Summertime has returned under the Tower. Final exams have been graded. Grades have been posted. The rugby team has won yet another state championship and things have quieted down for the time being at Saint Ignatius. Memorial Day firmly behind us, we have entered into summer: a time of vacations, of evenings on the front porch or back deck, a time when we ostensibly devote ourselves to leisure.
Leisure, in my experience, is a concept we tend to misunderstand and under-appreciate. In short, we—especially we Americans—view leisure (weekends, vacations, evenings) as a means by which we can recharge our batteries so we can get back to work refreshed and ready to go. Our faith teaches us quite the opposite: leisure is what we are made for.
Work enables us to rest.
In her book Walking on Water: Reflections and Art, Madeleine L’Engle (known better as the author of A Wrinkle in Time) insightfully remarked that we are “human beings, not human doings.” Too often we gauge our worth and/or find our identity in what we do, our professions. How often have we seen professional athletes—who have more than enough money to live on—hanging on well past their prime or repeatedly coming back from retirement? How many of those who are retired don’t know what to do with their newly-acquired free time? How many people have gone through existential crises in the wake of a down-sizing or firing?
Catholic social teaching reminds us that there is dignity in work. Work enables us to contribute to the common good, to develop our talents and provide an outlet for our creativity, and to bring us into relationship with others in our workplaces. Work is a good—but it is an instrumental, not intrinsic one. It doesn’t define us. It is what we do—not who we are.
Who we are are children of God: heirs to His Kingdom, loved and called to live in love with God and each other. And it is in our leisure where we grow those relationships.
Knowing us better than we know ourselves—and our tendency to get lost in busyness (business?)—the Lord literally commands us to take it easy. Scholars tell us that the earliest scriptural writing revolved around the Law, starting with the Ten Commandments. Christians recall that the third of those commands is the injunction to rest:
Remember the sabbath day—keep it holy. Six days you may labor and do all
your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God. You shall
not do any work, either you, your son or your daughter, your male or female
slave, your work animal, or the resident alien within your gates. (Ex.20: 8-10)
Legislation such as the now-defunct blue laws which curtailed or prohibited most forms of work on Sundays and the 40-hour work week were ways society enshrined leisure into our culture. As society has “progressed,” both of those things have largely gone, and since COVID showed the financial advantages to many companies of having employees work remotely, many have lamented that “working from home” is more like “living at work.”
As early as the mid-eighteenth century, French philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie declared Man to be a machine (L’Homme Machine). While most (though certainly not all) would disagree with such a reductionist view of humanity, our language and practice suggest that we may have bought into that view more than we realize. Look at how we describe food as “fuel” and how we look at rest and leisure as opportunities to recharge so that we will be more efficient when we get back to work.
But that’s not why we rest. In his version of the Gospel, St Luke (Lk. 10: 38-42) famously recounts Jesus’s words when he visited his friends, sisters Martha and Mary. Mary, one recalls, sat at the foot of Jesus while her sister Martha was presumably overwhelmed with the work associated with welcoming her guest. After Martha asked Jesus to tell Mary to get to work, He responded: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
That “one thing” we need is resting in the Lord, something that we seem to have forgotten. Note that St. Luke positions the account immediately after he recalls the work of the 72 disciples in spreading the Gospel and after Jesus spoke the parable of the Good Samaritan. In those accounts we see people doing good, necessary work. Indeed so was the work of Martha. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we must constantly do more and more things in life. (Look at how the Ignatian concept of magis has been distorted from an understanding of growing deeper in our relationship with God to the idea of piling up activities.) Jesus reminded Martha—and us—that resting in Him is what is most important.
The virtues of prudence and temperance help us to find the balance between the necessity (and goodness) of work and the need (and meaning) of leisure in our lives. As we do so, let us remember that we are made for leisure, for this is where we find the Lord. So, as we begin our journey through summer, I challenge us all to, for God’s sake,
Relax.
A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.