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A Sunday Well Spent
118 Plays1 year ago
“A Sunday well spent brings a week of content”. So the popular saying goes. And American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once noted that “Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.” Even in an increasingly busy and secular society, “Sunday” still has a quality about it that makes it stand out and stand alone. This week, we're digging in to what it means to “Sunday well”, how it is deeply ingrained in our humanity, and why it is imperative to the wellness of our souls!
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Transcript
Introducing the Modern Lady Podcast Conference
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey guys, Michelle here with some big news. We've often said that the Modern Lady podcast is meant to feel like just us friends, sitting around the kitchen table, chatting about all the things. Well how about this summer, we ditched the microphones and cut out the middle man.
00:00:18
Speaker
Lindsay and I are so excited to announce that we will be hosting a Cultivating Your Family Culture conference this summer at the St. Anthony Spirituality Center in Marathon, Wisconsin, and we really want to see you there. We've taken some of our favorite episodes and topics and have created a weekend that will motivate you to create a family culture that will have a generational impact.
00:00:43
Speaker
But this time, we're digging deeper and hope you'll join us in person for the chat. Join us June 9th to 11th, 2023 for a weekend filled with engaging conversation, a lot of laughter, and inspiration whatever season of life you're in.
00:01:01
Speaker
Check out the St. Anthony Spirituality Center website at www.sarcenter.com or our website www.themodernlady1950.wordpress.com for registration information and all the details. And now on to the show.
Humorous Mix-up: Poetic Names
00:01:22
Speaker
American poet Henry Wadsworth Longworth
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's his name. Once noted that, quote, it's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Just so you know. What did I say? Henry Wadsworth Longsworth. That's what I thought. That's like I'm pretty sure I said that wrong.
Sundays as a Day of Rest
00:01:47
Speaker
Why would his parents do that?
00:02:04
Speaker
Welcome back to the Modern Lady Podcast. You're listening to episode 136. Hi, I'm Michelle. And I'm Lindsay, and today we are talking about Sundays as a holy day of rest. American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once noted that, quote, Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week, end quote.
00:02:28
Speaker
Even in an increasingly secular society, Sunday still has a quality about it that makes it stand out and stand alone.
Listener Engagement and Global Gratitude
00:02:37
Speaker
But a Sunday consciousness is more than just a day off, to Sunday well is deeply ingrained in our humanity and it is imperative to the wellness of our souls.
00:02:48
Speaker
But first, the best way that you can support the Modern Lady podcast is by giving us a reading and review on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Your reviews, especially on Apple podcasts, can really help others who might be interested find our podcast too. Your comments mean the world to us.
00:03:07
Speaker
This week's shout out goes to Rahel Epp, who left us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts from Germany and said, quote, Michelle and Lindsay, I'm so happy you are back. Happy 2023. And thank you for this refreshing, well balanced and inspiring new episode. I'm so excited to hear what topics you will dive into this year. It's always a pleasure to listen to you. Much love from Germany. End quote.
00:03:35
Speaker
Well, hello to you, Rahel, all the way in Germany. Wow, thank you so much for your message and your review. It's such a pleasure to be able to connect with you from across the pond and so wonderful to know that we have such like-minded friends like you all over the world.
00:03:52
Speaker
And if you would like to leave us a comment, you can do so on our website, www.themodernlady1950.wordpress.com, or you can leave us a comment on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, where you can find us at the Modern Lady Podcast.
Etiquette for Being a Gracious Guest
00:04:13
Speaker
But before we get into today's chat, Lindsay has our Modern Lady Tip of the Week.
00:04:19
Speaker
Well Michelle, as you know, I just left my kids for two whole nights and it was the first time ever that I've done that since becoming a mother in 2006. Now my hostess was beyond gracious, going out of her way to make myself and the other ladies feel totally at home. And I wanted to make sure that I was a good guest. And I probably should have looked into this before I went away, but it's better late than never, so here are some etiquette tips for overnight guests.
00:04:46
Speaker
I found a great list of tips on the website CamilleStyles.com and while some of them seem a bit obvious like leave the pets at home and bring a small hostess gift, I love that she stipulated that one should get everyone's permission before posting photos to social media.
00:05:03
Speaker
This was something that I was keenly aware of. I didn't take photos in my friend's house without her permission and then I asked her permission again before I sent them to my family to show them where I was staying. There were five ladies present and everyone was very considerate when taking and posting photos.
00:05:19
Speaker
Now, the next tip is take care of their home. Use coasters, make the bed, wipe down the bathroom counter after doing your nighttime routine. In fact, Camille Styles recommends leaving the bathroom cleaner than you found it, and this is a great tip. Be considerate of their time. Have a discussion about the schedule beforehand and be sure to arrive on time and leave at the time that was discussed. And the final tip from this website is to send a handwritten thank you note after you return home. I'm adding that to my own to-do list right now.
00:05:48
Speaker
Now a few things my friends did which really helped everyone enjoy the weekend was, well, we brought all the food. The meals were planned by us guests and all of the food was purchased and prepared by the guests so that our hostess could relax too. We had a spa day planned and one of my friends bought matching flip-flops for all of us to wear that day, a cute souvenir from our time away.
00:06:09
Speaker
We also divvied up chores and gave the host a quick clean before leaving. Now, one final point on helping out with the chores. I found an article on apartmenttherapy.com about being a good guest, and they pointed out that it is good etiquette to ask how the host likes certain chores done. Do they hand wash those wine glasses or do they put them in a dishwasher? Do you bring wet towels right to the laundry room or do you hang them up? This shows that you are serious about helping, but it gives the host a polite way to share how they prefer those things done.
00:06:39
Speaker
Remember this, a good host hostist wants you to feel at home, but regardless of their efforts, it is not your house. And if you want to be invited back, be conscious of your surroundings at all times. Be thoughtful, helpful, kind, and show just how thankful you are that they opened up their home to you.
00:06:56
Speaker
those are great tips and it is interesting because when you think of like tips in reference to hospitality it is often from the host or hostess perspective but you don't often think about the etiquette of being a guest so I do love that and overnight guests no less so I do love like the tips about how to help clean and tidy and take care of their home I think that shows
00:07:22
Speaker
a lot of consideration and awareness of what they've given you and what they've done for you. It reminded me of when you stay in an Airbnb and they, in lieu of the host actually being there, they often give you like a whole book of instructions on how to close out the house. And a lot of those things are mentioned as well. And they do often have very specific ways of how they would like things to be done. So tips to the guests, like the tips
00:07:52
Speaker
directed towards hosts and hostesses, all of it essentially means just please be considerate of one another. Oh there was one I forgot too about bathrooms. It suggested that you empty your own bathroom garbage just so the host doesn't have to you know look at what you put in the garbage and so I think just discreetly maybe like
00:08:14
Speaker
tying up the bag and, you know, taking it to the garage or, or perhaps maybe like just putting that bag in the kitchen garbage, but just emptying your own garbage. I thought that was a great reminder as well.
Theology and History of Sunday Rest
00:08:27
Speaker
A Sunday well spent brings a week of content. So the popular saying goes, but details, we need details. What does a Sunday well spent truly look like? And does it really matter how we view it?
00:08:42
Speaker
We say yes, it does, right, Lindsay? Yeah, we do. And this was intensive, wasn't it, Michelle, doing all of this research? There's actually so much to say on this topic. Now, we've been wanting to do an episode on this for a very long time. And honestly, as I was doing my research, I'm like, this couldn't be the better time for me because we've really dropped the ball.
