In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says, “come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The Greek work for rest, ἀναπαύω, means to cause to rest, to soothe, to refresh, and features in the etymology of the English word pause.
“Of course, the original meaning of the concept of ”leisure” has practically been forgotten in today’s leisure–less culture of “total work”: in order to win our way to a real understanding of leisure, we must confront the contradiction that rises from our overemphasis on the world of work. “One does not only work in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one’s work,” this statement, quoted by Max Weber, makes immediate sense to us, and appeals to current opinion. It is difficult for us to see how in fact it turns the order of things upside-down.” — Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture, p. 26
Reader, do you find it weird that, in this era of leisure and entertainment, of technological aides, of more vacation time that we’ve ever before had — we experience a crisis of stress, of burnout, of anxiety? We do not experience proper rest. Escapism ≠ rest. Leisure ≠ living well. In Confessions, Augustine writes, “our hearts are restless till they find rest in you.” (You in this quote refers to G-d.)
What does it mean to rest?
It means to know our purpose, such that our soul knows where it belongs, and can rest there. Our souls become tired of living without G-d. Messages to do more, buy more, post more bombard us constantly. Instagram curates its algorithm to addict users. X does this, and so too does Facebook. Where did we ever get the idea that escapism = rest?! Now even “leisure” has become exhausting. From Friday to Sunday our leisure time takes us in many different directions — we do not rest. Then we find we need a rest to recover from our weekend of leisure. What if divorcing leisure from the spiritual and from worship has led to our perpetual exhaustion?
“Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. Such stillness as this is not mere soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul’s power, as real, of responding to the real – a co–respondence, eternally established in nature – has not yet descended into words. Leisure is the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion – in the real.” —Josef Pieper, p. 50
Why do we feel so unrested?
Does the obsession to assign value to human beings based on their productivity and economic output exhaust, distort, and dehumanise us?
Perhaps Josef Pieper had a point. Perhaps our machine culture of metastatic growth and our valuation of humans based on their economic output has something to do with our perpetual feeling of unrest. In human physiology, we consider unlimited cellular growth a pathology. We call it cancer, and it makes us very sick and can kill us. So why don’t we consider unlimited growth in our economy and society equally as pathological? When we assign value to people based on their economic output, then idleness, ie pausing from work, becomes rest. This does not rest the human spirit though.
“There is nothing, then, to keep the world of the ”worker” from being a poor, sterile world, even though filled with material goods; thanks to the principle of utility, in virtue of which the ”world of work” comes into being, there can be no real wealth, no overflow. Wherever something is left over, this excess will be subjected again to the principle of rational utility. ”Work does not make you rich; it only makes you bent over,” as the old Russian saying goes.” — Josef Pieper, p. 72
What is proper rest, then?
Proper rest, or leisure as Josef Pieper called it, goes beyond the absence of work, to the presence of G-d’s gifts. Think of delighting in truth, beauty, goodness. G-d made us as embodied soul creatures. That means leisure must promote soul rest and growth.1 Replacing work with busyness doesn’t bring us leisure or rest. Ultimately, real leisure has a holiness to it, we could almost think of it as sacramental. What if we could see attending Mass as the highest form of leisure? When we walk into that church, we stop consuming, producing, proving ourselves. We settle into the love of G-d the Father as we are in the moment. Through adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and supplication we can enter into G-d. Rest comes from living the way Jesus lived. He shared meals with his disciples, he walked, he prayed, he spent a lot of time alone in nature and wilderness. In fact nature had such an impact on Jesus that he mentioned birds frequently in his parables.
“Worship is to time as the temple is to space. ”Temple” has a certain meaning (reflected also in its etymology, cf. Greek temenos, from temnein, to cut; Latin templum): a definite physical space has been ”cut off” by enclosure or fencing from the rest of the land, whose surface was divided up for farming or other uses. These sectioned-off spaces were handed over to the possession of the gods and were not inhabited or planted but were removed from all practical use.” — Josef Pieper, p. 71
Work is not prayer, contrary to what Thomas Carlyle wrote. We should not consider idle time as leisure time as long as it exists as a means to an end — we must regard it as its own end. Section off your time from utilitarian creep. Take time each day and definitely each week to cease consuming, producing, proving yourself. Doom scrolling on social media is not rest. Getting square eyes in front of a screen is not rest. Killing time is not leisure. Leisure requires a kind of surrender, and that takes some spiritual power. Rather than scroll, pick up a book. Rather than get square eyes on screen time, go outside. Pray, serve others.
“Culture lives on worship,” writes Pieper (p. 75).
The question then becomes, what are we worshipping?
For my secular readers, if that word “soul” bothers you, feel free to replace it with “nervous system” in order to grasp the concept Pieper tries to make. Though, this is a faith-based reflection on rest and work.