A Year-end Sabbath
What a year! The older I get the faster years seem to fly by. Seems like it was just Jan. 1 and now a new year is around the corner. With life’s fast pace, we often do not take time to look back, reflect, and enjoy what we have experienced.
St. Thomas Aquinas says the two great moves of the will are to seek the absent good and to rest in the good possessed. Basically, he is saying we are either striving after things and experiences or resting in the things we have accomplished. I think we are really good at the first one, but the latter is often skipped in pursuit of more absent goods.
I learned this Aquinas quote while watching a Bishop Robert Barron video on the importance of the Sabbath. He explained God did not so much “rest” on the seventh day because He was tired from all that creating; rather, He spent the first Sabbath day savoring all He had made the previous six.
His exhortation to us is to reclaim the Sabbath day as a time to savor the things we have been working so hard to acquire.
The speed with which 2024 flew by and the reminder to savor the things in my life prompted me to combine the two into a year-end examination.
It seems like the perfect time to do this with all the year-end top 10 lists and all the New Year’s resolutions being contemplated. Why not take these traditions and put a spiritual twist on them?
Let’s allow this season to be a time to savor what we received and carry this as a resolution into the New Year, to savor, taste, and rest now, as it pertains to 2024, but also to resolve to do this every Sabbath day.
Here are some ways I plan to savor, taste, and rest:
1. Go month by month reviewing 2024. Remember the good things that happened, “wins” at work, and new items and experiences that brought me joy. Give thanks for all these wonderful parts of my life.
2. Reflect on the tougher moments, the times I failed to be Christ-like to others, the loss of loved ones, ending of relationships, changes that were not welcomed, and hurtful things that happened to me. Can I see the hand of God in these events? Is there anything to savor? Any lessons to be learned?
3. For the things that happened so fast I barely remember them, I will set aside some time to rest and reflect over them, or journal about them, so as to attempt to remember the “taste” of the moment that has passed.
4. Think of the important people in my life and consider the times we spent together. Try to savor the memory, and maybe send a text or card to these people thanking them for who they have been in my life and reminisce with them over these shared experiences.
5. Lastly, reflect on the times of prayer and sacrament that stand out, and times God was with me, but I was not aware in the moment. God is constantly savoring me, as He said in Genesis 1:30: “God looked at everything He had made and found it very good.” I want to take time and savor God and His love for me.
In this fast-paced, 15-second-attention-span, doomscrolling time in which we live, being intentional about our spiritual lives is essential. Days, months, and years will fly by, never to be remembered if we let them. But we can choose to slow down, rest, taste, and savor the things God brings into each of our lives, and we can take advantage of one of the great gifts of God’s creation, the Sabbath.
Jeff Hedglen has been working in youth, campus, and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Fort Worth since 1986. He is currently the Director of Campus Ministry for the University Catholic Community at the University of Texas at Arlington. Find his regular columns for the North Texas Catholic here.