00:09:02
Speaker
In this area there was so much we used to do as a family and we've just been coasting on our Sundays and everything I've just learned is that you really shouldn't coast on Sunday that it's like this active inactivity that we'll get into later But I do want to say to you like so much of the research took me back to one of my favorite if not my favorite episode we ever did and I think you would probably agree right our episode on leisure and
00:09:27
Speaker
We talked a lot about Sunday rest in that episode, but I think this one we're going really deep into the theological history and those reasons for Sunday rest today.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, and how it's, we're kind of like, well, not kind of, we are specifically made for that, for that rest, right? And so it's, it is good to think on it and to learn about it and reflect on it in our own lives, because it does seem to be so intrinsic to our humanity, right? But yeah, like you, our family as well, like we're kind of like, we try to do Sundays.
00:10:09
Speaker
I don't know if we often view it this way as being one of the more counter-cultural things that we could do is just to observe Sundays as this special set-apart day and recognize why and do it with intention. It doesn't seem like it could be so revolutionary or rebellious against the culture, but it really is and I think that's why it's so hard to do.
00:10:35
Speaker
So, I think we should first address the Jewish tradition of the Sabbath and the Christian tradition of the Lord's Day. And I mean, this itself, we could talk for hours on. So true, yes. And we aren't Jewish, so there's only so much I can explain about this or that you and I can talk about. And we hope we're doing honour to that and that we're getting that history correct.
00:10:59
Speaker
Um, but you know, there's probably a lot we're going to miss on that. And then that being said on the Christian side, there are Christian denominations that observe the Lord's day as the Sabbath on Saturday. So we're not speaking for all the Christians either. So we're just, we're going to do our best here.
00:11:14
Speaker
Now, a lot of the information that I'm going to be sharing, I got from a lighthouse media CD that we have had for years in our house and we've listened to so many times. Now, that being said, in preparation for this episode, I went to find the CD and realized we don't have a CD player anymore. So I couldn't actually listen to it to write my notes. So I was able to purchase it as an MP3 just by Googling it. There are Catholic websites where you can purchase it. It was under $5.
00:11:44
Speaker
The name of this Lighthouse Media CD is Keep Holy the Sabbath and it's by Dr. Timothy Gray. And like I said, I've listened to it countless times and it really did inform my family about this when we really made some changes years ago. But again, I confess we've let these things slide so it was the perfect time.
00:12:02
Speaker
to re-listen. Now, to go into the idea of the Jewish Sabbath and where that came from. Okay, so my understanding is that this all started with Moses' demand that Pharaoh let his people go. Now, yes, this is a demand that they be obviously released from slavery, which is non-stop labour, right? They were working to death. But it's not just that. This is what's so fascinating about this demand that the people be let go.
00:12:29
Speaker
It was that they can go and worship God, that they have rest. Now Pharaoh responded initially by making them work harder. He wanted to keep the Jews busy, so busy that they didn't have time to hear the Word of God.
00:12:45
Speaker
Does this sound like today? We don't have Pharaoh ruling us, but the culture seems to be almost intent on keeping us so busy that we don't have time to hear the Word of God. So now let's look at a few definitions just to clear those up. So the Hebrew word that was used by both Pharaoh and Moses is avad or abodah.
00:13:06
Speaker
And this means to work, okay? But interestingly, this blows my mind, that word work also means worship. It means service to God. But it also means agricultural work and labor. Those things are interchangeable, but in totally different ways. So Pharaoh uses it because he wants them to keep working for him.
00:13:28
Speaker
using that word avoda, avad. But Moses wants them to keep working for God through worship, divine work, the work of the people, which is liturgy, which is the Greek word liturgia, which means the work of the people. So I just love that this word that means all these different types of work
00:13:48
Speaker
also then translates into liturgy, which is liturgy, right? Which is the work we put in as the laity and our pastoral teams and our priests put in towards the liturgy. It is work, but it is work for God. So then the plagues start to happen, right? We know all about the plagues and they come on a seven day schedule. And there is a period of rest, a day of rest between each plague, hammering Egypt, hammering the Pharaoh's people.
00:14:15
Speaker
So, why does God give the gift of the Sabbath to Israel? It is a gift God gives them. Now, the commandment, right, to keep holy the Sabbath. This is in the top three of the Ten Commandments, meaning it's a very important one. But he says, keep holy. This is an action word. It means to be on guard, to guard it.
00:14:35
Speaker
Now from Dr. Tim Gray, he says, quote, you are to remember on the Sabbath now, and this is the first calling of the Sabbath. You're to remember to hear the word of God, to study and learn, to remember. I'm going to talk a lot about this idea of remembering.
00:14:51
Speaker
This is the formula for forming the people of God. You take them out of the world for the day and remind them every seven days who God is and what he has done for them. When we lose our memory, we lose our identity." End quote.
00:15:07
Speaker
There's so much He even said in that. So this again is this understanding that God gifted the Sabbath to the Jews, to the Israelites, to remember their story, where they came from, His role in everything.
00:15:24
Speaker
Now, they talk about how because they had been in captivity for I think 400 years, they weren't able to observe the Sabbath and all that time. They weren't able to take that time to study his word and to contemplate God. And so that is one of the explanations of why they wandered in the desert for 40 years, that that was all of the missed Sabbaths together to really drive home
00:15:49
Speaker
God's role in their lives, what he's done for them, and what life is like without God. Now, Dr. Tim Gray brings up a phrase that was coined by Rabbi Abraham Heschel. He says it like this, that the Sabbath is a sign between you and me throughout the generations.
00:16:06
Speaker
so that you know that it is I, the Lord, who sanctifies you, if that all makes sense, right? That it is a sign through the generations that it is the Lord that sanctifies you and I. This is the Exodus. To not keep the Sabbath is to not know who God is. A forgetfulness which causes us to lose our identity as we lose our knowledge of God.
00:16:27
Speaker
That's what Exodus is. That we still can be there in the desert, right? When we aren't keeping that remembrance, then we lose our identity and we're lost in the desert. No different than those Jews, those early Jews.
00:16:41
Speaker
That is so, so interesting and the parallels between like the Jewish people in slavery in Egypt at that time and how much it means, like the meaning behind it, right? I know I was listening to a talk by Father Mike Schmitz about why we need to rest from work on Sundays and he talks about Exodus 2.
00:17:06
Speaker
And in addition to what you're saying about how we keep the Sabbath or the Jewish people kept the Sabbath to remind them of who God is in their lives. Father Mike also says that, you know, remembering the Sabbath reminded the Jews of who they are. That's right. Because in their captivity and in their slavery in Egypt, like you said, you don't get many days off work when you're a slave, right? Yep.
00:17:35
Speaker
But the Lord set them free. They were no longer slaves. So it was like his way of saying, so live freedom. Take a rest. Take a break. You're not the slaves anymore. You don't have to work on the Sabbath. You get to rest because you are not slaves.
00:17:53
Speaker
And so it was like a changing of the Jewish people, their identity as well. Like they were being called into a new identity. And that as well was gifted to them by the Lord in this gift of the Sabbath. Yes. And now this takes effort. This takes, so he gifts it to them, but then us as the people, right? We need to keep that day holy. We need to do that active work.
00:18:16
Speaker
So just to go back to something that Dr. Tim Gray said, he said, you know, this is an effort we need to make to let go of self for one day a week. Now this takes vigilant guarding. It needs walls around it. I love that imagery. That is the one thing that stuck out at me from the very first time I heard that CD. He says the walls, just like around the walls around the Jewish temple, right? You can still see the one wall there right now. Those weren't the walls of the temple. Those were the walls that surrounded the temple.
