appreciating the sabbath rest - 2nd week tuesday 2014

Today, more and more people no longer appreciate the Sabbath rest or for us Christians, the Sunday’s rest on the day of the Lord.  More and more people are becoming very busy, some have even no more time for worship or for mass.  I even heard confessions saying, I forgot that it was Sunday.  In a book written by Thomas Cahill, the Gift of the Jews he pointed out that one of the best things which the Jews contributed to civilization after monotheism or belief in one God is the Sabbath rest.  No other people before the Jews instituted a day of rest.  And he emphatically noted a people who do not or have not instituted a day of rest in their live “emptier and less resourceful” lives.  In the bible those who work seven days a week even if they are paid millions are in the biblical understanding, salves, they are the real slaves.  We Christians inherited this tradition of rest, that a day is set for worship and for rest and because of the importance of Sunday to our faith this rest was transferred to Sunday.

How many of us here rest on Sundays?  Obviously we priest could not rest on Sundays because it is our busiest time.  But more importantly we should also ask the question how many of us here permit, or allow or even oblige those under us, those working for us to rest and to find time for worship whatever their religion is on Sundays or on the days their belief appoint as their day of rest.  Many times we rest at the expense of others.

Jesus affirms what the heavenly Father declared in the book of Genesis, to make holy the day of rest.  Jesus affirmed this by saying that the Sabbath is made for man, we need to rest, we need to free ourselves every week from labor and it is for our benefit.

Resting makes us human because we affirm that there is more to human life than making money, we affirm that there is more to human life than just our physical life – we also need to nourish our spirits, we also need to strengthen our bonds as family, we need also to relieve ourselves from the stress of our daily routine.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Agnes, Virgin and Martyr.  She did not want to marry even if her would be husband is well-positioned and wealthy.  She only wanted to dedicate her life for God and thus she was martyred for her belief.  What does the choice of Agnes show us?  It teaches us the primacy of God.  God is prior, God is first, God is more important.  And this is also what our Sunday’s rest would want us to be emphatic about – God is first in my life, God is prior over and above my other concerns, God is first.  But alas this is no longer true in our society beset by consumerism where many of us need to work more so that we can spend more.  Today let us recover a sense of balance in our life.  It is the only way we can be human and it is the only way we can begin treating each other as human beings, when we recognize that we are more than strong bones and muscles, that we are more than bodies, that we are not machines, that we are not commodities to be bought and sold, that what we have in us and around us were made for man, were made for us, just as the Sabbath is made for man and not the other way around.

Look at it from an angle - when we begin to treat each as commodities to be used, it destroys a whole fabric of morality that will explain why there are modern slaves like the so called white slavery and even child sex of which the Philippines has become popular recently.

It is just a day of rest, simple as that, but the values it destroy when we belittle it can be tremendous and even scandalous.