February 14, 2004
Leisure and the Mass: A Philosophical Approach to Rest and Worship
Too often in our hectic world do we find ourselves failing to truly make time for leisure. It could be argued that leisure can take on different meanings for different people and to a certain extent I would agree. But I wish to speak of that form of leisure that can truly be called "restful leisure".
Josef Pieper wrote in his book Leisure, The Basis of Culture:
The soul of leisure, it can be said, lies in "celebration." Celebration is the point at which the three elements of leisure come to a focus: relaxation, effortlessness, and superiority of "active leisure" to all functions.
But if celebration is the core of leisure, then leisure can only be made possible and justifiable on the same basis as the celebration of a festival. That basis is divine worship.
The meaning of celebration, we have said, is man's affirmation of the universe and his experiencing the world in an aspect other than its everyday one. Now we cannot conceive a more intense affirmation of the world than "praise of God", praise of the Creator of this very world. This statement is generally received with a discomfort formed of many elements - I have often witnessed that. But its truth is irrefutable. The most feastive feast it is possible to celebrate is divine worship.
So now let us tie this into my initial comment about that form of leisure that can truly be called "restful".
And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. - Gen 2:2
So after all His work was completed God rested or took leisure. Throughout history this "day of rest" has been directly tied to worship. Let us return to Pieper:
What is true of celebration is true of leisure: its possibility, its ultimate justification derive from its roots in divine worship. That is not a conceptual abstraction, but the simple truth as may be seen from the history of religion. What does a "day of rest" mean in the Bible, and for that matter in Greece and Rome? To rest from work means that time is reserved for divine worship: certain days and times are set aside and transferred to "the exclusive property of the Gods".
Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned. "Temple" means (as may be seen from the original sense of the word": that a particular piece of ground is specifically reserved, and marked off from the remainder of the land which is used either for agriculture or for habitation. And this plot of land is transferred to the estate of the Gods, it is neither lived on, nor cultivated. And similarly in divine worship a certain definite space of time is set aside from working hours and days, a limited time, specially marked off - and like the space allotted to the temple, is not used, is withdrawn from all merely utilitarian ends. Every seventh day is such a period of time. It is the "feast time," and it arises in this way and no other.
Here we see the material manifestation of leisure in a very unique form. Land is set aside and a "temple" or "church" is built for "worship" and "rest". This is done due to the fact that "time" had first been set aside for "worship" and "rest". The "temple" or "church" is only necessary because the "time" is necessary. So for those who believe that "going to church," that going to the physical "temple" or "church," is all that is necessary to be a good Christian, they make the gravest of mistakes. The setting aside of "time" involves much more than just physically doing something, it contains a wholistic aspect. The human person must "rest" completely - body, mind, and spirit. Therefore, that must be one's approach to "worship" as well. For that is likewise the nature of true work. True work requires complete work, it requires focus of body, mind, and spirit, for even work then can become a truly human, yet at the same time, a truly spiritual act. But let us return to Pieper's meditation of the need for leisure that can only be found in worship.
On the other hand, divine worship, of its very nature, creates a sphere of real wealth and superfluity, even in the midst of the direst material want - because sacrifice is the living heart of worship. And what does sacrifice mean? It means a voluntary offering freely given. It definitely does not involve utility; it is in fact absolutely antithetic to utility. Thus, the act of worship creates a store of real wealth which cannot be consumed by the workaday world. It sets up an area where calculation is thrown to the winds and goods are deliberately squandered, where usefulness is forgotten and generosity reigns. Such wastefulness is, we repeat, true wealth; the wealth of the feast time. And only in this feast time can leisure unfold and come to fruition.
Separated from the sphere of divine worship, of the cult of the divine, and from the power it radiates, leisure is as impossible as the celebration of a feast. Cut off from the worship of the divine, leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman.
That is the origin or source of all sham forms of leisure with their strong family resemblance to want of leisure and to sloth (in its old metaphysical and theological sense). The vacany left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire's Journal Intime that is fearful in the precision of its cynicism: "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure."
And the counterpart to that is the fact that if real leisure is deprived of the support of genuine feast days and holy-days, work itself becomes inhuman: whether endured brutishly or "heroically" work is naked toil and effort without hope - it can only be compared to the labours of Sisyphus, that mystical symbol of the "worker" chained to his function, never pausing in his work, and never gathering any fruit from his labours.
In its extreme form the passion for work, naturally blind to every form of divine worship and often inimical to it, turns abruptly into its contrary, and work becomes a cult, becomes a religion.