00:18:44
Speaker
These walls keep out the profane from the sacred. They remind us that we're entering a holy space and the walls give you that sense of the sacred. We need to put a wall around that day, around that time, around our family. Now, a sanctuary in time, going back to that phrase by Rabbi Abraham Heschel, which is so beautiful, a sanctuary in time, we're carving out this holy sacred space in time within our week. It does need these barriers and protection because work and busyness
00:19:14
Speaker
They keep attempting to sneak in, to break in, to climb over your walls, right? We rest in contemplation, just like what God was asking the early Jews to do. Contemplation, the God who made the world and who made you. So we have to keep holy the Sabbath. You guard it. You're vigilant. Be intentional. This was commanded of the Jews, but it's also still commanded of you and I.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I like the the language that is used in that right that it is now we're getting back into our favorite battle motif. Yes, our favorite we love because it is so much of it like we were saying at the beginning is struggle.
00:19:56
Speaker
And its struggle against a culture that has lost its sense of Sunday and lost its remembrance, we have forgotten collectively, right, of what this means and why it's so important.
00:20:12
Speaker
So that all makes a lot of sense, right? And we should pause as Christians to really understand the Jewish roots of the Sabbath. But for us, we celebrated on Sunday. We celebrated as something called the Lord's Day. And that's what it was called by the end of the New Testament, the Lord's Day.
00:20:27
Speaker
It's a new day of rest. Christians now aren't just remembering the deliverance of the Jews, which I think is really important as part of our story from slavery and their exile, but now we're celebrating. We're celebrating the resurrection every single Sunday, right? A mini Easter. We are an Easter people. Jesus' death and resurrection on the first day is this new
00:20:49
Speaker
creation. It's a new covenant, a new exodus celebrated in the Eucharist, and this is the new center of our identity as Christians. So this happened gradually over the first seven years after Christ's crucifixion. I have a couple different dates that I've seen according to Maria von Trapp in her book that we will reference so many times in this episode, which is called Around the Year with the von Trapp family.
00:21:15
Speaker
She mentions that it was the Council of Jerusalem in the year 50, so that's only 17 years after Christ's crucifixion, when the apostles decided that the Sabbath need not be observed anymore. This is really interesting because I kept reading sources that were talking about how the apostles, specifically St. Paul, who wasn't one of the original 12, but St. Paul was still preaching to the Jews in the temple,
00:21:39
Speaker
on their Sabbath on Saturdays. He was going in and teaching about Jesus. But then on Sundays, they would get up before sunrise, right? Because it was illegal and you still have to work in the Roman world. And they would worship and sing and praise God and celebrate the Eucharist before sunrise. But then the rest of Sundays, if they could, was meant preaching to the Gentiles and to the pagans.
00:22:01
Speaker
the pagans who were celebrating Sunday as their Sun God day. So this started according to her around the year 50 with this council of Jerusalem. And then according to Wikipedia, the other great source. The other definitive source. Yes.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yes. They mentioned that it was 115 AD, which is one of the earliest mentions of it being Sunday. And this is also backed up around the writings of Saint Irenaeus around the year 110. So we're in that first, you know, 100 years following Christ's death and resurrection.
00:22:39
Speaker
But then it was not until the Council of Laodicea, I believe, in the 4th century AD when the non-observants of the Sabbath was officially approved and replaced with Sunday following Emperor Constantine's laws in 321 AD.
00:22:57
Speaker
It was only when Emperor Constantine made Rome and you know that whole area Christian that they could start to have a legal day off because before then like I said They had to celebrate the liturgy before sunrise and still work all day So it was Constantine that made it legal that they could have a Sunday day of rest
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think the history and the significance of everything is so fascinating, right? And I just try to picture myself in the place of those early Christians who were Jewish still, like up until what we're saying like around like starting in the maybe 100, but up until 400 years later, like
00:23:41
Speaker
there would have been this tension for 400 years about should we or shouldn't we. And so this move then we see from the early Christians, like moving the Sabbath from the Saturday observance to the Lord's day on Sunday, it really was, I could see them struggling with this idea of like Jesus's
00:24:02
Speaker
parable of the old wineskins and pouring new wine into old wineskins and the fulfillment of a new covenant, a new kingdom that's coming and they were living that out in real time. That must have been really hard.
00:24:18
Speaker
And it, it harkens all the way back. So even this like observance of Sunday, we're, we're living it now, but it's actually one of the most ancient truths from the very beginning from Genesis, right? We see mention of this one day that is set apart and that it means yes, rest, but so much more than rest. So if you'll allow a little bit of timeline jumping here,
00:24:47
Speaker
Do you think we can go from Exodus up to the early church back to Genesis for a sec? Because yeah, I learned so much about this first initial covenant and it's making so much more sense now in the context of Exodus and St. Paul and all that we see in the New Testament. So like when we see the creation of the world in six days and then on the seventh day God rested,
00:25:13
Speaker
Father Mike Schmitz, again, in his video, he was talking about that number seven. For the Jewish people, it's also, it's called Sheva or Shiva. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but it means covenant. It's not just the number before or the number after six. It means covenant. So you would say when you're making a covenant with someone else, you would seven yourself to that person.
00:25:42
Speaker
So it's not just a number, it's an action. So taking all this into account, when God invites man in Genesis and to rest with him on the Sabbath, he's inviting man to not be like the animals, but to live in a new way, to live his divine life on the seventh day. He's inviting us into a new covenant that is different and separate from his relationship with the rest of creation.
00:26:11
Speaker
So when we keep the Sabbath, even from the beginning, we see that we're to be reminded of and living this new covenant relationship with God. But what I see in this pattern, moving through the Old Testament into the New, and how we start seeing why the Sabbath was on Saturday in the Jewish faith, and they started transitioning it into Sunday and the Lord's day,
00:26:38
Speaker
it is yet another new covenant. So the Sabbath and Sunday and the Lord's Day, this special day is a constant calling from God into deeper and deeper and more intimate covenant and relationship with Him. As He reveals Himself through the ages, He invites us into a deeper covenant
00:27:03
Speaker
with him. And I think that is such a mind-blowing big picture view of Sunday. Yes. So much so, right, that as Catholics, we are in communion. Like we literally partake in his body on Sundays. You couldn't be any more in a covenantal relationship with God himself, right, than at Sunday Mass.
00:27:23
Speaker
So it's hard to believe then that anyone would not observe Sundays, that any government would not allow for Sundays, that why on earth after millennia would we take Sundays away from people, right? Like it's just so mind-blowing that people could live in a world where there is no opportunity to rest from work and to rest in creation and say it is good.
00:27:46
Speaker
But there is a section in Maria von Trapp's book that just blew you and I away and that section is called A Land Without Sundays. So she was quoting that title comes from a book written by her friends only known in the book as Baron and Baron S.K. who went to Russia, right? And they wrote about it in their book that they entitled The Land Without a Sunday. And a quote from that book by Baron and Baron S.K.
00:28:14
Speaker
quoted in Maria von Trapp's book says, the atmosphere was one of constant rush and drive. And I was like, whoa, the atmosphere in this community, which they're talking about Russia, is one of constant rush and drive.
00:28:29
Speaker
They continued, finally, we confess to each other that what we were missing most was not a well-cooked meal or a hot bath, but a quiet, peaceful Sunday with church bells ringing and people resting after prayer. So as many of you know, Maria Von Trapp is the Maria Von Trapp from The Sound of Music. I think a lot of people don't know she was a real person and this was a real story and that they were a devoutly Catholic family.
