(from the editorial of Icono magazine)
Taking a break does not mean ignoring things. Knowing how to stop, breathe a new breath, suppress something habitual, does not mean disconnection, much less a lack of interest or authenticity.
The holidays are approaching, which is a necessary privilege. They are part of the values that we as humanity should achieve and claim for everyone. The truth is that you and I are privileged because we can talk about holidays, time for reflection and rest or change of activity. Those who do not have food, do not have time to rest either. Those who do not have someone to rest with, do not have, strictly speaking, holidays either; it is only a paralysis of one’s own solitude that is altered by an environment that has stopped. We are inaugurating a time in which the productive rhythm, commitments and meetings are practically paralyzed… The hunger that continues to shame us in our rest will not take holidays; the war that continues to question us about the truth of our peace and solidarity will not have days of rest. The oppression, abuse, and humiliation that women and children experience in so many places and that also shame our rest will not have a time of inactivity. The empty diaries of beggars, passers-by, migrants, and the poor, who feel our change of activity in the summer is an insult, do not have holidays.
Coming back to us, to you and me, stopping and changing our perspective can help us to understand the truth of our faith and our shared life in the community. Often, taking distance is the paradoxical medicine we need to see clearly. I think of many Christian and religious communities that, caught up in the maelstrom of conflict, are unable to look at each other with objectivity, mercy, and forgiveness. When vacations are a time to learn to look at others in a different way, they become a very valuable pedagogy and a time gained. Because the truth of rest is knowing how to grow in time to learn to value life, in normality, in a different way. Christians should understand the distance that vacations offer in order to learn to strengthen the bonds that unite us as members of a community that shares faith and life.
Jesus often used the expression: “Let us cross to the other shore.” It seems to me that today it can mean: let us pause for a while, let us dedicate more time to taking care of ourselves, to reading what the pace of the course does not allow us to do, to having conversations without price or measure, to getting closer to those who expect a kind, close or sincere word, to recognizing the passage of God in the simplicity of any given day. Crossing to the other shore is learning to think about the people with whom we share life, in a different way. Leaving behind competition, compensation, envy, or resentment… It is taking distance to learn to miss and to give thanks.
The usual rhythm of how and where we change, but our awareness of living the evangelical presence in the midst of reality does not change at all. Therefore, welcome this time of rest, during which, however, our commitment to be in a mission, an identity of the values of the Kingdom, and men and women who, even on vacation, offer a reconciled life moved by hope wherever they are, does not disappear. Happy rest!
Fr. Francisco Javier Caballero, CSsR.
