Remember the Sabbath day—keep it holy.  Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God. You shall not do any work, either you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your work animal, or the resident alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.  Exodus 20:8-10

Every person I have ever met has this in common; they want rest! Oh, I need a vacation! Perfect rest translates into images of lounging upon the sands of the Bahamas. While “getaways” can be a good thing at times, the problem is that wherever we go, we bring ourselves along with us. If there is not rest within, there really can never be true rest without, wherever we may be, or however ideal the setting.

In continuing our meditations on the great Sabbath commandment, we wish to explore the mystery of rest. Again we go back to creation. The seventh day is the great culmination of creation, and the word “rest” is given to describe the essence of this day. We have seen that rest is not mere inactivity. In my flesh, there is hardly a day that goes by that I do not long, on some level, to get away from stressful situations and the rough grind of life. Rest therefore means no responsibility, of wearing a big sign that says “do not disturb.” Oh for the hammock, that great symbol of bliss! However, the idea of rest in the Bible is deeply theological and will not yield to such superficial interpretations.

Rest in the Bible is closely associated with the idea of blessedness. God blessed His creation, and in doing so, empowered everything He made to function according to its design. To be at rest, then, is to be in a state of creation blessedness, functioning as God designed us to be and function. Another term associated with rest is ‘peace.” “Shalom” is also a creation word linked to blessedness. Peace is an interior state of being that entails being in harmony with God and creation; the blessedness of the seventh day. It has nothing to do with self-centered desires to be left alone without any responsibilities. Indeed, such longings lead to the deadly sin of sloth, where we lose our will to strive for perfection, and desire to be served rather than to serve.

God’s rest, supernatural rest, is a paradox of interior rest birthed in blessedness and peace, with action. As with all paradoxes, one must search out its mystery. It helps to have a model of what such rest looks like, and there are many saints that have exhibited this supernatural rest.

However, there is no model better than Jesus Himself. Look at how He moves about each day. Oh so busy! Oh so responsible! Oh how He spent Himself for others! Oh how physically tired! Yet, He never is in a hurry, never stressed, never is afraid, always in deep peace and blessedness, and at one with His Father. Jesus claimed that He was “Lord of the Sabbath.” By this He meant, along with His authority, that He was the Sabbath, He was rest itself!

We penetrate into this mystery of rest and action by love. Love energizes us for action, yet brings a state of interior blessedness and peace. Such love comes from an ever deepening life of prayer where our wills come in union with God. By nature, we are fighting God with our wills, and this brings on restlessness, fear, and anger. In contrast to this, Jesus invites us to take up His Yoke, for His burden is light! Rest is the harvesting of the fruit of the Seventh Day of creation. We instinctively sense it in persons who have attained it, don’t we? Ah, let us long for this kind of rest!

The philosopher Josef Pieper wrote a magnificent book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, that helps us understand the essential meaning of “rest” for us moderns.  Since Kant, western culture is all about action, hard work, and production, reducing humans to mere functionaries.  But in the Bible, demonstrated here in this Sabbath Commandment, and even in the ancient Greek Philosophers, room must be made for “non-utilitarian modes of human activity” (p. 40), specifically contemplation.  In fact, busy people can suffer from the deadly sin of sloth defined as “the incapacity to enjoy leisure,” (p. 43), the inability to be alone, to enter into our interiors.  As a culture, humanity has become “proletarian,” that is, fettered to the process of work” at all levels (p. 57).  We must “deproletarianize” the masses (p. 62), by making real leisure available to the working man” (p. 63). 

The Sabbath is set aside for worship, and worship is sacrifice, “a voluntary offering freely given,” out of the pure generosity of heart, nothing utilitarian, something that can only be done in leisure (p. 68).  The Church carries this forward in its full experience of the pure grace of the sacramental life, a celebration that carries us away into ecstasy” (p. 73), far away from toil springing from the curse upon the earth.  

Takeaway: “Rest” does not mean inactivity in the biblical world view, but is creative and active. 

Questions: Clearly, to achieve the state of rest described above takes intentionality and spiritual formation over time; it is something we grow into. 1) What has been your experience with the paradox of action and rest/leisure defined biblically? 2) What can you do to enter into this rest? 

Resources Used:

Pieper, Joseph.  Leisure: The Basis of Culture.  Ignatius Press, English Trans. 1963.