“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). The big question is “rest from what?” And along with that comes: “how do we rest?” In today’s fast paced society most people would also ponder, “why?” Why should I rest when there’s just so much to do and so many things to see and so many people to interact with (and so many different ways to interact). Resting doesn’t enter into the equation.
In the last ten years, from the pens of a wide variety of individuals, discussion regarding a Sabbath rest has been increasingly bandied about as a necessary human social need. Society is suffering from its lack. It has been recognized that in the last one hundred and fifty years Western society has moved from a six-day to a five-day work week. Around the turn of the twentieth century the concept of a weekend of leisure time came into existence, but a short one hundred years later it was devoured by our passion for overachievement in every aspect of our lives. Workaholic parents driven by the desire for status obtained through financial or social position, are raising children who have no concept of the word “rest.” Rest (a ceasing of routine activities) whether from a good night’s sleep or a vacation away from home, leaves us feeling out of control and anxious about what we are missing while we’re disconnected from society. Rushing from activity to activity—soccer, football, music lessons, summer camps, pressure for successful school grades, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, cell phones, interactive video games, and myriad other social connections—swamps us, consuming any “free time” we might have once had in which to seek the rest Jesus longs to give us. We simply don’t have time any more to “rest.”
Overachievement has created a sick society. The idea of an organized, institutionalized period of nonproductivity is the theme of thoughtful individuals who are concerned about the deterioration of the family unit and the increasingly neurotic condition of society in general. John Paul II wrote in his 1998 apostolic letter titled Dies Domini, that “even in our own day work is very oppressive for many people, either because of miserable working conditions and long hours, or because of the persistence in economically more developed societies of too many cases of injustice and exploitation of man by man.” He claims that oppression from excessive work is the reason why the Roman Catholic Church has “through the centuries, made laws concerning Sunday rest.” Placing the emphasis on the basic human need, John Paul further stated, “In our own historical context there remains the obligation to ensure that everyone can enjoy the freedom, rest and relaxation which human dignity requires, together with the associated religious, family, cultural and interpersonal needs which are difficult to meet if there is no guarantee of at least one day of the week on which people can both rest and celebrate” (par. 66).