23rd Sunday of OT 2019 - Silence and rest

Since my first year in seminary, my seminary classmates and I, who are now priests, take a week or two vacation at the end of August up in the Algonquin Highlands in Ontario, about three hours north of Toronto.  We canoe a little bit, we swim, we don’t really fish much, we really just enjoy the quiet of the wilderness, good food, and good fellowship.  Two weeks in the wilderness in order to spiritually and mentally prepare for the busy-ness of the school year, when parish life really begins to kick into high-gear. 

And it usually takes a day or two to adjust from the busy, loud world to the quiet of nature.  But then things begin to settle, we settle into the quiet, and then you really begin to notice the beautiful surroundings: the lapping of the lake, the gentle breeze, the occasional cry of the Canadian loon.  It’s a wonderful atmosphere for good prayer and reflection and spiritual reading.

What does my summer vacation have to do with the readings this weekend?  Well, from our first reading we hear how the concerns of the mind, our earthly plans, and the burdens of the body can distract us from the plans of God.

Sometimes we are just physically and emotionally warn out, aren’t we? And we know all too well how our many earthly concerns can weigh down upon us. Our health, our jobs, our family obligations.  And our materialistic culture certainly doesn’t help things when it drums into us over and over that we cannot be happy until we have the next-new thing, the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect job, that we watch the next new series on Netflix. No wonder why the practice of the faith and Sunday worship  takes second, or third, or last place for so many Catholics who are busy about their worldly business.

Honestly, I considered skipping my Canadian vacation this year, not quite a whole year into my pastorate, with all of the fall parish programs starting up. First Friday Holy Hour. Second Friday Faith Formation. The rockiness of the beginning of the school year. Getting ready for RCIA. Fall weddings. Head start contract renewal. Repair projects. But rest and respite, offers the opportunity to ready ourselves for the challenges ahead. Quiet and prayer is needed to prepare for busyness.

The Catholic Philosopher Svoren Kierkegaard went so far as to say that the constant busyness of the modern world is a sort of disease. The inability to be quiet and unstimulated, is a sort of disease. And If he were a doctor he would prescribe as a remedy for this disease, “silence”.

We had about 30 people Friday night, we came to spend time in prayer with the Lord in silence. That is reason number 72 for us to have a scheduled Holy Hour, where we can spend a long period of silence with Jesus. One parishioner said that Holy Hour, that period of silence with Jesus, allowed the stresses that build up throughout the week to melt away, silence with the Lord allows her to focus on what was most important.

And really, Christians need those moments of quiet every day, don’t we? To stop from the busyness, to recollect ourselves, to seek strength and peace that only God can bring, to remember that our first loyalty is not the earth, but to heaven, not to the things and riches and pleasures of this world, but to God.

This of course does not mean that we lay down our crosses, or take a vacation from our vocations. While on vacation in Canada, every day we celebrated Mass for our parishes, we prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, we engaged in personal prayer. But even our rest from work serves a purpose; holy rest is not selfish, but rather, it serves the purpose of seeking refreshment and union with God. And like the king in this weekend’s Gospel, who sits down and takes time to strategize for battle, our rest from work can give us perspective in how to prioritize our life wisely, and to ready ourselves for the spiritual battle of being out in the world fraught with temptation and trial.

Many find silence disagreeable, even abhorrent, because in silence we are also confronted by our personal demons, guilt from past sins, uncomfortable truths we do not want to face, grief from departed loved ones. But for that very reason, how blessed silence is, for in silence we encounter the Lord who can exorcize those demons, who can bring those sins to light that they may be confessed and forgiven, who can help us face those uncomfortable truths, who can heal our greatest griefs.

The remedy for so many of our ills, so much of our anxiety, so much of our dis-ease, can be found, as Kierkegaard said, in silence and holy rest, where we can encounter the Lord in prayer, and seek his will, and fall in love with Him above all else.  How much of the violence and anger and tension in the world would dissipate if we put down the cell-phones, turned off the internet, and television, and video games for an extra half-hour every day, and read the bible, prayed the rosary, reflected on our life in light of scripture and the teaching of the Church. Would not the paths of the earth be straightened, as our first reading describes?

I hope you can all join us for our parish picnic (tomorrow/today) to rest from busyness in the company of your brothers and sisters in Christ. For our crosses our heavy and we need each other, strong relationships with fellow Christians, to help keep us strong and focused on our Christian mission, the glory of God and the salvation of souls.