Christmas memories

Honoring the Sabbath is greatest gift you can give yourself all year

By Martha Ardis (Special to The Criterion)

When I was growing up, my family honored the Sabbath. This was a

non-negotiable custom in our family.

Sundays started with church in the morning followed by Sunday lunch.

Then it began. No TV, no radio, no homework—this was done on Saturdays—and no chores whatsoever.

Our afternoons and evenings were spent in silence every Sunday.

I can remember my father, who was a very tall man, staring disdainfully down at me whenever I tried to renegotiate our Sabbath customs. I would always lose.

As with most things that my parents instilled in me, I did not begin to fully appreciate their wisdom until I realized that I had lost something.

A few years ago, my life was becoming an endless “To Do” List, and that list was taking over my life. I was strangely restless and not really satisfied with anything in my life.

A friend once told me that “God will get you where he wants you,” and this adage rang true for me.

After struggling with that call to “go away and rest,” God did get me where he wanted me to be.

I was welcomed by the Trappist monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Ky., to rest my body, mind and soul in silence.

That special place gave me the opportunity to crank the “speedometer” way back and to reflect on my life. It also provided me with time to pray, and to finally listen to the things that God had been waiting to tell me.

When I returned home, I was obsessed about how to reclaim the spiritual experience that I had enjoyed at the monastery.

My soul had tasted the living waters, and I realized that quiet, reflective time is what I needed in order to continue down the path.

It took me a while to finally connect the dots, but when I did the answer was always there—the Sabbath.

God created the world in six days and said, “It is good.”

But the seventh day—the Sabbath—God made that day holy, and asked us to honor that day.

We all make choices in life, and those choices determine how we live our lives. It is not an easy choice to follow the road less traveled.

Choosing to honor the Sabbath, to take time to honor the day that God set “apart,” is not for the weak of heart. It will take courage.

St. John of the Cross knew about the need for silence, and left us with these words: “The Father spoke one word, who was His Son, and this word He is always speaking in eternal silence. It is in silence that the soul must hear it.”

I have never regretted returning to the weekly practice of honoring the Sabbath.

It might be constructed as a time for “doing nothing” by some people.

But “doing nothing” and just being … with God, isn’t that the greatest gift you can give yourself?

(Martha Ardis is a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis.) †