17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Parish Family & Friends,

We are quickly coming to the end of the summer – at least as we think of it in our academic calendar ways. However, the heat will continue for a little while yet! In any case, with the end of summer comes an end to times of particular vacation and rest. Often we look forward to these weeks and months for a while, and then they come and go. We may find ourselves desiring more rest and leisure, but we feel like the time has passed. But this really should not be the case.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference for priests with the Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology out of Steubenville, Ohio. The theme for the conference this year was Jubilee. This was not accidental, of course, because we are in a jubilee year for the Church. The jubilee years in our Church call to mind the Jubilee that ancient Israel was supposed to observe every fifty years. This special year would occur after seven sabbatical years, which themselves would occur every seven years. (See the math?) Every seven years, people were supposed to let the land rest, slaves be freed, and debts be forgiven. The Jubilee year would then be like a super sabbatical year.

The point of all this, and the point of the conference, is that we need to reclaim the command from God to rest! Isn’t that nice? Rest. Leisure. These are the things that are fundamental to our flourishing as human beings. We need to rest, to play, because from that comes culture. Are we resting as we should? We remember that for Israel and the Jewish people, the seventh day of the week, Saturday, was set aside for rest. Because Jesus rose on Sunday, the day of rest was transferred to the first day of the week for us Christians – Sunday. Do we really set aside Sunday as a day to not do work that could be done on other days? Do we take the time on Sunday to pray a little bit more? Do we take time on Sunday just to spend extra time with family and friends in good conversation and laughter? Do we take time on Sundays to read a good book or watch a good film? Do we actually take the time to rest?

I think this is something most of us need, and it’s not supposed to be relegated to just a couple of months during the middle of the year. We should rest every week, and take the time necessary to be rejuvenated, re-created, restored. Let’s work on that together as a community.

Peace.

-Fr. Kennell