptural vision? It’s not to indulge ourselves. The holy days and festivals of the Old Testament command that work be replaced by worship. When Elijah is exhausted from fighting pagan corruption, where does he find rest? On the mountain of God, in the quiet place of the cave, listening to the still, small voice. With the Apostles, Jesus is revealing something deeper.

The crowds are there waiting at the place of rest; Their resort destination is full of needy pilgrims. Does Jesus resent this and assert his right to personal space? No, “his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” The reality is that these people had no rest either. They lived in a continual state of uncertainty; They were unable to rest because the shepherds, the leaders of Israel failed to provide them the guidance and security the needed to rest.

This scene is actually the beginning of the miracle of feeding five thousand people. It’s tempting to see this as Jesus going back on his offer to rest because he puts the apostles to “work” handing out all the miraculous food. The reality, however, is that Jesus puts them to “work” precisely so that they can rest.

This miracle of multiplying loaves is, of course, a sign of the Eucharist. Over the next several Sundays, we will hear the “Bread of Life” discourse from the Gospel, which is where we get some of Jesus’ most profound teaching on the Eucharist. The overarching message should be clear: to rest requires that we worship. And for Christianity, that worship is not something we make up; It is a participation in the holy “work” of the liturgy. On the Sundays of August, Fr. Blanda and I will take you step by step through the liturgy, the Mass, to explain the symbolism and work that is meant to renew and strengthen us.

Yes, true rest is not idleness, but engaging the “work” of worship, and of leisure. Unlike simply “letting it all go,” leisure has a more transcendent value. The commandment to keep holy the sabbath means to stop working long enough to worship God and to enjoy the gifts he has given us. Family, Food, and genuine recreation.

Holy Leisure strives to create space and time to regain perspective on work and life. Rather than pleasure and self-indulgence, it is wonder and contemplation. The Mass is a participation in the eternal worship of God in heaven, a wonder of transcendence. Breaking from worldly labor allows us to marvel at creation, art, the goodness of family and friends, the delights of food and drink. Leisure is deliberate, not dissipation

Even the word recreation points us in a better direction. It is re-creation. At creation, God rests on the seventh to simply enjoy the fact that creation is now “very good.” Jesus sends out his Apostles to draw all of creation back to God; He concludes it with a miraculous meal and the revelation of the Eucharist, a sacrament that takes a piece of creation, bread, and turns it into God.

Every Sunday is a re-creation, a sacred time to gather all of creation to the altar, to have it re-created in the perfect sacrifice that feeds us and restores us. Are you truly re-created by binging on social media and Netflix? By getting drunk? By shutting off your will and blindly following instinct for a few hours?

And this matters because it all comes back to love. Without the time to experience wonder and awe and delight in the goodness of creation – to be re-created – you will not know love. Love delights in another and to wants what is best for them. How can you do that if you have never seen the beauty and goodness of existence itself, if you never pause to remember what truly matters?

Our culture is tired. That is why it so quickly lashes out in irritable reclusiveness. We’re too tired to love because we’re to proud to rest, to turn away from the noise of the world and truly re-create ourselves according to God’s design. Reclaim our heritage. Seize Sunday for Mass and for holy leisure, not dissipation and entertainment.

If you want to understand what the looks like, then let God and His church be a shepherd to you. Read the beautiful letter written by Pope St. John Paul II on the value of Sunday. It is called “Dies Domini,” which is Latin for “The Lords Day.” Read it, but don’t see it as homework, see it instead as it is, the invitation of Christ to “come away and rest a while.” Reclaim your rest. Be re-created in God and never, never grow weary of love.