Skip to main content

Snow Day/ Sabbath Rest

One prominent aspect of life in Israel as an officially Jewish State is the weekly observance of the Sabbath.   Indeed Friday afternoon until about 3:30PM there is an air of anticipation as many people are out and about doing last minute errands in preparation for the Sabbath evening meal. For the religiously observant, the food that will be taken for breakfast and lunch on Saturday must also be prepared as no such work is permitted on this weekly day of holy rest, which begins at sundown on Friday and ends at the same time on Saturday.    The arrival of the Sabbath is greeted with joy, with the blowing of the trumpet in Jerusalem and with displays of flowers and fruit and wine amidst lit candles in hotel lobbies.  Most extended families come together at home or in hotels to celebrate with a special evening meal on Friday followed by a day of rest and recreation on Saturday.   Indeed - all is hustle and bustle and then in a moment most traffic disappears and quiet descends on the streets, as shops close and no more business as usual is conducted for the liturgical day from evening to evening.  God created the Sabbath, and God mandated its observance and so there is a saying that more than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.   Whenever I go to the Holy Land this observance is something that I admire and envy, because it's been a long time since my childhood days of Sunday breakfast at a diner after Mass and early afternoon Sunday dinners with family and visits later on to or from  extended family or going out for a Sunday ride and ice cream.  Sadly our culture has lost sight of the value of the Sabbath, maybe even its absolute necessity and that is to our detriment no doubt!   Gone indeed are the days when Christians worked on Saturdays to allow their Jewish neighbors their day of rest and then they on Sundays to allow Christians our day   the original purpose of a weekend.   Now our culture has become so commercialized that shops don't close on any day of the week and we've become so sports obsessed that our children have competitions or practices for them even on Sundays.  Road races are all the rage now on Sundays and are scheduled such that streets are blocked often preventing those who would rightly want to worship from even getting to or from their Church!   Yet every once in a while the heavens drop the snows in such measure that everything closes down and there is no traffic and nowhere to go and nothing to do but to stay put for a day.  These are often the most glorious of days, an unplanned but true day of rest from usual labors during which we feel ourselves being restored.  Might the Lord himself be subtly reminding us of what we have lost by forgetting our need for a weekly Sabbath rest?  O Lord, thank you for the snowstorms that remind us that You know better than we what we truly need!

Fr. Edward Healey

Comments