The measure of our identity or our being is the amount of our love for GOD. The more we love earthly things, reputation, importance, ease, success and pleasures, for ourselves, the less we love God. Our identity gets dissipated among a lot of things that do not have the value we imagine we see in them and we lost in them; we know it obscurely by the way all these things disappoint us and sicken us once we get what we have desired. Yet we still bring ourselves to nothing, annihilate our lives by trying to fulfill them on things that are incapable of doing so. When we really come to die, at last, we suddenly know how much we have squandered and thrown away and we see that we are truly annihilated by our own sick desires. We were nothing, but everything God gave us we have also reduced to nothing, and now we are pure death.
Sept 3 1941, Journal by Thomas Merton, 243-44
The one thing that seemed to me more or less impossible was for grace to penetrate the thick, resilient hide of bourgeois smugness and really take hold of the immortal soul beneath that surface in order to make something out of it.... however no sooner had I got a faint glimpse of the real character and spirituality of St Therese an I was immediately and strongly attracted to her- an attraction that was the work of grace since as I say it took me in one jump clean through a 1000 psychological obstacles and repugnance.
But What Do you Do on a Day of Rest?
Well that’s the point – we stop DOING!
Just like God stopped “making” on the 7th day, we too change from “doing” to “being“. This is one of the most conscious concepts that is currently being encouraged and adopted by meditators, new-age thinkers. medical experts, philosophers, business leaders as well as religious leaders. When we are in a mode of being we are able to connect to ourselves, to others and to spirituality.
One of the main connections made on Shabbat is between family members, as for one whole day the family spends time with them as no technology, travel, housework or work is permitted. Consequently, a whole day is spent together as a family – reading, chatting, playing , visiting friends and connecting spiritually through prayer, expressing gratefulness. This all sounds like a very 2021 self help book, despite it’s beginning being 3500 years old!
When is Shabbat?
Shabbat starts from an hour before sundown on Friday evening and continues until sunset, with the appearance of three stars, on Saturday night – all in all, 25 hours. The beginning of Shabbat is marked by the lighting of two Shabbat candles with your eyes closed which involves blessings for the Shabbat. The moment you open your eyes and see the two flames of holiness a feeling of peacefulness fills the home.
Shabbat is an official day of rest coming from the Bible: Genesis2:2-3 which states “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
