Within God’s very design for our human creatureliness is the need for keeping the Sabbath. Primarily, this is meant as a day to honor God in worship and praise. Yet keeping the Sabbath is also a way for human beings, fashioned in the image and likeness of God, to join with God in Sabbath rest. As the Third Commandment states, “You shall not do any work” (Ex 20:10).

In his apostolic letter Dies Domini (“The Lord’s Day”), Pope St. John Paul II comments on what “rest” means in the Third Commandment: “The rest decreed in order to honor the day dedicated to God is not at all a burden imposed upon man, but rather an aid to help him to recognize his life-giving and liberating dependence upon the Creator, and at the same time his calling to cooperate in the Creator’s work and to receive his grace. In honoring God’s ‘rest,’ man fully discovers himself ” (No. 62).

For us priests, the Sabbath is a busy day. We get up early to unlock the church; we celebrate one, two or even more liturgies of the Eucharist; we field questions and concerns from our parishioners before and after Mass; we visit religious education classrooms or teach formation classes ourselves; we meet with grieving families to plan a funeral later in the week; we run to the hospital if a parishioner’s condition worsens; we try to attend other parish events happening that day. And then we lock up the church at the end of the day. When do we get our Sabbath rest? How are we to “fully discover” ourselves when our Sabbaths are anything but restful?

Perhaps the key is St. John Paul II’s twofold insight that Sabbath rest (1) evokes our recognition that we are utterly dependent on God for our very lives and for the freedom in our lives, and (2) calls us to receive well the grace of God to continue his work, to sustain what God has done and is doing in the world, in the Church and in people’s lives.

Continuing God’s Care for the World

In Jewish rabbinic Midrash, God “rests” on the Sabbath by actively sustaining and holding in care what he worked so hard to create in the world. In a similar vein, the “work” of a priest on Sunday sacramentalizes God’s rest by sustaining the lives of faith of the people God has formed — the Church. Our pastoral presence Sunday after Sunday manifests God’s active care for his people. Priestly work on Sunday continues the sustenance God provides for his people, especially through the body and blood of his Son.

But priests need a true day of rest for themselves as well. Just as we challenge our people to refrain from their normal responsibilities and labor on Sunday in order to discover more fully their dependence on God and offer their gratitude to him, so, too, priests need a true day off each week. Priests need a non-Sunday Sabbath to sit in quiet gratitude for all that God is for them and all the ways that God sustains them.

So, even if a priest gets to sleep in that day, he ought to spend some extra time in the morning pondering how God has been holding onto him in care. As he enjoys refraining from his normal routine of pastoral work and responsibilities, the priest needs to be rejuvenated by the discovery of the love by which God sustains him. A priest’s Sabbath rest is a time to experience deeply how God desires to be for him what God can be for him. It is a day that renews a priest to continue God’s care for the world, the Church and the individual lives of the people the priest will encounter until the next Sabbath day. 

FATHER SCOTT DETISCH, S.T.L., Ph.D., is a priest of the Diocese of Erie, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Girard, Pennsylvania, and adjunct professor of systematic and sacramental theology at St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Wickliffe, Ohio. He holds a license and doctorate in systematic theology.