[Pearls Ep 171: Preparing for Sunday]
We’re coming to the final weeks of the Easter season. Next Sunday we celebrate Jesus’ ascension to heaven. And the following Sunday we celebrate Pentecost – the coming of the Holy Spirit.
This Sunday (the 6th Sunday of Easter) anticipates both of those events with Jesus alerting His disciples that He will soon be leaving them. Fortunately, for all of us, He continues to explain that they (we…) will not be left orphaned and leaderless. The Father will send them (us…) the Holy Spirit (the Advocate).
But – and this is the key – to receive the Holy Spirit we must keep Jesus’ commandments.
And so, in this week’s Pearls of the Interior Life we are focusing on the topic of leisure.
Huh?
Doing the work of keeping Jesus’ commandments first requires that we receive them and interiorize them. And that requires a different sort of work – leisure.
Few people have pondered deeper the topic than Josef Pieper. Here’s an example of what Prof Pieper has to say on the benefits of leisure:
“Leisure is essentially ‘non-activity’; it is a form of silence. Leisure amounts to that precise way of being silent which is a prerequisite for listening in order to hear; for only the listener is able to hear. Leisure implies an attitude of total receptivity toward, and willing immersion in, reality; an openness of the soul, through which alone may come about those great and blessed insights that no amount of ‘mental labor’ can ever achieve.”
Elsewhere he draws a direct line tethering leisure to worship, liturgy, and relationship with God. In short, that we must grow ever closer to the God who labored for six days and then stepped back to admire His work and declare it good.
It is not for nothing that the 3rd Commandment tells us, “The seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord.” Our Creator is telling us that to understand and follow His commandments in our active life, we first need to draw close to him in “non-activity.”
And here we are and it’s Friday and Sunday is just around the bend. A fine time to practice both worship and leisure.
Easter blessings –
Karen and Steve Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: John 14:15-21
Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”