Modern life can easily give us the impression that our worth is measured by how much we accomplish. We admire people who are always busy and seem able to fit an extraordinary amount into each day, and we may gradually come to regard rest almost as a weakness or as time taken away from more important things. The Gospel gives us a different perspective. After the Apostles returned from their first missionary journey, they eagerly told Jesus all that they had done and taught. They had worked hard and must have been tired. Our Lord listened to them and then said, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while” (Mk 6:31). He was concerned not only with the success of their mission but with the Apostles themselves. The same Lord who had sent them out to work now recognized that they needed to recover their strength.
God never intended our lives to be an endless succession of tasks. From the beginning of creation, he established a rhythm of work and rest. Genesis tells us that after the work of creation God “rested on the seventh day.” God, of course, did not need to recover his strength, but in this way he established a pattern for human life. The commandment to keep holy the Sabbath also reminds us that we cannot work indefinitely without becoming exhausted. We need time to recover physically, but also to pray, enjoy the people we love and remember what our life is ultimately about. When this balance is neglected for too long, our work itself usually suffers.
We see the same truth in the humanity of Christ. The Son of God truly became man and accepted the ordinary limitations of human nature, except for sin. After travelling through Samaria, Jesus sat beside Jacob’s well because he was weary from the journey. The Gospel tells us this quite simply: the Son of God, through whom the universe was created, sat down beside a village well because his human body needed rest. On another occasion, after spending the day teaching the crowds, he fell asleep in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee and remained asleep even when a violent storm arose. These scenes remind us that Christ knows human tiredness from experience. He worked, walked long distances and gave himself generously to others, but he also slept when he was tired and withdrew from the crowds when he needed time apart.
Generous Christians sometimes find it difficult to accept their own need for rest. We may imagine that holiness requires us always to be doing something useful, and conscientious people can feel guilty when they stop while there is still work to be done. Certainly, there are occasions when love requires us to go beyond our normal limits. Parents lose sleep caring for a sick child, and emergencies sometimes require us to continue working despite fatigue. But exceptional circumstances should not become our normal way of living. Ordinarily, we should take reasonable care of the health God has given us so that we remain capable of fulfilling our responsibilities over the course of many years.
The saints understood this very practically. St. Francis de Sales advised Christians to take reasonable care of their health so that they could serve God faithfully, while St. Thomas Aquinas recognized that our minds need recreation because they cannot remain continually concentrated without becoming fatigued. St. Josemaría sometimes expressed the same idea with a down-to-earth comparison: if a donkey is expected to carry a load, it must also be fed and allowed to rest. We should therefore be able to rest without feeling that we are wasting time. Accepting our human limitations is not a failure of generosity; it is part of living realistically as creatures.
Our Lord’s words to the Apostles contain another important lesson. He did not simply tell them to rest; he invited them to “come away.” This is particularly relevant in a world where we can stop working without ever becoming mentally free from our work. We may leave the office or finish our duties for the day while continuing to think about emails, messages, news and unfinished tasks. Our phones make it possible to remain occupied from the moment we wake until the moment we fall asleep. Sometimes we need enough distance from these demands for our minds and bodies genuinely to recover.
This does not mean escaping from our responsibilities, nor is genuine rest simply inactivity. We can spend several hours doing very little and still finish feeling exhausted. Endless scrolling through social media or moving continuously from one form of entertainment to another may distract us without refreshing us. We need to discover what actually restores us. Sometimes we simply need sleep; at other times a walk, a good book or time with family and friends may help us recover. The important thing is that our free time should not become merely another form of restless activity.
Modern technology has made this more difficult because it fills almost every empty moment. The instant we have a few free minutes, we can reach for a screen and begin absorbing information without making any conscious decision about how we want to use the time. There is nothing wrong with entertainment, and a good film, music or a hobby can be excellent recreation. The problem arises when we become incapable of leaving any space unfilled. We may benefit from recovering the ability to go for a walk without listening to anything, read a book with our full attention, enjoy a meal without repeatedly checking a screen, or spend time with someone we love without feeling that we ought to be doing something else.
Josef Pieper wrote perceptively about leisure because he understood that it is very different from laziness. Much of modern life is organized around producing, achieving and accomplishing, but some of the most valuable things cannot be approached primarily in terms of usefulness. We do not listen to beautiful music merely because it might make us more productive, nor should we spend time with a friend because we expect some measurable return. Above all, we do not worship God because prayer is an efficient means of accomplishing a task. We need the capacity to receive what is good simply because it is good, and periods of genuine leisure can help restore that capacity.