00:28:53
Speaker
and that they did leave Austria during the onset of World War II. They moved to the United States and lived in Vermont. Their lodge is still there that you can go and stay in with your family. And so this was at the height, right? Like, so we're talking World War II, just another round of utter human devastation. And then it goes into communism, right? So that's what they're talking about here. This place, this land without Sundays, all work, no rest communism.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yes. And I was so interested in that quote, in that whole chapter. I mean, the entire book of Maria von Trapp's book is fascinating, but that is the chapter that sticks in my head. And so I was curious. First of all, I can't find Baron and Baron S. Kay's book anywhere. I did try to look. I'm like, I'd love to read their book, but I couldn't find it. So if anyone else knows where it is, I'd love to read it. But then I was really curious about
00:29:51
Speaker
Russia in particular and where that all kind of got started. And so follow me for a little Russian history course. But it was interesting to note that up until the Russian Revolution, that was in 1917,
00:30:09
Speaker
Russia followed the same calendar as everyone else. So they included observing Sundays as the day of rest. It was the first day of the week. And in fact, week in general in Russian can be called nadelya, I think. They used that word interchangeably for the first day of the week and week in general. It can be translated to mean no work. So that's what they called. They did have an observance.
00:30:36
Speaker
And then in 1918, after the Russian Revolution, one of the first things the Bolsheviks did was to change the calendar from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. So this did adhere them to the rest of the world at the time that used the Gregorian calendar too. But they did it on purpose in a deliberate move to distance themselves in Russia from the Russian Orthodox Church, which still to this day uses the Julian calendar.
00:31:08
Speaker
But they still had the seven day week with Sundays being set apart. So it wasn't until 1929 that the weeks were completely reformed in Russia under Stalin. And he introduced a five day week where people worked for four days and then rested on the fifth. This meant that there were now 72 weeks in their year. And the problem was that it was a rolling week.
00:31:33
Speaker
essentially. So people were divided into groups and that would be marked on the calendars by the colors yellow, pink, green, red, and purple. And they offset each other so that the factories and the businesses, everything could operate without stopping year round. So people still rested on the fifth day.
00:31:53
Speaker
But there was no common day off for the people. Yes. And for families, right? I was just going to say it wasn't super popular. Yeah. Because yeah, often like a husband and a wife would be in different groups. Yeah. Right. So would split families apart for sure. And that this actually continued until the year 1940.
00:32:15
Speaker
That's when the USSR returned to a seven-day week. So in reading that history, I wondered actually if the von Trapp's friends who traveled to Russia and saw such an appalling difference in the lack of Sundays, they must have traveled between those years of 1929 and 1940.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, and then they would have actually witnessed not just like a seven day week as we understand it where there is a maybe a dissociation with Sunday rest like Sunday is just like every other day but a literal no Sunday was literally no seventh day.
00:32:52
Speaker
And it just, it really struck me. I think this is why it sticks in my mind so much is that with no common days off, it's such a clear tool for dividing the people and isolating them and creating disunity.
00:33:08
Speaker
where in direct contrast God's plan for Sundays traditionally highlights worshiping community, life in community, so that no matter where the week takes you, you were never many days away from common worship and common living.
00:33:25
Speaker
But the kind of interesting point is that we do more and more live in a culture that seems to look more like the disunity of the Russian calendar in the early 1900s than we do with what God had ever intended.
00:33:45
Speaker
Oh my goodness, there's so much to unpack and it goes right back to Pharaoh, right? Wanting to keep the people busy. This is what the Bolsheviks would have wanted. Keep the people busy and working because heaven forbid family get together and have a chance to reflect on what is good, what is true, what is beautiful and their hearts go back to God.
00:34:02
Speaker
and so keep them working, keep them separated. This is one of the beautiful things about the Catholic Church, and I can only speak for them because we are Catholic, but you know, Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, Rerum Novarum, spoke of Sunday rest as a workers' right, which the state must guarantee. The Church has actively worked throughout these changes in the Western world,
00:34:27
Speaker
over the last 150 years or so, ever since the Industrial Revolution. And you and I talked about this in our episode, I think, on the dignity of labor, of the church's active efforts to inform and to manipulate governments into ensuring that all of their workers had this day of rest. So I'm now reading from an apostolic letter written by Pope St. John Paul II. He wrote it in 1998 called Deus Dominae, The Day of the Lord.
00:34:55
Speaker
and he says, quote, when through the centuries she, referring to the church, we refer to the church as she,
00:35:00
Speaker
has made laws concerning Sunday rest, the church has had in mind above all the work of servants and workers. This is, you know, it's been part of the heart of the church to protect this time of its workers so that they can have this time to remember, to contemplate God, to enjoy rest. And I just love that the church has been working so hard to enforce that opportunity to come together as people like what you were saying.
00:35:25
Speaker
Okay. And then for the rest of the world, right? Like I remember, I don't know if you remember Michelle, because I think you probably would have only been two or three, but I remember when, um, the malls and everything started to be open on Sundays and there was a, there was a large outcry. I remember everyone talking about it. People were very angry. Um, when storters started to be open on Sundays, but my whole childhood, everything was closed on Sundays. So then not just, we're not just talking about Russia here. We're talking about the rest of the world going, yeah,
00:35:54
Speaker
forget about Sundays. Let's keep commerce going. Let's keep people busy, right? Now back again to this lighthouse media CD, Dr. Tim Gray says, quote, what we have now is the weekend and the weekend is a pale, pale reflection of the great Sabbath rest that the Jews knew and the great day of celebration that the early Christians knew as the Lord's day. Now we are so busy during the weekend. We go back to work in order to rest.
00:36:22
Speaker
And then Pope St. John Paul, he says again in D.S. Domine, until quite recently it was easier in traditionally Christian countries to keep Sunday holy because it was an almost universal practice and because even in the organization of civil society, Sunday rest was considered a fixed part of the work schedule.
00:36:42
Speaker
And then just to jump forward a little bit, he says the custom of the weekend has become more widespread, a weekly period of respite spent perhaps far from home and often involving participation in cultural, political and sporting activities, which are usually held on free days.
00:36:58
Speaker
This social and cultural phenomenon is by no means without its positive aspects. There are good parts to that. While representing true values, it can contribute to people's development and the advancement of the life of society as a whole. All of this responds not only to the need for rest, but also to the need for celebration, which is inherent in our humanity.
00:37:20
Speaker
Unfortunately, when Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of the weekend, it can happen that people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see heaven.
00:37:37
Speaker
I love that our modern popes, you know, can weigh in and share their thoughts on something like the weekend and all of that, right? It's just love that such wisdom and as we're, it's just this continuation of these people weighing in on this, you know, over the thousands of years. So I just love that he had that to say.
00:37:57
Speaker
It does go with what you were talking about before. I think it was Dr. Tim Gray, you were saying, calling us we need to build a fence around it, right? That it is constantly something that is threatened from losing its meaning, right? And I appreciate what the Pope John Paul II is saying.
00:38:19
Speaker
in a recognition of perhaps not with bad things, right? A lot of the times it's not a deliberate, I think on the part of the people we'll say, it's not necessarily a deliberate stepping away, maybe an outright proclamation of rejection of God and His principles. It's the busyness of the culture.
00:38:44
Speaker
It is something intentional that we have to be aware of. And I like that he really sums up the modern perspective and the modern dilemma of the Sunday becoming just the weekend. And if it is just the weekend, then it is just another day that you don't have to go to the office. So what else can you catch up on from the rest of life? And can you fit it in on a Sunday?
00:39:09
Speaker
Yes, yes. Okay, so I think it's becoming clear that Sundays are important, right? That I loved his imagery too of like the horizon. So you have all these things that you could be looking at on the horizon, all these other busy activities of the weekend, but we need to lift our eyes towards heaven, right? We need to move from the horizontal back to the vertical.
