INTRODUCTION: I began this reflection briefly this morning on Facebook and decided to fully flesh it out. Obeying the commandment to keep holy the Lord’s Day is one of the hardest commandments to keep for someone in church ministry. To truly keep holy the Lord’s Day requires more than just to be present in church. This is especially true for those who are ordained and “doing” the services on the Lord’s Day. I acknowledge that all who are ordained may not see honoring this commandment through the same lens that I have. Nonetheless, I believe that keeping holy the Lord’s Day is an ongoing challenge for all in church ministry.
While my work week really begins on Saturday, Monday still feels like the beginning of the week. One of the topics for the next Archdiocesan clergy day is how the ordained can keep holy the Sabbath. When you are working the Sabbath, you don’t celebrate it. Working in the Church can often make one weary of religion. After a load of weekend Masses, baptisms, & pastoral visits the last thing I seek is more religion.
Being essentially an introvert, it takes a great deal of energy to be present and celebrate Mass well. Unlike extroverts who are energized by large groups of people, I find that large groups of people suck the energy from me. So when I am done with Sunday rituals & visits, I need time to just be away to replenish my energy. Sabbath is synonymous with rest. How does one keep holy the Sabbath when in celebrating it, one is exhausted by it? When the Sabbath is anything but a day of rest?
Rabbi Harold Kushner addresses the important need for the Sabbath as a time to rest one’s soul in his book, “The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm.” He writes: “I read once of a group of tourists on safari in Africa. They had hired several native porters to carry their supplies while they trekked. After three days, the porters told them that they would have to stop and rest for a day. They were not tired, they explained, but “we have walked too far too fast and now we must wait for our souls to catch up to us.” We too can be so busy taking care of things that we neglect our souls. What shall we say about the men and women who invest so much time and energy in their jobs that they have neither time nor energy left for their families when they arrive home? Do they need to pause to let their souls catch up to them?
” … The world asks so much of us. We give ourselves so totally to our work, to the task of raising our family and running a home, to our volunteer commitments that we often forget to take time to nourish our souls, forgetting that we need to rely on the wisdom of the soul to guide our working and our living hours. Our bodies are more active when we are awake than when we are sleeping, sometimes frantically so. But our souls may be as absent during the day as they are at night. We lack the wisdom of those native porters, the wisdom to know that we have left our souls behind and we need to stop and let our souls catch up to us. The psalmist would remind us that God has given us ways to reclaim our humanity when pressures of time and obligation have caused us to misplace it, and that part of God’s role as faithful guardian of the flock is to urge us to remember to be human. Our task is to stop long enough to hear that message.
” … When our souls are on the verge of giving in to compassion fatigue, when we know what the right thing to do is but we are tired of being charitable and helpful, that is when we need God to restore our souls, to replenish our ability to act like human beings, to understand that what is asked of us is not to make the world perfect but to make one person’s life better. When events challenge our faith so that we find it hard to believe that this world is God’s world, that is when we need God to restore our souls, to reinforce our ability to believe in ourselves and in our ability to do good things. Even as a faithful shepherd gives his flock the food and water they need to be sheep, God, our faithful shepherd, gives us the strength of soul we need to be human.”*
Now beginning my 41st year of ministry, in being busy about “doing” the Sabbath for 40 years, I have realized that I have been cheating the Sabbath. It has taken its toll on me. While I have not lost my soul, it takes quite a while for my soul to “catch up with me.” And I confess, that some weeks and even some months, particularly the high holy seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter, my soul may never catch up with me.
I find it ironic that the one thing that those of us in ministry “doing religion” share with those that never darken the door of any church, synagogue, mosque or temple, is distraction from God. Many who do not go to church, synagogue, mosque or temple are distracted from God by all the things of life. Many of us in ministry may be distracted from God by being busy “doing religious things.” Having been busy about “doing religion” for over 40 years, I have come to see that “doing religion” is not being faithful. “Doing religion” is about being busy. It is about work obligations. Rather than building faith, “doing religion” is distracting me from faith, preventing me from being fully faithful.
While many people get excited about Relevant Radio, EWTN, and other religious programming and media, I eschew it all. In ministry, one is immersed in religion, rest does not come from drowning in the glut of religious radio, television, and print media, much of it painfully trite, self-righteous, filled with religious schmaltz and sentimentality, and, a near occasion of sin (EWTN especially so for me).
I love the Bible, however, I do not find rest in the Bible. Why? Reading the Bible is more about doing than resting for me. Having been thoroughly schooled in Biblical Exegesis in graduate school and the seminary, the Bible has a task oriented focus. It is hard to pray the Bible when one’s mindset has been focused on “studying” the Bible. The Liturgy of the Hours, or breviary, as church neo-cons call it, is pretty much the same. I do faithfully pray it every day. However, its focus is again task oriented. In praying the Liturgy of the Hours, we join our prayer with that of Christ to the Father, praying for the whole world. Noble? Yes! Necessary? Absolutely! Restful? No!
So, how can someone stay in ministry, keep holy the Sabbath, and truly rest in the Sabbath? This question has become my major focus for my 41st year of ministry. With only one day off a week, and that day often spent in doing the necessary things about the house and being present to my family, the day is too task oriented to truly keep holy the Sabbath, to rest as God has commanded us to rest.
I am convinced that the only way for me, as a church minister, to keep holy the Sabbath is to escape doing religion. To clarify, this does not mean to divest myself of Catholicism, to skip Sunday Masses, or to escape God. Rather, by escaping doing religion the quest is to find God. It is basically doing that which Jesus did during his ministry among us on earth. He went away, literally escaped from the religious demands placed upon him, in order to be faithful to his heavenly Father. Jesus went away by himself to some lonely place so that he could replenish his energy by being in communion with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. This is especially true for myself, an introvert.
If the demands of ministry prevent me from escaping and resting a whole day of Sabbath, I have found that I need to insert a small time of the Sabbath into every day. This small time of Sabbath excludes those “holy things” I am obligated to do as an ordained deacon. To keep holy the tiniest piece of Sabbath every day is to escape doing of religion and fully resting in silence in the presence of God that is all around me. It means finding a quiet place, most often not a church, but a place where I can rest, free from all distraction, and sit in quiet before God.
While it is helpful that this place of respite is a quiet place far from noise, truth be told, the place of respite for which I long is more interior. Rabbi Martin Buber’s “third threshold” (See Buber’s epic book, I and Thou, for a full examination of the three thresholds in which God and humanity meet) is the place where upon our souls meet face to face with the Divine Presence of our loving God. The journey to that third threshold is an ongoing pilgrimage for me, one in which I have experienced only very briefly. It is the place, the ultimate place of Sabbath, where my soul finally catches up with me, and as one, I rest with the God who created me and loves me.
*Kushner, Harold S.. The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm (pp. 60-62, 72). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
