Shabbat
You live, run, eat, drink, get dirty, wash yourself, have fun, talk, wish, work, relate with others, think, and then you get rusty. Then there are challenges, failures, wounds, fears, mistakes, and then you get rusty. Then there are pains, illnesses, betrayals and sins and you are ready to be thrown out like yesterday's trash. Every day the alarm clock rings, it is difficult to wake up and to clear your thoughts, and then attachments, plans, fears, rushing around, relationships, affections, disaffections, unexpected events, joys, pains, emotions, credits and debts of all kinds fill your day. Day after day, life's burden makes us loose our balance, slow down, and sometimes stop. So how should we live, interact, do our duty with passion and love without getting rusty, getting burdened down and finally getting stuck? There is no way, it is impossible. Even when we are simply breathing, we are oxidizing.
In order to live fully and not to get burdened, rusty, or sick with attachments, we must follow the first of God's commandments. What was the first biblical order given to man in the order they were given?
Shabbat, rest.
It is the first of God's indications, and the Bible, the Sacred Law, specifies even the divine proportion of this restorative rest: one to seven. Out of seven days, six are for work and inevitable and sometimes wonderful incrustations (because that is how life is), and one is for "disincrusting," that is recovering through sacred rest. But rest does not mean starvation, inertia, boredom, idleness, or simply sleeping.
The shabbat is more than this, much more. The shabbat is to purify the soul through sacred activities that have the power to regenerate both the body and the soul: praise-chant-prayer, forgiveness to be asked of God and to offer to brothers, play and relaxation, happy relationships. It is a vital regeneration by praising God, beneficial actions, good relationships, restorative activities.
When the Lord called his people to keep holy the sabbath day, He was asking something sublime and beautiful of his people. He asked, or rather gave, His people a day of total and complete regeneration.
Sunday is the special day for gathering to pray and to praise God, to ask Him for forgiveness and to give it to our peers as well, it is for restoring relationships and affections, and to listenening to His word that makes us wise and luminous by celebrating and reliving the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection. This is the celebrative core of the shabbat, but along with this, Sunday is a good time for relations and for a few hours of holy solitude, time to caress the people you love, to play with your children, it is time for a walk with friends, enjoying nature and movement, good food and serenity.
It is not easy to achieve the shabbat, one needs a certain method, and even some training, but it is essential to learn to live the shabbat peacefully in order to be able to live a healthy and effective life before God and man.
Jesus, our wise, tender, sweet and affectionate teacher, sends His disciples out on the roads of the world without economic security, without bread, without human support, but at the same time He guides them firmly to live the shabbat, the holy rest, perhaps away in divine solitude, or all together chanting praise to the Lord, conversing and eating happily some good broiled fish on the beach.
If we live a good and healthy shabbat we can enjoy a balanced life, strong and resistant to the inevitable difficulties and able to enjoy every breath and every moment of God's providence.