00:39:28
Speaker
And this ties in again with like leisure, right? And what we're doing on the weekends. And we're going to talk about Joseph Pieper. You can't talk about leisure without talking about him. We did our whole episode, like quoting him on our leisure episode. So he wrote a book in 1947 called Leisure as the Basis of Culture. And he talks about leisure as a different kind of rest, a space for true humanity. And the Pope was talking about that too.
00:39:54
Speaker
And the proper order of rest and work. Now, what's really important is he was writing this in the aftermath of World War II. He was in Germany. And you can just imagine, we know we've seen the footage of what Germany and Europe looked like, right? Rubble everywhere.
00:40:12
Speaker
people literally having to work around the clock to get clean water and food and people taking care of and injuries and homes rebuilt for children. It was nonstop working. So for him to come up with a book about leisure in the literal aftermath of World War II in Europe would be
00:40:30
Speaker
People were probably like, what are you talking about? But he was concerned that Europe would only focus on rebuilding the buildings, okay? Bringing back the city. But a city without a soul. He wanted to build a culture back that wasn't a culture of death again. Culture of death, I mean, that's Catholic language right there.
00:40:52
Speaker
And his answer was leisure, right? Space for people, space for God, space for the transcendent. Transcendent is that word for going beyond the horizon, for lifting our hearts and our gaze towards the heavens. So the question that people ask is, what is the next Europe? You know, this is what he asked in the book. What is the next Europe? We have this chance to rebuild this right now. So what do we want it to look like? And then I think our question, like that you and I are asking ourselves is like,
00:41:22
Speaker
What is the post pandemic world? We're also in ruins in some ways. Everything has been almost reduced to rubble and not in the same way, but so much in our everyday lives. So we have this incredible chance to rebuild right now. And you and I would strongly suggest that starting with Sundays is a great place to start.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, on that note, it is interesting you mentioned that because in our town, there were some businesses who, yeah, during lockdowns and pandemics were closed, and when they reopened, they modified their business schedules. And now they are no longer open on Sundays.
00:42:00
Speaker
That's amazing. Right? I know that is like an actual, as you just said that, that is an example of people who have done that and have rebuilt after the pandemic when there was that huge pause and decided to make a move on that idea.
00:42:18
Speaker
And you know what I find so interesting about the businesses that I know locally that are closed on Sundays is they are the family run ones. They're not. And those are the ones who are taking a huge financial hit every time on a Sunday coming home from mass. And this is something Jason and I are trying to work on is not grabbing any food or shopping on Sundays. But I'm always like, Oh, let's go to the butcher. Like let's get a really good fresh cut of meat. There is not a butcher open and we live in a pretty big region, right? That I can find on a Sunday open and I'm always a little ticked off.
00:42:48
Speaker
because I'm like, but I would go to your business today. I would spend money there. But when I think about how these are small family-run businesses more often than not that are choosing to stay closed, they're missing out on that chance to make money. And it's always the big faceless, nameless corporations that just stay open and have their employees working. And it shocks me that it's these family businesses that seem to have more to lose that are willing to close down on a Sunday.
00:43:14
Speaker
Yeah, and they give it to what we presume we don't know these families personally, but if they are Christian, it's something that they're doing and giving back to God.
00:43:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm, and that's remarkable in a culture like ours One of the other neat things about leisure and again You guys can listen to our episode on that as we talk so much about how leisure isn't just like inactive rest that it's about like learning a new skill or being creative about painting about needlework about doing something playing an instrument and
00:43:46
Speaker
There was another book written 40 years after the Joseph Pieper one, written by a Jewish man named George Steiner. And he wrote a critique of the modern West and its art, and he called it Real Presences, which was actually a play on the Catholic Eucharist being a real presence.
00:44:03
Speaker
And in it, he explained that literature, art, and music, that the greatest examples of these artworks is always done with a sense of the transcendent, right, throughout history, except for what's been done in the last 50, 60 years. That there's always the sense of something greater than ourselves. And then the second half of the century, there's an absence of God, right? We know this starting in literature and art and music.
00:44:27
Speaker
Classical music, it's heard today more than any other time in history, right? You can hear it at any time, anywhere, but it's barely being created now. And then Dr. Tim Gray then said, we are spending the endowment from our ancestors, but we're not filling back up the vaults of creativity. So we'll talk more about worship on Sundays, but again, this idea of leisure, leisure,
00:44:54
Speaker
and being creative and creating things that are true, good and beautiful, this is what we should be doing on our Sundays.
00:45:01
Speaker
Yeah, like that re-creative work, right? That we talk about what leisure is. Re-creative. Yeah, and even in our own daily lives, it requires activity. I think that's what we talk about, right? Like, we're not talking slave labour. That's the work we need to abstain from. But it's the kind of work that connects us back to either God and or each other.
00:45:28
Speaker
Um, and even ourselves, right? So anything that takes you into a reflective kind of a state, either a reflective, uh, like in terms of gardening, say reconnecting with God through nature, or whether it's singing with family and friends or playing music or indulging in music and marveling in God's creation of community and family.
00:45:50
Speaker
and giving thanks to him for that. That kind of work will require activity, but it is restful and it is re-creative in us. Yes, he says, Dr. Tim Gray says, we are so busy. We're blind to beauty, deaf to beauty. Our busyness has hardened our hearts. It's funny that you mentioned gardening because he shares the story about his mother.
00:46:12
Speaker
And he talks about how she had this prized rose garden and she took care of it every day, but every evening, right at dusk, she would go out and water the roses and she would contemplate their beauty. And she would say, yes, this is good, right? Like God contemplating creation. So every night she'd go out and water them for like 20 minutes, a half hour, and just stare at their beauty. He said, now, if they had had a sprinkler system installed, it would do the work for her. And she wouldn't have that opportunity every night to contemplate the beauty.
00:46:41
Speaker
And that's what our Sundays can be, right? Is we have to carve out this time. Archbishop Gomez, I think it was, was talking about
00:46:49
Speaker
that the fact that we live in a digital space now, that the crowd is always with us, right? And this busyness again, that it's always pressing in, it's always trying to come over those walls, and that this crowd causes us to disconnect from ourselves, like what you were just saying, our family, our friends, and God. And when we lose the Creator, we lose the capacity to wonder at His creation.
00:47:13
Speaker
So all of that just ties back into this idea again of remembrance. I wasn't expecting that to be such an undercurrent of this theme, but right from the Jews, right through till now, this idea of remembering what he has done for us and this world and just taking in all of that and then wanting them being inspired by that to create new things, to create new beautiful things. I was just going to say like the forgetfulness kind of extends
00:47:38
Speaker
beyond forgetting God and our purpose and His purpose in creating us and all of those covenants that we talked about before. We even have forgetfulness of ourselves because one of the things I was reflecting on too in regards to leisure and Sundays and all these kinds of things is
00:47:57
Speaker
one reason we may find it difficult to engage in leisure, especially on Sundays, an entire day set apart for leisure is because I don't know if we remember how to do a lot of those things as a culture and as a community. And we do feel better with a routine. So like even in Maria Von Trapp's book, when she's talking about Sundays, she spells out in detail their Sunday routine.
00:48:24
Speaker
Um, it was different than the usual work day one, but there was a plan for the day and it included all of the leisure. And like, I think the young people danced in the meadows, um, all those, and the, the people made music in the afternoons, that type of thing. But all of what we do right now is so centered on work that when we're told don't work.
00:48:49
Speaker
We don't really know what to do. And so we kind of either resort into kind of like a sloth-like existence on Sundays, and that doesn't fill or refresh or feed us. Or we just work, because that's what we know. So it is an interesting concept that there may be more to keeping holy the Sabbath than we were initially aware of. It's like a rediscovering and a remembering
00:49:17
Speaker
not only of God and his truths, but also because we would remember that we remember ourselves in the process. Yes, Marie von Trapp says like a day of rest, but it's become a rest stemming only from entertainment, right? Like filling it with those fun things. She says with zero spiritual effort.
