Threats to Rest

One

The danger of the weekend

In the last several years of his pontificate, St. John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter on the Importance of the Lord’s Day.

He talked about how crucial it is that we begin to observe the third commandment by fulfilling our religious obligations and taking time for true rest and recreation. 

He also noticed that the Holiness of Sunday was being threatened by the weekend, a two-day clump where you’re not really committed to anything.

He said, “When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a "weekend", it can happen that people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see "the heavens". Hence, though ready to celebrate, they are really incapable of doing so.”

This is true. Many of us treat Saturday as just a day to flake out, sit around aimlessly, or do random things on impulse.

Then when Sunday rolls around, we realize we have a lot to do to get ready for Monday and that turns Sunday into a day of work.

This is not how it’s supposed to be. So what can we do to prevent Sunday – which is supposed to be a day of rest and prayer – from turning into the part of the weekend where we play catch-up on work?

Two

Get your work done on Saturday.

Everything important, including the practice of our faith, requires discipline and planning.

If we’re going to pray, if we’re going to tithe, if we’re going to catechize our kids, if we’re going to become educated in the faith – that requires discipline and planning.

So too, the observation of the Lord’s Day will require discipline and planning. 

In the book of Exodus, there was no manna that came down on the Sabbath, so the people couldn’t gather their daily food on the Lord’s Day. They had to remember that the day before the Lord’s day and gather twice the manna so that they could rest on the Sabbath.

In other words, they had to plan, and they had to take steps the day before the sabbath so that the sabbath could be a day of rest.

So too, we have to plan, and we have to take steps on Saturday so that Sunday can be a day of rest. We have to do what needs to be done for our jobs or our classes on Saturday.

We can’t treat every Sunday as an emergency just because we didn’t think ahead.

Parents and teachers will often tell their procrastinating children: “Your lack of planning is not my emergency.”

That’s what God tells us every Sunday: “Your lack of planning on Saturday is not my emergency today. Today, you keep My Day Holy.”

Three

Sports

The other great cultural threat to Sunday is the great behemoth of sports. 

This consumes parents’ lives on Sundays. It consumes a family’s time on Sundays. Fathers miss mass and ignore their kids because Sunday is their day for spending quality time with football.

One of the major reasons Americans give for missing mass on Sunday is sports-related. Which is nice and clear: it tells us what the idol is that prevents us from putting God first.

Four

The example of the Maccabees

At the end of the Old Testament, the pagan Greeks tried to destroy the true religion of the Jews. But before the violence began, the first step to destroying true religion was to build a sports arena right next to the Temple and schedule sports at the same time as temple worship. 

2 Maccabees 4 relates that the Jews naively gave into the Greek way of life and built a gymnasium next to the Temple. And the Maccabees says:

“So that the Jews ceased to show any interest in the services of the altar; scorning the Temple and neglecting the sacrifices, they would hurry to take part in the unlawful exercises on the training ground as soon as the signal was given for the sporting events…But all this brought its own evil consequences; the very people whose way of life they envied, whom they sought to resemble in everything, proved to be their enemies and executioners. It is no small thing to violate the divine laws, as the persecution that followed will demonstrate.”

In other words, the Jews started by preferring sports to Sabbath worship. And then the persecution came – because they had shown that they weren’t really faithful.

So when we put sports ahead of faith and family on Sunday, why should we expect anything other than the utter destruction of Christian society? 

Five

Are we forming the culture or is the culture forming us?

The Holiness of the Lord’s Day has always been a primary indicator that reveals whether His People will be true to Him or true to the world.

It is a fairly reliable indicator of our priorities. What matters most to us?

If sports matter most to us, then we will sacrifice rest, prayer, and time with family and friends to make sports happen, either on tv or on the field. If comfort and entertainment matter most to us, then we will simply lounge around, entertain ourselves, with no thought for God. And if work matters most to us, then we might get a bit of relaxation on Saturday night, but we’ll spend Sunday gearing up for the coming week.

If God matters most to us, then we’ll organize our weekend so as to keep Sunday pure, holy. A day of rest, of community, and of liturgy. 

Six days – especially a Saturday where you don’t go to school or work – should suffice for a full week of getting things done.