“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” Jesus urges his disciples and us to stop, to rest, to recoup, to renew ourselves. God gave us the Sabbath Day to be a day of rest, for without it we become less human. I don’t mean just that if we are overtired we may easily get into accidents. I myself once fell asleep at a red light and banged into the car ahead of me. That is a sad business, but even sadder is that when we are always rushing, never stopping, we don’t have time to think, to consider, to pray, to love God, our family and our neighbor as ourselves.

In fact, we can’t even love ourselves for we aren’t caring for ourselves. Joseph Pieper, the philosopher, entitled one of his books, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. The Greeks believed that only when we slow down and have time to reflect and contemplate can we get in touch with what is truly important and move beyond mere knowledge to wisdom – a way of life that leads to true happiness. Though our culture is obsessed with having and doing, our faith reminds us that what is most important is being, becoming like Jesus, being people of love, being there for our family and for others.

St. Paul reminds us in our second reading that Christ Jesus “is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity … that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile both with God, in one body, through the cross, putting that enmity to death by it.” Paul is talking about the hatred between Jew and Gentile in the world of his time, but Christ wants to break down the walls that exist in our own time – the walls between rich and poor, between male and female, between Christian and Muslim, between religious and secular, between learned and unlearned, between powerful nations and weak nations.

In a frenzied world, we will never stop to hear the other, to recognize how all desire a better life for their children, an ability to have the dignity of work at a just wage, a life of peace, not of instability, violence and warfare. In a world of shouting heads and computer algorithms that reinforce our prejudices, we need that prayerful quiet where God can speak to our hearts and minds and call us to reconciliation in our families, our communities, our nation and our world. Yes, may we come away and rest, and there hear the voice of God whispering to us the way to peace.  –Fr. John