00:49:37
Speaker
So if we go back to that question about like, how are they going to rebuild Europe? How are we going to rebuild this time right now? It leads into this other question as how is the church going to be leaven in this secularist culture? Well, what does that mean? According to the dictionary, it means being a persuasive influence that moves the world in a good direction, permeating something, the culture, and leaving it better.
00:50:05
Speaker
My goodness, what a call to action, right? The church is meant to always be 11, like a leavening agent, right? Something that causes bread to rise, right? Okay, so I think we get it. So again, Pope St. John Paul II
00:50:24
Speaker
in his letter diastominate and i just highly recommend reading the entire letter because i'm trying to like share bits of it but i could just share the entire letter it's so good um he said the rediscovery of this day is a grace which we must implore not only so that we may live the demands of the faith to the full but also so that we may respond concretely to the deepest human yearnings
00:50:47
Speaker
Time given to Christ is never time lost, but it is rather time gained so that our relationships and indeed our whole life may become more profoundly human. That harkens right back to the rabbi who called it a sanctuary in time.
00:51:05
Speaker
that we have this opportunity to like carve out and almost transform time. And I will share that when my family was being really serious about this a couple of years ago, we would bring certain examples to our priest and go, but we really need to get such and such a thing done, like our homeschool room. I remember that being a specific example.
00:51:23
Speaker
going, can't we finish doing the painting and the decorating the homeschool room on a Sunday? And he's like, nope, nope, you can't. You need to plan out your week better and have it done. And when you do that, this taught me over and over and over again, when we work harder during the week because we know we're carving out the sanctuary of time on a Sunday, time changes.
00:51:42
Speaker
Time, somehow time changes. It is truly otherworldly, right? It is a heavenly gift how time can be manipulated when you carve out this time on a Sunday. Yeah. And that can be so hard to do. I mean, we all have so much that we'd like to get done. And we have these, this, you know, weekend that is two days that most people will use both to their fullest extent. And here we are being asked,
00:52:09
Speaker
by God through the church to give up one of those days. It shouldn't seem like a tall order, but it's a tall order for us a lot of the time. But I know what you're saying, and I know the practice of giving God what little you have
00:52:27
Speaker
He always gives you back more the hundredfold, right? I don't know why we need so much reminder and practice in this because he's always been faithful There's never been like a maybe sometimes he will sometimes he won't Throughout the Bible throughout history always story after story of people giving what little tiny they have even if it means they go without and
00:52:53
Speaker
And God giving them back more than they could have ever even thought to ask for in the first place. And I think the saying that we use nowadays that time is money, that kind of is our modern dilemma, right? It's more like, here is your currency, your currency is time. Will you give what little time you feel like you have left?
00:53:18
Speaker
Will you give it to God and see what he does with it? And the faithful trust that you do with that is really beautiful. And so the one sermon I was listening to with Father Mike Schmitz, he was talking about a priest who was head of a seminary and much like you with the homeschool room, his students in the seminary would come to this priest and say like, but Sunday is when I study. Like Sunday is when I need to finish my papers and do all this work.
00:53:48
Speaker
And so his suggestion to them was to make a gift of Sunday in whatever way that they can to start somewhere, right? If you can't do an entire day, can you start somewhere? And he recommended, you know, maybe putting your books away at 4pm on Saturday night.
00:54:08
Speaker
to prepare that whole evening for a rest. And you begin your rest, you wake up in the morning, you go to mass, perhaps you take brunch with a community of friends or your family, and then maybe after 1pm or 2pm on a Sunday, you could start with that gift to God. And I want to believe, and I do believe, that even if you're at a starting point with wanting to observe and recognize Sunday,
00:54:36
Speaker
we can begin at some of those little stop points along the way. And once again, when we give our little bits to him, he will expand them to be what his vision and will is ultimately. Yes, God can't be outdone in generosity.
00:54:54
Speaker
So we'll give him a little bit. And then on top of this, we're not only suggesting that you don't do any work, you abstain from unnecessary labor on Sundays. The church also has made Sunday mass a holy day of obligation every single Sunday. So we're like, okay, so not only can you not get your staff done, but we're also going to need you to get up, get all your children ready and go to church.
00:55:16
Speaker
Whoa, that's a big ask it seems like in today's day and age but Pope John Paul II talks so much about there's a whole section on why why we need to come together as community why the church made it a day of obligation it wasn't always a day of obligation like it wasn't always under penalty of mortal sin to not attend mass that actually is relatively recent and
00:55:39
Speaker
Development in terms of like canon law But he talks about how everything belongs to God He says speaking vividly as it does of renewal and attachment this day of rest The interruption of the often oppressive rhythm of work expresses the dependence of man and the cosmos upon God Everything belongs to God The Lord's Day returns again and again every week to declare this principle within the weekly reckoning of time
00:56:09
Speaker
Now he says therefore I jump forward a little bit but he goes like therefore it is important that people come together to express fully the very identity of the church the Ecclesia the assembly called together by the risen Lord who offered his life to quote reunite the scattered children of God That's from John that they have become one in Christ. That's from Galatians through the gift of the Spirit this unity becomes visible when Christians gather together
00:56:37
Speaker
and then sharing in the Holy Eucharist. So he just goes on to say that, again, Mass is often a reminder of our baptismal vows. So he says, it is not enough that the disciples of Christ pray individually and commemorate the death and resurrection of Christ just inwardly in the secrecy of their hearts, he says.
00:56:56
Speaker
that we need to just get together as those who've received the grace of baptism and to be reminded that we're not saved as individuals alone but that we are members of the mystical body of Christ and that that is what we are doing when we're at mass together.
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah, I love the coming back to this central purpose on Sundays that we have to partake in the Eucharist. And Maria von Trapp talks about that in her book. We were talking about that too with the early Christians, how throughout the Roman Empire
00:57:30
Speaker
not everywhere was Jewish. And so they didn't all even have that sense of Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, right? And so for the early Christians throughout the Roman Empire, once it started spreading throughout the known world at the time,
00:57:44
Speaker
what marked Sundays for the early Christians was the Eucharist. It was the day that they celebrated in partuk of the Eucharist. So I love that even from the beginning, from the early church, like 50 AD, that was the central thing. And from the Eucharist, all else flows out from that.
00:58:07
Speaker
And what is so fascinating about the Eucharist, and there are countless things, but then this is just off the top of my head, but when we think about Jesus walking on the road to Emmaus, they don't know who he is. He's like preaching, he's pulling out all the information like the best rabbi in the world from the Old Testament readings, and he's saying all these things, and they're doing this long walk.
00:58:28
Speaker
It wasn't until he broke the bread and they got back and they recognized him as Jesus, as Lord, right? It was that act. It is the Eucharist in which he is what we believe fully present.
00:58:41
Speaker
that they remember. Yes, that's when they realized who it is. Oh my goodness. Yes, I love it. Just him quoting scripture and knowing, you know, that those things inside out, it's when he broke the bread. And then that is what happened every Sunday. Every Sunday afterwards is the Eucharist.
00:59:01
Speaker
Pope John Paul II says, sharing in the Eucharist is the heart of Sunday, but the duty to keep Sunday holy cannot be reduced to this. In fact, the Lord's day is lived well if it is marked from beginning to end by grateful and active remembrance of God's saving work. This commits each of Christ's disciples to shape the other moments of the day, those outside of the liturgical context.