Sunday teaches us this every week. The centre of the Lord’s Day is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, when we turn more deliberately toward God and remember that our whole life comes from him and is directed toward him. The rest of the day should flow naturally from this. According to our circumstances, we may have more time for family and friends or enjoy forms of recreation that are difficult during the working week. Sunday should have a different rhythm because it reminds us that we are more than workers. We may be doctors, teachers, students or engaged in any number of occupations, but none of these describes who we are at the deepest level. Before all our responsibilities and accomplishments, we are children of God.
We need this reminder because even good work can become excessive. We may be involved in worthwhile projects and sincerely want to serve God, yet gradually become so busy that we lose our interior balance. Prayer itself can begin to feel like one more obligation that must be fitted into an overcrowded schedule. The Gospel account of Martha and Mary speaks directly to this danger. Martha was doing something good: she was serving Christ and caring for her guests. Our Lord did not criticize her for working, but he pointed out that she had become “anxious and troubled about many things.” Mary, meanwhile, sat at his feet and listened. We need both attitudes in our lives. We have work to do and should do it well, but our activity must remain rooted in our relationship with God. If we become so busy serving Christ that we no longer have time to be with him, something has become disordered.
Periods of rest can help us recover this balance. When we step away from our ordinary duties, we may have more time for prayer or spiritual reading without immediately rushing to the next task. A vacation can also give us enough distance from our normal routine to look at our life with greater perspective. We should therefore choose our recreation intelligently. Not everything that entertains us necessarily does us good, and some harmless activities can consume so much time that they displace things that matter more. We do not need to analyze anxiously every form of entertainment, but it is reasonable occasionally to consider whether the way we spend our free time actually leaves us refreshed and better able to return to our responsibilities.
One of the best forms of recreation is often simply spending time with other people. Our Lord himself valued friendship. He accepted invitations to meals, attended the wedding feast at Cana and enjoyed the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. We should not regard time with family and friends as unproductive simply because nothing measurable is being accomplished. Some of the most important moments of our lives occur when nothing particularly remarkable is happening: a conversation that continues after a meal, a walk with a friend or an afternoon spent together without a programme. Years later, these may be among the moments we remember most fondly. They remind us that people are more important than projects.
Our experience of fatigue can also teach us something about ourselves. When we are tired, we become very conscious of our limitations. Our concentration weakens, our energy runs out and sometimes we need other people to help us. We should accept this without resentment. We are creatures, not God, and there is no reason to be embarrassed by the ordinary limitations of the nature he has given us. Becoming aware of our own limits can also make us more attentive to others. Once we know what it is like to be exhausted or overwhelmed, we may be quicker to notice when someone else is carrying too much and offer some practical help.
There will nevertheless be occasions when we cannot rest as much as we would like. Duty may require us to continue despite fatigue, and at such times we can unite our tiredness to Christ, who knows from experience what exhaustion feels like. A parent awake during the night with a child or someone completing an urgent responsibility can offer that fatigue to God as part of his or her self-giving. We should neither neglect reasonable rest nor make comfort into an absolute requirement. If we normally care for ourselves sensibly, we will also be better prepared to make the sacrifices that love sometimes demands.
The Christian understanding of rest can be summed up in the saying that “love never takes a holiday.” We may take a break from our ordinary work, but we never cease to be Christians. Our circumstances and schedules change, but our relationship with God and our concern for others remain. We see this beautifully in Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman. Jesus had been travelling through Samaria and, tired from the journey, sat down beside Jacob’s well while his disciples went into the town to buy food. When a woman arrived to draw water, he could easily have remained silent. Instead, he began a conversation that transformed her life. Christ had stopped because he was tired, but he remained attentive to the person whom Providence placed before him.
Our holidays do not need to become organized apostolic projects. We should genuinely rest and enjoy them. Yet even when we are resting, we can remain attentive to the people around us. A vacation with our family may give us more time to strengthen relationships that receive too little attention during a busy year, while travel can bring us into contact with people whose lives are very different from our own. Often nothing dramatic is required. Ordinary consideration, patience when plans go wrong and a genuine interest in the people we encounter can all become expressions of Christian charity.
We should also resist the temptation to make a vacation almost as busy as the rest of the year. It is possible to plan every hour, rush from one attraction to another and return home needing several days to recover. Often we benefit from leaving some space in the day. We may want time simply to walk, read or enjoy a long meal without having to hurry somewhere afterward. Families in particular can benefit from having enough unplanned time simply to be together.
