Pope Benedict XVI today talked about Sundays. Not just about going to Mass on Sundays, but devoting the entire day to God and family, the latter consisting of rest.
Catholic News Service reports today:
Sundays must be a day of rest dedicated to God, family, pope says
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The demands of work can't bully people out of needed time off, Pope Benedict XVI said.
Sunday must be a day of rest for everyone, so people can be free to be with their families and with God, the pope said.
"By defending Sunday, one defends human freedom," he said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square June 6.
...
The pope said he wanted to come to the defense of free time, which is "threatened by a kind 'bullying' by the demands of work."
"Sunday is the day of the Lord and of man, a day which everyone must be able to be free -- free for the family and free for God."
The Pope's words repeated his remarks in his homily last Sunday:
One final point: man, as the image of God, is also called to rest and to celebrate. The account of creation concludes with these words: “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. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” (Gen 2:2-3). For us Christians, the feast day is Sunday, the Lord’s day, the weekly Easter. It is the day of the Church, the assembly convened by the Lord around the table of the word and of the eucharistic Sacrifice, just as we are doing today, in order to feed on him, to enter into his love and to live by his love. It is the day of man and his values: conviviality, friendship, solidarity, culture, closeness to nature, play, sport. It is the day of the family, on which to experience together a sense of celebration, encounter, sharing, not least through taking part in Mass. Dear families, despite the relentless rhythms of the modern world, do not lose a sense of the Lord’s Day! It is like an oasis in which to pause, so as to taste the joy of encounter and to quench our thirst for God.
Family, work, celebration: three of God’s gifts, three dimensions of our lives that must be brought into a harmonious balance. Harmonizing work schedules with family demands, professional life with fatherhood and motherhood, work with celebration, is important for building up a society with a human face. In this regard, always give priority to the logic of being over that of having: the first builds up, the second ends up destroying. We must learn to believe first of all in the family, in authentic love, the kind that comes from God and unites us to him, the kind that therefore “makes us a ‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28)” (Deus Caritas Est, 18).