00:59:25
Speaker
family life, social relationships, moments of relaxation, in such a way that the peace and joy of the risen Lord will emerge in the ordinary events of life. For example, the relaxed gathering of parents and children can be an opportunity not only to listen to one another,
00:59:41
Speaker
dolls will share a few formative and more reflective moments. He goes on a little bit later to say if Sunday is a day of joy and he talks so much about joy in this too that we cannot even getting into again like this Christian idea of joy but he says if Sunday is a day of joy
00:59:57
Speaker
Christians should declare by their actual behavior that we cannot be happy on our own. They look around to find people who may need their help and maybe that in their neighborhood or among those they know there are sick people, elderly people, children or immigrants who precisely on Sundays feel more keenly their isolation, their needs, their suffering. So the Pope goes on to just say that living in this way
01:00:20
Speaker
Not only the Sunday Eucharist, but the whole of the Sunday becomes the great school of charity, justice and peace. Oh, again, let me just repeat that. Sunday becomes the great school of charity, justice and peace.
01:00:35
Speaker
The presence of the risen Lord in the midst of His people becomes an undertaking of solidarity, a compelling force for inner renewal and inspiration to change the structures of sin in which individuals, communities, and at times entire peoples are entangled.
01:00:52
Speaker
Far from being an escape, the Christian Sunday is a prophecy inscribed on time itself. A prophecy obliging the faithful to follow in the footsteps of the one who came to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who were oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. That's from Luke. It outlines exactly what Sundays are supposed to be.
01:01:15
Speaker
And in the Sunday commemoration of Easter, believers learn from Christ and remember His promise, I leave you peace, my peace I give you, which is from John. That's said at Mass, right? Like that just brought tears to my eyes. And then we, as the people who are leaving church, we become in their turn, in our turn, builders of peace. I leave you peace, my peace I give you.
01:01:39
Speaker
Oh my goodness. So it is like Rabbi Heschel was talking about the Sabbath, the presence of eternity and time. We were talking about that. Yes. And this idea
01:01:54
Speaker
I was listening to that through a sermon from then-father Baron, but now it's Bishop Baron. And he was taking that and he was explaining that eternity doesn't mean endless time. It means transcends time, right? And so in the context of the Sabbath, everything you're describing sounds like heaven. Sunday is heaven on earth. It transcends our concept of time. It transcends time.
01:02:24
Speaker
And that that heaven on earth is what we are invited to on Sunday. Yes. That's the covenant. Yes. And that's the invitation that we're being offered every single week is, do you want to live in heaven for a day? Like this is how it's done. This is how you get there.
01:02:44
Speaker
And just again, she's going to keep going back and back and back to this apostolic letter written by him, because again, it's just so good. But Pope St. John Paul II says, through Sunday rest, daily concerns and tasks can find their proper perspective. The material things about which we worry give way to spiritual values. In a moment of encounter and less pressured exchange, we see the true face of the people with whom we live.
01:03:10
Speaker
Even the beauties of nature, too often marred by the desire to exploit, which turns against man himself, can be rediscovered and enjoyed to the full. As the day on which man is at peace with God, with himself, and with others, Sunday becomes a moment when people can look anew upon the wonders of nature, allowing themselves to be caught up in that marvelous and mysterious harmony." And just to continue on because I can't stop because it's all so good.
01:03:38
Speaker
I'm sorry, but I just can't. He says, it is with this strong conviction of faith and with awareness of the heritage of human values, which the observance of Sunday entails, that Christians today must face the enticements of a culture which has accepted the benefits of rest and free time, but which often uses them frivolously. It is at times attracted by morally questionable forms of entertainment. We've done an episode or two on that, Michelle.
01:04:06
Speaker
Certainly, Christians are no different from other people and enjoying the weekly day of rest. But at the same time, they are keenly aware of the uniqueness and the originality of Sunday, the day on which they are called to celebrate their salvation and the salvation of all humanity. Wow, it just sums it up so much. And I love that there is
01:04:27
Speaker
actually no specific rubric on what you need to do besides going to mass. The church leaves the other 23 hours of Sunday open for you because I think that there is like my mind is already going too. That's the litmus test for what you choose to do and consume or engage in on a Sunday.
01:04:49
Speaker
are all those things that he outlines in this letter and I find it really inspiring is what I'm going to say. So sometimes I think keep holy the Sabbath. It can be used in our modern sensibilities as a drag.
01:05:07
Speaker
as a pit against Christianity, why you wouldn't want to, you know, cleave yourself to this religious observance. But what we're seeing is that it is so much more than what the world could ever offer to us. And it's right there. It's for public use. Like the church wants all peoples to be able to access the promises that are given to us, gifted to us on a Sunday.
01:05:36
Speaker
Yes, and this actually leads perfectly into this point that Dr. Tim Gray talked about as well, that we can convert people, I guess, based on theology, based on all these things right to the church, but what people want is a culture. These are the building blocks, he called it, the building blocks to create a culture.
01:05:56
Speaker
this is what's so revolutionary against what the rest of the world is offering right now is that we're like, no, you get this one day to step away from all of that, from the rat race and all that. And you and I first want to do this episode and really share the ways we're trying to do that. But what we're finding, I think, as we're talking, right, is that we don't need to share that. That is so
01:06:17
Speaker
It's going to be on your own hearts as you're listening about what you want to do with your families. The only thing that I think is important to discuss and the one thing my family is going to start to do again is is just again really reflecting on the modern dangers of technology, right? The world is right.
01:06:32
Speaker
There it is climbing over that wall that we talked about and so we kind of do well not kind of we do we need a Sabbath rest from technology and It's funny because Have you ever seen real simple magazine that beautiful magazine that's out there being okay?
01:06:49
Speaker
They had once asked what people do on Sundays and I answered on social media that we don't use our screens and we don't use technology, which was true for my family for a long time. And they published my answer. It's in a real simple magazine. They thought that that was so outstanding out of the, you know, thousands and thousands of answers they got that they published that. And I'm like, wow.
01:07:08
Speaker
How did I let that go? How did my family get out of that habit? And the thing Dr. Tim Gray says is the key to living Sunday rest is habit and ritual, right? And those are the parts of building a culture, the building blocks of culture. So I'm walking away from this going as a habit and a ritual, the one thing my family is going to do is we are going to really put down our screens on Sundays.
01:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. We will also have to work on that as well. And I think that's good too, because it kind of leads into what I think I'm taking away from this conversation too, is that renewed connectiveness of Sunday, connectiveness to God, connectiveness to other people. And that's really hard, if not impossible to do with screens and social media, to be able to put that down and look up.
01:08:00
Speaker
And I think I would love to start fostering an awareness of other on a Sunday, like to go beyond me. Yes. Like I think I can, I can rest on Sundays, but that, um, and this is once more from Father Mike Schmitz. You did a lot of JP2 quoting today. I'm doing a lot of Father Mike Schmitz quoting today. Um, but he was talking about how the law of charity
01:08:30
Speaker
and love trumps the law of rest in some cases. So I'm like, okay, yes. So I can rest, but I am so interested now to reflect on, but does my rest still include others all the way from considering like, am I consuming or engaging in things that are going to force other people to have to work that day? Like which we were talking about before.
01:08:57
Speaker
Maybe we can modify some aspects of our Sundays in that regard, all the way to putting down phones like what you were just saying and looking at one another and then engaging in our community and worship at Mass, like really recognizing the day as a day to remember
01:09:17
Speaker
what God has done for us, for all of us together. Yes, and just Pope John Paul again, he said that, he talks about as a family kind of like preparing for mass, right? Really knowing those readings. He says, if Christian individuals and families are not regularly drawing new life from the reading of the sacred text in the spirit of prayer and docility to the church's interpretation,
01:09:42
Speaker
then it is difficult for the liturgical proclamation of the Word of God alone to produce the fruit we might expect. So what he's saying in that is that we aren't going over the readings within our own families as well on Sundays and having a conversation. We can't expect the church will just always produce all those fruits. We can't just go, here you go, mass that one hour a day, transform my family.
01:10:03
Speaker
So, there were some other excellent things that Maria Von Trapp talks about in her book that, again, we highly recommend around the year with the Von Trapp family because she talks about Fiowa Bent. I'm probably butchering that again. But you and I talked so much about that in our episode on leisure.
01:10:19
Speaker
People can go back and listen to and again if you want more of our like concrete tips on what you can do That episode really covers that But she again just like what you're saying It's about others as well and they visit a cemetery right on their walk home from Mass and just check on the graves and clean them up We're lay some flowers down. She said that in this way. They're talking about visiting their family beyond the grave And then yeah about little acts of charity for people in the community, but they start on Saturday night, which is
01:10:54
Speaker
Which really ties in again what the Pope was saying about how you prepare your family She prepared her family the night before with the readings which is again something my family used to do that we're not doing now But they get all the cooking the cleaning the baths all of that done Saturday so that as soon as Saturday evening progresses they are getting their hearts minds and bodies ready for mass the next day and
01:11:16
Speaker
So that that part is taken care of and then they enjoy the rest of their Sunday, just family time, right? Taking care of the community and being with their family. So there has been so much in this episode in terms of invitation to rediscover Sunday and why it's so important that we remember this day that I think we should just continue on our trajectory and close with John Paul II.
01:11:45
Speaker
And his letter with this final quote that really sums up, and this is from that document that you've been referring to, Lindsay, this whole time. What is it? Day as Dominee, right? Yeah, the day of the Lord. Yep. Yes. So he says, quote, it is a call to awaken remembrance of the grand and fundamental work of God, which is creation, a remembrance which must inspire the entire religious life of man and then fill the day on which man is called to rest.
01:12:13
Speaker
Rest therefore acquires a sacred value. The faithful are called to rest not only as God rested, but to rest in the Lord, bringing the entire creation to him in praise and thanksgiving, intimate as a child, and friendly as a spouse. Blessed be he who has raised the great day of Sunday above all other days. The heavens and the earth, angels and of men give themselves over to joy.
01:12:41
Speaker
This cry of the Maronite Liturgy captures well the intense acclamations of joy which have always characterized Sunday in the Liturgy of both East and West. Moreover, historically, even before it was seen as a day of rest, which in any case was not provided for in the civil calendar, Christians celebrated the weekly day of the risen Lord primarily as a day of joy.
01:13:05
Speaker
In the Christian view, joy is much more enduring and consoling. As the saints attest, it can hold firm even in the dark night of suffering. It is, in a certain sense, a virtue to be nurtured.
01:13:30
Speaker
Okay, it's time for our What We're Loving This Week segment of the show. So Lindsay, what have you been loving this week? Well, you and I were talking about this before we started recording because it's Lent, right? So we're both not as consuming as many exciting things. I've been listening to a lot of Scott Hahn. I keep joking. It's my Scott Hahn Lent, where he's got enough out there that I can, my entire Lent, and a lot of pints with Aquinas. And of course, I highly recommend both. So that's just a little bonus.
01:13:59
Speaker
But then I remembered I did go somewhere within the last week that I've almost forgotten about. Jason took me, as you know, Michelle, to Toronto to see the Canadian opera company's performance of Richard Strauss's 1905 opera, Salome. And I don't know quite, I haven't said anything about it yet because I, while I, okay, I guess the best way to say this, I loved the experience.
01:14:29
Speaker
Okay, as a whole. The performance in detail, there are parts of it I really enjoyed. There are parts of it I didn't enjoy as much. And I won't get into all of that detail right now because this isn't like a critical review of the opera.
01:14:45
Speaker
But my point here is that I loved the experience. It was so nice getting dressed up and doing the long drive into the city and going with Jason to a really nice dinner ahead of time. The building that the Canadian Opera Company uses is a brand new theatre facility in downtown Toronto that's absolutely stunning. It's very modern. It won all these awards. So being in that building
01:15:08
Speaker
right? And then everybody in Toronto dresses up for the opera more than they do here in our town. And so the whole experience start to finish was just something I absolutely loved. So I think I said it in an earlier episode this year, but I'll say it again.
01:15:24
Speaker
If you can, if you can just make it work with your budget and your time and babysitters to go ahead and book tickets for something for years, I didn't either. Right. I just was like, no, we can't, we can't, but now I'm clicking. Yep. Yes, we can. We'll figure it out somehow. Just get the tickets. Just.
01:15:41
Speaker
Get them. Do it. Because it's so much more than just the show. It is a whole event. It is daytime. It is time carved out for leisure, for rest, for something that is true good and beautiful. And it was a wonderful evening. So go to the opera.
01:15:58
Speaker
I love it. I would love to go to the opera. Even just to say I'm going to the opera would be part of the experience. But I do love that. What you're describing is culture. You're engaging in culture, right? And just to briefly bring it back to our episode when you're talking about the quote.
01:16:19
Speaker
I think it was Tim Gray who was like, we're basically spending our ancestors. Yes. Our endowment. Yes. Yes. Our endowment from our ancestors. Yes. But we're not refilling the coffers. And I think one step towards that recreation and rediscovering ourselves is to actually be familiar with the endowments of our ancestors. Yes. So that is awesome. It sounds like an amazing time. And what have you been loving this week, Michelle?
01:16:50
Speaker
So for mine, Lindsay, I can't remember if you actually officially did this already in what you're loving this week pic. I know you have loved it, though. But I have finally watched The Bells of St. Mary's. Ah, yes. Yes. And then around Christmas time, we watched Going My Way, which is like the the prequel of The Bells of St. Mary's, right? So this is the movie starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman.
01:17:17
Speaker
And I just loved it. It does kind of go with going my way, so it's kind of like a two for one. I guess I'm going to lump them together here. But both of the movies follow the story of a young, easygoing priest, Father O'Malley, spin Crosby, first in going my way. He goes to a church called St. Dominic's. It's in Manhattan, and he helps smooth out some of the problems that are facing that parish.
01:17:44
Speaker
But in the Bells of St. Mary's, Father O'Malley now arrives at St. Mary's, which is an inner city school run by nuns. And he immediately butts heads with the headmistress, Sister Benedict. This is Ingrid Bergman's character. On a number of things, not the least of which is what to do with the actual school itself, because the building is really deteriorating and it's falling into disrepair.
01:18:07
Speaker
But through their interactions with the students, their families, and with one another in this community of sisters, both Father O'Malley and Sister Benedict are changed. And the Christmas play scene will go down as one of my favorite and most heartwarming scenes ever. So, you know, all this to say, I have been noticing for the last few years
01:18:32
Speaker
there's been a very clear sense of searching for more forms of entertainment like this in movies in particular that have good cheer, peace, encouragement. It also doesn't necessarily have to be lighthearted in genre per se, but films and movies that have that bolstering and encouraging effect. And I felt like these movies, the Bells of St. Mary's especially,
01:19:00
Speaker
have really fit into that category. So if you are looking to fill your life with this kind of entertainment too, I highly recommend watching both Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's.
01:19:15
Speaker
Okay, that's going to do it for us this week. And if you want to get in touch and chat with us about our topic today, you can find us on our website, www.themodernlady1950.wordpress.com or leave us a comment on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at the Modern Lady podcast.
01:19:34
Speaker
I'm Michelle Sachs and you can find me on Instagram at mmsax. And I'm Lindsay Murray and you can find me on Instagram at Lindsay Homemaker. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week and we will see you next time.