JULY 12, 2018
THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT • 21
COMMENTARY FAITH AT HOME | LAURA KELLY FANUCCI
God rested. Can’t we do the same?
This column almost made a liar out of me. “I’ll write about leisure,” I decided one morning at Mass, snuggled next to a rarely calm child, soaking in the Sunday quiet. A perfect topic for July’s sultry weather and summer vacations. Gentle reminders that God calls us to rest. But then my work schedule picked up. So did my husband’s. House projects became emergencies; kids got sick; calendars got thrown off. When I finally sat down to write, my fingers paused, caught. Nothing came to mind. Turns out I had zero leisure in my life. Even before our family’s rhythms slipped from school schedules to summer’s slower pace, I had started to notice the restless itch. The inability to slow down, the frantic rush from one must-do to the next, the nagging guilt that stopping would be lazy. We read in Genesis that God rested on the seventh day. But too often we dismiss this notion for our own “crazy busy” lives as quaint or cute, a heavenly nap on the couch after a long week of creation. But what if — like every one of God’s actions — resting on the Sabbath was a powerful and profound act of divine might and wisdom? God rested. Why do we think we don’t need to do the same? “We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence,” wrote the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper in “Leisure: The Basis of Culture.” Look around at our culture. It’s not hard to see that most of us are soul-worn, living beyond basic human needs. Living even beyond divine mandate. The Third Commandment tells us to keep holy the Sabbath. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that “the Sabbath brings everyday work to a halt and provides a respite. It is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money” (No. 2172). So how can we slow down to reclaim rest? Here are three ways to make space for Sabbath —
TWENTY SOMETHING | CHRISTINA CAPECCHI
A scratch-and-sniff stamp for an ailing business
The numbers don’t look good for the U.S. Postal Service. Last year it reported its sixth straight annual operating loss, in the amount of $2.7 billion. During fiscal year 2017, the USPS delivered 149 billion pieces of mail, down from 154 billion the previous year — and a major drop from its peak of 213 billion in 2006. The average American is no longer using the mail to send greeting cards or newsy letters, family photos at Christmas or postcards from vacation. In fact, the average American couldn’t tell you the cost of a stamp. (It’s 50 cents, up a penny from the 2017 rate.) So we are all to blame — Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps disproportionately — for the struggles of the postal service. And yet, reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. It averted a 2009 proposal to cut back to five days of delivery a week and defied reports that it was going out of business.
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But a family isn’t called to be a well-oiled machine. We’re a home full of humans who need to rest, relax and enjoy each other’s company, too.
iSTOCK | VLADANS
simple ideas that are helping me get back on track. First, let technology rest. I’ve been taking a “phone-free Sabbath”: tucking the phone in a drawer on Saturday night and resisting the temptation to scroll on Sunday. I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s harder than I expected. But the deliberate practice of being offline and available to those who matter most — my spouse and kids — is delightful and refreshing. I pray longer without distraction. I started reading novels again. I sit and notice: children at play, birds at the feeder, growth in our gardens. Now on Monday mornings, I regret picking the phone back up. The more Sabbath I have, the more I crave it. Second, let chores rest. In a bustling household, there is always something to do, fold, fix, file, scrub, wash, sweep or mend. But a family isn’t called to be a well-oiled machine. We’re a home full of humans who need to rest, relax
and enjoy each other’s company, too. Try piling the dishes in the sink after Sunday lunch. Or quieting the washing machine from its constant churning. Leaving a chore or two to rest (even until Sunday night) can free up a little breathing room. Third, let yourself rest. Yes, you, with 1,000 things to do and a racing mind that won’t quit. Go to bed early. Sleep in a little later. Take a guilt-free nap. Summer is a season to slow down and let ourselves breathe again. Let the God of rest — the God who rested — restore you, body and soul.
In 2015 it appointed its first female postmaster general. In 2017 it launched Informed Delivery, a free service that provides a digital preview of the mail that will be landing in your mailbox later that day. And last month it issued a set of scratch-and-sniff stamps. The postal service offers a remarkable value proposition. For just 50 cents, mail carriers will deliver your handcrafted message anywhere in the United States! The distance from Anchorage to Miami spans nearly 5,000 miles, breaking down to a hundredth of a penny per mile. Compare that with the Pony Express pricing in 1860 — $10 an ounce — and, adjusting for inflation, you see a business that has drastically improved its service at ever lower prices. Amid continued murmurs of doom and gloom, of a failing business model in a rewired communications landscape, I find it refreshing to consider the USPS’s history, beginning in 1775 when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The postal service is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the U.S. Constitution, and over the centuries it has innovated again and again. In 1845 it hired the first woman to carry mail, ferrying it from the train depot to the post office in Charlestown, Maryland. By 1860 a woman worked a contract route, a “tall, muscular woman” the Boston Daily Globe dubbed “Brave Polly Martin.” In the winter, Martin said in an interview, she often had to dig her horse out of snow drifts, and once she was accosted by robbers. The man who grabbed her reins paid the price; she “pounded him in the face” with
her horsewhip, she said. “He had tackled the wrong customer that time.” The postal service pioneered airmail delivery, building an entire aviation infrastructure years before passenger airline service became profitable. Eddie Gardner, one of its first pilots, was nicknamed “Turkey Bird” because his wobbly takeoffs resembled a turkey trying to fly. In 1918, he tested a proposed route from New York to Chicago, breaking his nose in a rough landing and paving the way for a regular New YorkChicago airmail service that took effect the following year. To appreciate the postal service’s history is to recognize how much it has weathered and how far it has come — and, as a by-product, to believe in its future. So too is it with the Catholic Church. Reports that we are losing members faster than any other denomination in the U.S. are troubling. But the oldest Christian faith offers a service like no other: food for the soul. To reimagine our future, we must remember our past — beginning with an education for young Catholics, whose appreciation for history may surprise you. Where we are headed depends on where we have been.
Fanucci, a parishioner of St. Joseph the Worker in Maple Grove, is a mother, writer and director of a project on vocations at the Collegeville Institute in Collegeville. She is the author of several books, including “Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting,” and blogs at motheringspirit.com.
Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights.