From Father Steven - July 14, 2024

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

I came across a very interesting article about Resting on Vacations. It is often very difficult to rest properly. I hope it helps you and your family.

God Bless,

Fr. Steven

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The school holidays can often lead to conflicts within families as they struggle to balance the children's desire for fun with the parents' need for rest. This is especially true for families who cannot synchronize their vacations with those of their children. Additionally, teenagers often find their parents' plans boring and prefer to make their own arrangements. So, how can families find rest and leisure together? This article will not provide a "vacation itinerary" or suggest games or activities for children. Instead, it will draw upon the Word of God and the Magisterium of the Church to offer a teaching on rest that can provide a foundation for families to plan their own leisure time within their own realities and possibilities.

The need for rest is something we can all feel in our bodies and minds, but we don't always have a clear idea of what it really means to rest. Some people rest simply by sleeping, others by looking at a landscape, while others, with more active temperaments, come up with such complicated ways to rest that they end up getting more tired than before. Rest, in fact, is something that deeply touches our desire for happiness, well-being, and the restoration of the "lost paradise." In the biblical "paradise," before sin, human work meant caring for the work of creation in submission to God. We can find this call directed to us in the command: "fill the earth and subdue it" (Gn 1:28). According to the narrative of the book of Genesis, God blessed the seventh day and consecrated it, for on that day he had ceased from all the work that he had created (cf. Gn 1:3). Saint John Paul II, in the Letter "Dies Domini" (Day of the Lord), teaches that here the day of rest was created, the day set apart for the praise of the Creator.

Sin distorted everything! Man was called to live in an orderly way: administering the earth in submission to the Lord and, on the seventh day, resting in God. And everything he would do, both in work and in rest, would always be in honor and praise of God. Still in the book of Genesis we can read that, after the sin of man, God walked in the garden of paradise in the afternoon breeze in search of the man and the woman, who hid from him! (cf. Gn 3:8-11) - It is clear that these narratives were written in a symbolic language, to refer to much deeper realities. From the moment of sin, we would eat bread with the sweat of our brow (cf. Gn 3:19) and hide from God, avoiding walking with Him in the afternoon breeze. The meaning of work and rest was lost. However, Jesus came to redeem the true meaning of these realities. The Gospels show us in Jesus - the model of man - the order restored between work and rest; how often we see him setting aside some of his time from his intense work of healing and evangelization, of spreading and establishing the Kingdom, to withdraw and rest with his friends! Rest is not an escape from work or irresponsibility, but a need that the human being has to interrupt a series of productive activities to enjoy activities in which there is no tension for results. Leisure, therefore, is not a period of simply staying inactive, but of "occupying oneself" in activities that do not generate any of the inner demands that tire the mind and body.

In this way, finding the dreamed-of rest becomes not a matter of choosing the most beautiful place, the most fun companions, or the favorite games. Although all of this can even be found, true rest requires much more of an inner disposition: to abandon all the activism we have been living in our daily lives, which generates so much disunity and murmuring, to find ourselves again through loving interpersonal relationships and a true spirit of charity, which is the praise that God expects of us.

In light of all that we have seen, it becomes clear that families need to come together to pray and listen to what God wants to provide for them on that Sunday, on that vacation, on that holiday. This will involve giving up on each of us pulling in the direction we believe is the best leisure option. Again, in the Letter "Dies Domini," the Holy Father says that Jesus came to redeem Sunday, through our recreation as new men and women who submit their whole lives to Him and find in Him true joy and authentic rest. Here are our prayers that together, as a family, we may truly live the rest that the Lord has won for us. Let us, as families, seek to find true rest together.