16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“[Jesus] said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’” Seems like a fitting Gospel following my retreat!

I had a great retreat, thank you for your prayers. It was in a deserted place, by a monastery in rural Wisconsin. It was very restful, in fact the first task on my retreat was just to rest, to catch up on sleep - take naps, sleep in - whatever I needed to do to just rest, which was good. After a few days I got to the point where I wasn’t as tired and actually felt well rested.

I have a tendency to run really hard, and get a lot done, but it adds up, our bodies can’t take it, and we need to rest after a while.  This is what the Apostles were experiencing.  They went out on their first Mission, shared the Good News of the Kingdom, healed people just like they saw Jesus do, and when they all got back together, they shared all they had done, but then Jesus called them to rest.

Rest is a word that is used often in the Bible.  Since my Spiritual Director had to push me to rest on this retreat, I was really paying attention to the word “rest” in the scripture passages I was reading and it is used quite a bit.  God wants us to rest from our work, especially to take that time with Him.  It isn’t just any rest, it is rest with Him! To just stop “doing” and just “be.”   

We all have a tendency to run really hard, to be productive, to get a lot done, but at what cost?  This is what Sunday is for, to be with God, to rest from our running all week.  And that is hard for me, too. I have a tendency to run really hard, and then crash, so I work hard, go, go, go, and then the crash happens, and my crash happens usually in prayer.

Frequently over the last year or two, maybe more, I don’t know, I go to prayer during my daily holy hour, pray my Liturgy of the Hours, maybe begin a Rosary or a Divine Mercy Chaplet, but then I just fall asleep.  It might be restful but not the quality time with God that I had in mind.

So retreat was good from that standpoint, by the end I wasn’t falling asleep in prayer and I could maintain focus on a scripture passage for a full hour, and I’d do that four times/day. 

Another thing that I realized on retreat was just how much of a problem my phone had gotten to be in prayer.  For instance, when I go to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, which I do five times each day, if I get a text message, or a notification of any sort, I usually address it.

We all know how annoying it is to be with someone one-on-one and for them to receive a text message and to see them stop mid-conversation and address the text, seemingly completely forgetting about us… well, that is what I have been doing to God, and I realized I need to stop, starting with using my books again instead of using the phone.  

I was being rude towards God, and using the book helps me to be better, more attentive in the relationship. But it has been a battle since I got back, the phone is so convenient, and this App that I use, it is called “Divine Office” if you want to pray with all of us Priests and Deacons and Religious around the world, they just added a new feature, checkboxes on the right hand side of the, so after you finish praying you can just check the box.  

Now as a former Software Developer, I thought this checkbox was one of the coolest features - if I listen to the prayer, it checks the box automatically, if I read it, I can check it myself, and then I remember if I prayed it or not... Which is bad that I need that because I can’t remember 5 prayer periods in a day, but that’s how much I get running and juggling.

But the bigger thing that I realized is I was checking the boxes... That’s all my relationship with God had become at times, checking boxes, and that is a potential problem in all of our relationships, right?  Can you imagine a husband waking up saying, “okay, new day, I have to tell my wife I love her 5 times today,” and having an app on his phone with 5 checkboxes?  That would be absurd.  And then on dates he just falls asleep after 15 min of texting. Not good.

But so often, in our busy-ness, in our running to survive each day, we just check the boxes.  We should not check the boxes in any relationship. We cannot check the boxes in a relationship with God. If we think that we can just check the box for Mass each week & go to Heaven, we are wrong. If we think we can just check the box for Confession each year & go to Heaven, we are wrong. If we think we can just check the box for tithing & go to Heaven, we are wrong. 

God wants a deep, committed, focused relationship with each and every one of us that helps us to get to know Him here so that we can spend eternity with Him in Heaven, Heaven is simply a continuation of our relationship with God here on earth, it way deeper than checking the boxes on the precepts of our faith, because love is way deeper than checking boxes! 

Jesus came to earth because He loves us, He wants a relationship with us as a Shepherd cares for His sheep. We run all the time, but we must really stop and rest with God, put the phones down and be with Him, focused in prayer on His Word, trusting that He does care for us.