Our Need For Sabbath: A Reflection on the Gospel from the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

REFLECTION ON THE 16^TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

I have written before about how hard it can be to be faithful to the Sabbath in church ministry. We all reach a saturation point in which we need to break away from all the demands of ministry in order to be more effective ministers. Even Jesus had to go away by himself with the sole intent of isolating himself from not only the needs of the many people who followed him, but also from the neediness of his apostles.

In the gospel for the 16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we find the disciples returning from their missionary trip. Jesus orders them to get into a boat and rest from their journey. Filled with an assortment of excitement, wonder, and fatigue, they needed some time to get away and debrief with one another, to understand what they had just done.

It becomes quickly clear that the people were not going to allow Jesus or the apostles to do that. They reach the destination of Jesus and the apostles prior to them arriving and are waiting for Jesus and the apostles as they disembarked from the boat. It was then that Jesus, looking over the crowd, saw all these people as lost and forsaken, like a flock of sheep that has no shepherd.

Each and everyone of us needs the Sabbath. We need one day to be free of the distractions of life in order to get in touch with ourselves. More importantly, we need that day to get in touch with God who is present within us. If we do not have the Sabbath, we will end up like those lost and forsaken souls in the gospel story.

Rabbi Kushner writes in The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm that if we do not keep holy the Sabbath, we are endangering our soul. We could lose our soul. Kushner tells the story of rich men going on safari in the Africa of bygone days. The rich men employed porters to carry and see after the supplies, tents, etc needed for the safari. They made great time for a good number of days in the African jungle, when one day, the porters refused to go any further. All they did for the entire day was to sit quietly. When one of the rich men complained to the porters about the delay, the head porter responded to him that they needed that day as the Sabbath. “We have walked too far too fast and now we must wait for our souls to catch up to us.” We need the Sabbath to restore our souls.

There is a wonderful poem that William Butler Yeats wrote many years ago entitled, “The Ballad of Father Gilligan”.
           
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.
 
Once, while he nodded on a chair,
At the moth-hour of eve,
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
 ‘
I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die;’
And after cried he, ‘God forgive!
My body spake, not I!’

He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars began to peep.

They slowly into millions grew,
And leaves shook in the wind;
And God covered the world with shade,
And whispered to mankind.

Upon the time of sparrow-chirp
When the moths came once more,
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Stood upright on the floor.

‘Mavrone, mavrone! The man has died
While I slept on the chair’;
He roused his horse out of its sleep,
And rode with little care.

He rode now as he never rode,
By rocky lane and fen;
The sick man’s wife opened the door:
‘Father! You come again!’

‘And is the poor man dead?’ he cried,
‘He died and hour ago.’
The old priest Peter Gilligan
In grief swayed to and fro.

‘When you were gone, he turned and died
As merry as a bird.’
The old priest Peter Gilligan
He knelt him at that word.

‘He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls tire and bleed,
Sent one of His great angels down
To help me in my need.

‘He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.’

As it is important for all people to keep Holy the Sabbath, it is especially important for those of us who minister to keep the Sabbath Holy as well. In fact, it is vitally important that we do so. Unless we wish to end up exhausted and anxious as Father Peter Gilligan in the poem, we need the Sabbath in order to minister fully and well to the people God gives us to serve. To not keep Holy the Sabbath is to disservice those we are called to minister by God. For those of us who work the Sabbath, we must find another day to set aside as the day of rest, the day for our souls to catch up with us. The day in which we are able to restore our souls.