Pope Audience: Discern true rest
from false rest
Joining tourists and faithful in St Peter’s Square on
Wednesday, Pope Francis during his General Audience focuses on the Commandment,
" Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day."
The Pope told those gathered that resting on Sunday was not
“a mere escape or diversion, but a command to imitate God himself, who on the
seventh day rested from his works and contemplated the goodness of his
creation.”
False rest and true rest
He pointed out that there was “false rest and true
rest”. Society, he said, was thirsty for entertainment and holidays. The
image-model, the Pope continued, was “that of a successful person who can
afford different kinds of pleasure. But this mentality, he noted, slips towards
the dissatisfaction of an anesthetized existence of entertainment that is not
rest, but alienation and escape from reality. Man has never rested as
much as today, yet man has never experienced as much emptiness as today.”
Rest and contemplation
On the other hand, explained Pope Francis, true rest “is a
moment of contemplation, of praise.” It is a time to look at reality and say:
how beautiful life is. It is the day, he continued, to say to God: thank you
for your life, for your mercy, for all your gifts.” Sunday, the Pontiff
stressed, was not the day to cancel the other days but to recall them, bless
them and make peace with life because it is life is precious. Peace is chosen,
he said, it “cannot be imposed and cannot be found by chance.“
In God alone do our souls find rest.
The Pope concluded by saying, “when, on our weekly day of
rest, we contemplate our lives and the world around us, let us be conscious of
God’s provident care and conform ourselves, like Jesus, to the Father’s will,
knowing that, in the end, “all is grace”. For, as the Psalmist assures us, in
God alone do our souls find rest.”
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