Day 8: 23rd May – Celebrating Rest

From Laudato Si:
The law of weekly rest forbade work on the seventh day, “so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your maidservant, and the stranger, may be refreshed”

‘Rest opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others. And so the day of rest, centred on the Eucharist, sheds it light on the whole week, and motivates us to greater concern for nature and the poor.’ # 237

Reflection:
Like most life forms humans require rest. We have all at some point either been encouraged to, or decided ourselves to, take a rest from a particularly onerous task. And upon returning new insight has come, renewed effort is possible.

But there is more, because ‘rest opens our eyes to the larger picture’ as Pope Francis points out, and it makes us sensitive to the rights and needs of the other. We even see that not only the human requires rest but so does the ‘ox and the donkey’.

After rest we can engage again with the whole of ourselves. It is unfortunate that over time Sunday rest became less about this sense of renewal and more about adhering to regulation. Thus many people forgot about the need for rest or filled the time with more consumer oriented activity.

Now with time on our hands, we can begin again to see and experience the deeper meaning of rest – the opening of our eyes to the bigger picture, the rekindling of motivation in our concern for nature and the poor.

Prayer:
Let us be ever mindful of the gift of rest – its power to renew and revive us, to open us up to the larger reality of our world – so that we can respond with compassion and sensitivity to the fragility of earth and the great needs of the poorest of humanity.

All of the previous Laudato Si’ daily reflections can be found in our Resources Section under Social Issues.

Margaret Twomey rsm