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Jubilee spiritual practices: Rest

The Sabbath, and by extension the Jubilee year, is about communal rest – rest for the earth and rest for people. It calls us to avoid overwork and a preoccupation with material gain, but also to care for the well-being of the planet and make sure that all people have the opportunity for rest.

For our Jubilee webinar on rest we were joined by Sr Margaret Atkins, a Canoness of St Augustine in the community at Boarbank Hall in Cumbria, who shared the input below. We are grateful to her and to John Paul de Quay of the Ecological Conversion Group who created the images used here.

Experiencing time

Bicycle (John Paul de Quay)

We experience time in different ways which also go together and can both been seen in the image of the bicycle.

We experience time in cycles, like the wheels of the bicycle going around and around - for example night and day and cycle of the year.

We experience time as a journey - from a to b, from birth to death and death to rebirth.

But because we are human, the cycles and journeys can go wrong.

The cycles can get rusty - the rhythms of our lives can get out of sync.

The direction can go wrong - we can get lost

And this is why we need rest - to renew and re-energise the cycles and to refocus our direction. We have this built-in need for a rhythm of work/rest(oration)

There are different kinds of tiredness - physical exhaustion, mental tiredness, emotional strain, social overload, world-weariness, monotony and loneliness. Therefore different kinds of rest and leisure are needed - sleep, relaxation, fun, outdoors, exercise, silence and solitude, variety, communal enjoyment.

The Bible offers a way to renew both cycles and journeys through the idea of Sabbath. Sabbath gives us a rhythm of rest precisely through refocusing on God.

The Sabbath

Creator (John Paul de Quay)

This image emphasises the importance of putting the Creator at the centre. If we don't do so then our other relationships will go wrong. The biblical Sabbath puts God back at the centre.

Renewing creation

The commandment to observe the Sabbath recalls the Creation story in Genesis and the recreation of Jesus through the resurrection. To celebrate Sunday properly is to renew creation.

Sunday as worship and refocusing

John Paul II's apostolic letter Dies Domini reminds us of the importance of keeping Sabbath.

Insofar as this "remembrance" is alive, full of thanksgiving and of the praise of God, human rest on the Lord's Day takes on its full meaning.
DIES DOMINI, POPE ST JOHN PAUL II #17

Sunday as resting

The Sabbath is not meant to be about rigidity or judgement but rather renewal. The rest is there to renew us. It renews our physical, mental and spiritual energies. It allows us to see and be seen.

"Through Sunday rest, …. in a moment of encounter and less pressured exchange, we see the true face of the people with whom we live." (Pope St John Paul II, Dies Domini #67)

Sunday links worship and rest

Our Sabbath rest is a reminder of God resting at the end of Creation. It reminds us that we not in charge and that fundamentally all work is God's work.

As Pope St John Paul II wrote:

"Rest is something "sacred", because it is man's way of withdrawing from the sometimes excessively demanding cycle of earthly tasks in order to renew his awareness that everything is the work of God. There is a risk that the prodigious power over creation which God gives to man can lead him to forget that God is the Creator upon whom everything depends." (Dies Domini 65)

Sunday rest gives meaning to the working week

Work is given its purpose, then, by the meaning of the rest. In his book In Tune with the World Josef Pieper reflects on communal celebrations of festival and how they are a way in which we say yes to the world.

Pieper writes: "To celebrate a festival means: to live out, for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner, the universal assent to the world as a whole."

Why is it commanded?

Sabbath rest is one of the 10 Commandments. In general, things are commanded when there is a danger of us not doing them! We have a temptation to forget our need to rest.

Jubilee