Nature can help us regain a sense of perspective. Our Lord often withdrew to the mountains or spent time near the Sea of Galilee, and Scripture repeatedly directs our attention to creation as a reflection of God’s wisdom and goodness. A walk through the countryside or time beside a lake can help us step away from the artificial pace of modern life and notice things that ordinarily escape our attention. Good literature, music and art can have a similar effect by enlarging our understanding of life and our appreciation of beauty. We do not need to justify everything we enjoy by proving that it is useful. A mature Christian should be capable of receiving good things gratefully and enjoying them as gifts from God.
At the same time, a vacation does not suspend our spiritual life. We continue to need prayer and the sacraments, and if we are away on Sunday we make reasonable arrangements to attend Mass. Our schedule may change considerably, but the habits that sustain our relationship with God should not simply disappear. In fact, a vacation can sometimes give us more time for him. Without the normal pressure of work, we may be able to pray with less haste, visit a church while travelling or read something that helps our interior life. None of this needs to make a holiday solemn or burdensome. God should be naturally present in our rest just as he is present in our work.
There is another kind of rest that we do not choose. Illness, injury or advancing age may force us to slow down and prevent us from doing what we once did easily. This can be particularly difficult for people who have always been active because we can unconsciously identify our value with our usefulness. When we are no longer able to accomplish as much, we may begin to feel that we matter less. Yet our worth before God has never depended upon how much we produce. Someone confined to a hospital bed or no longer able to work remains infinitely precious to him and can continue to love, pray and offer his or her limitations to God.
Sometimes the most difficult part of such a situation is having to receive help. We may be accustomed to independence and dislike relying on others, but there are periods of life when we have to allow other people to care for us and surrender plans that mattered greatly to us. Christ himself accepted helplessness. As an infant, he depended completely upon Mary and Joseph, and during his Passion he allowed himself to be bound and led where others wished. On the Cross his hands and feet were nailed so that he could no longer move freely. When circumstances impose limitations upon us, we can unite ourselves to him without pretending that illness or incapacity is good in itself. We seek recovery when it is possible, but when something cannot be changed, it can still become part of our path to God.
Stopping work also teaches us something very simple: the world continues without us. This can be a healthy discovery, especially for conscientious people who take their responsibilities seriously. Our work matters and we should do it well, but none of us is indispensable. God governs the world perfectly well while we sleep. We do what he asks of us and use the abilities he has given us, but the fulfilment of his plans does not depend upon our constant activity. Remembering this can free us from an exaggerated sense that everything rests on our shoulders.
Our Lord himself sometimes left work unfinished. There were still sick people in Palestine whom he had not healed and towns in which he had not preached, yet he withdrew to pray and told his Apostles to rest. This is particularly important for those of us who find it difficult to stop because there is always something more that could be done. There will indeed always be more to do. Christian responsibility does not mean completing every possible task before allowing ourselves to rest. We need to discern what God is asking of us now, do it as well as we reasonably can, and then be capable of putting our work aside when the appropriate time comes.
Our periods of rest also remind us that work is not our final destiny. Sacred Scripture speaks of an eternal Sabbath prepared for God’s people. Heaven is described as rest, not because we will be inactive, but because the deepest desires of the human heart will finally be fulfilled in God. Every good experience of rest gives us some small anticipation of this. When we are with people we love and have nowhere else we need to be, when we stand before something beautiful simply to enjoy it, or when we pray without hurry, we are reminded that we were created for more than striving and accomplishing. We were created ultimately for communion with God.
We should therefore learn both to work well and to rest well. There is a time to give ourselves fully to our duties and a time to put them aside. When we work, we should try to do so with competence and love; when the time comes to rest, we should receive that rest gratefully rather than feeling guilty because some legitimate work remains unfinished. Both work and rest belong to the life God has given us, and both can become part of our vocation to holiness.
The words Christ addressed to the Apostles remain an invitation to each of us: “Come away by yourselves… and rest a while.” We can accept that invitation without guilt, enjoying the good things God has given us and allowing ourselves to recover our strength. Then, when the time comes to return to our duties, we can do so with renewed energy and a greater capacity to serve. We sanctify our rest in much the same way that we sanctify our work: by living it in the presence of God. Whether our day is filled with activity or gives us time to rest, our deepest identity remains unchanged. We are his children, and our life belongs to him.
*By the Via Virtutis team
Foto de Kate Stone Matheson en Unsplash