...The celebration of divine worship, then, is the deepest of the springs by which leisure is fed and continues to be vital - though it must be remembered that leisure embraces everything which, without being merely useful, is an essential part of a full human existence.
...But at a time when the nature of culture is no longer even understood, at a time when "the world of work" claims to include the whole field of human existence, and to be co-terminous with it, it is necessary to go back to fundamentals in order to rediscover the ultimate justification of leisure.
...The sphere of leisure, it has already been said, is no less than the sphere of culture in so far as that word means everything that lies beyond the utilitarian world. Culture lives on religion through divine worship. And when culture itself is endangered, and leisure is called in question, there is only one thing to be done: to go back to the first and original source.
Such is, moreover, the meaning of the marvellous quotation from Plato placed at the beginning of this essay - But the Gods, taking pity on mankind, born to work, laid down the succession of recurring Feasts to restore them from their fatigue, and gave them the Muses, adn Apollo their leader, and Dionysus, as companions in their Feasts, so that nourishing themselves in festive companionship with the Gods, they should again stand upright and erect. The origin of the arts in worship, and of leisure derived from its celebration, is given in the form of a magnificent mythical image: man attains his true form and his upright attitude "in festive companionship with the Gods."
...Our hope is, in the first place, that the many signs "intra et extra muros of a reawakening of the feeling for worship and its significance should not prove deceptive and misleading. For, to recapitulate: no one need expect a genuine religious worship, a cultus, to arise on purely human foundations, on foundations made by man; it is of the very nature of religious worship that its origin lies in a divine ordinance, a fact which is moreover implied in the quotation from Plato already referred to. No doubt the feeling for what has been ordained and laid down may increase, or it may lose its vitality. And that is the point toward which our hopes are directed - and not, of course, to the revival of some antiquated cult; and still less towards the foundation of a new religion!
...Worship is either something "given", divine worship is fore-ordained - or it does not exist at all. There can be no question of founding a religion or instituting a religious cultus. And for the Christian there is, of course, not doubt in the matter: post Christum there is only one, true and final form of celebrating divine worship, the sacramental sacrifice of the Christian Church. And moreover I think that anyone enquiring into the facts of the case from an historical point of view (whether he is a Christian or not)would be unable to find any other worship whatsoever in the Europeanized world.
The Christian cultus, unlike any other, is at once a sacrifice and a sacrament. In so far as the Christian cultus is a sacrifice held in the midst of the creation which is affirmed by this sacrifice of the God-man - every day is a feast day; and in fact the liturgy knows only feast days, even working days being feria. In so fart as the cultus is a sacrament it is celebrated in visible signs. And the full power of worship will only be felt if its sacramental character is realized in undiminished form, i.e., if the sign is full visible. In leisure, as was said, man oversteps the frontiers of the everyday workaday world, not in external effort and strain, but as though lifted above it in ecstasy. That is the sense of the visibility of the sacrament: that man is "carried away" by it, thrown into "ecstasy." Let no one imagine for a moment that that is a private and romantic interpretation. The Church has pointed to the meaning of the incarnation of the Logos in the self-same words: ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisiblium amorem rapiamur, that we may be rapt into love of teh invisible reality through the visibility of that first and ultimate sacrament: the Incarnation.
We therefore hope that this true sense of sacramental visibility may become so manifest in the celebration of the Christian cultus itself that in the performance of it man, "who is born to work," may truly by "transported" out of the weariness of daily labour into an unending holiday, carried away out of the straitness of the workaday world into the heart of the universe.
Though considerably lengthy, this is well worth it for it ultimately points us to that one perfect act of rest, of worship, of leisure: the Mass.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about the Sacrament of the Eucharist:
1324 The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life." "The other sacraments, and indeed all eccelesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ Himself, our Pasch.
1325 "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culminaiton both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through Him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
1326 Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.
1327 In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking" (St. Irenaneus, Adv. haeres, 4,18, 5, 180 A.D.)
This is the fundamental difference between Catholicism and any other "Christian" chuch. Catholics "truly worship", in the sense that only in the Catholic Church is Christ made present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity each day on the Altar at Mass, so as Catholic we "literally" kneel down before Christ in His totality. Only in the Catholic Church is the Christian able to consume physically the Flesh and Blood of the Son of God, as commanded by Christ Himself in John 6:51-59. For this is Christian leisure - to "rest" in God. This is our ultimate source of "leisure", for in partaking in the Mass, and only in partaking in the Mass, do we find our total strengths renewed and our life more completely fulfilled.
It is in leisure, in rest, in worship that we find our meaning, and it will be through the Mass that our culture ultimately will find fulfillment.
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