To acquire the art of relaxing, we must become children at heart again, we must find sound and wholesome forms of amusement.

Modern life is lived at high tension; its pace is intense and nerves get frayed. Whatever it costs, we must learn how to stop, when we need to, and draw a quiet breath. Many solve the problems of necessary recreation by taking more holidays. This is a step forward. But we must still learn how to relax, how to avoid being unbalanced by amusements, how to measure out this rhythm of fatigue and repose in the required mixture.

It is most important that rest should be soothing and that recreation, as the word implies, should re-create, create us over again, and give us new life, a fresh start. How many tourists do their touring on the piece-work system! They eat up the miles tearing through the countryside, see nothing and come back more exhausted than when they started. This applies not only to tourism, but to the cinema and TV, and it can even be true of reading, if we fail to learn the art of relaxing in order to work better.

In order to acquire this art, we must learn particularly how to take advantage of the little opportunities life has to offer and become children at heart again. We must not live at such an intensive, hustling pace that we no longer have time to – have time. To be relaxed makes one accessible to others.

Parents, ask yourselves occasionally during the feverish activity of the day whether you are sufficiently approachable to your children, especially the older ones. It is so easy to get to the stage of being so caught up in our work that we never really have time to be with others. We rush about and get involved in business when we ought to be able to sit down and listen, even when the atmosphere is intimate enough, to sit down in silence together. So many things need the right atmosphere, the slow and gradual approach.

Time has no respect for anything that is done without reference to time. Time is needed to ripen a field of corn or make a flower come out. Our family life is too rushed. Too often the home becomes a sort of boarding-house from which everyone sets off on his own affairs, a cross-roads where we pass each other. We no longer live together. Now all these things go a long way to promote unity of hearts and minds.

We must try and preserve in our homes a modicum of recreation in common, something we can all do together, and find time for family prayer in the evening. What a blessing the family rosary is! Those Aves link souls together more effectively than the rosary beads are linked! Prayer is a bond, a link, a union.

Happy the home whose husband and wife read the same book and compare notes afterwards; where everyone shares, not just the bread which perishes, but the interests, joys and sorrows of others. We are too apt to think that amusements must be expensive to be appreciated. How often the child of the rich is sad and miserable with his luxurious toys, while the children of the poor are as happy as Larry with their whips and tops! The key to happiness is within us, for joy can only be measured by our own hearts.

We must learn, or re-learn, to have time. Our Lord Himself did not want His Apostles to live in a state of perpetual tension. He urged them to “come away into a quiet place” – “rest a little”, He said to them on days after they had finished their apostolic missions. In the wilderness and in solitude, He revealed to them the best of Himself and His message. He paid a great deal of attention to time and the gradual approach. How often He said to His Apostles, “My time is not yet come”, or “The time is coming.”

We stand in need of rest – in the ordinary sense of the word, and also rest in God. We must find a place for Him in the bustle of the day; a place for private prayer, for slow and meditative reading. We need this ‘oxygen’. It is one of our vital necessities. It is a good thing to sit down, like Mary, at the Master’s feet, before we go off to carry out our daily tasks. In the midst of work, we must keep our hearts open to God. It helps so much to keep things in their proper proportion if we leave a window open to heaven.

We must call a halt from time to time, and it is better to do it sooner than later. The Christian ought to take the trouble to find sound and wholesome forms of amusement. It is his job to Christianize the vast world of entertainment. There is a Christian way of going out for the day and a Christian way of dancing. There is a way of life which it is our business to promulgate and there are ways of life we have no right to accept or tolerate.

Christian parents do not jeopardize the souls of your children by letting them go on ‘blind dates’, where the moral atmosphere is beyond your control. Do not yield to the pressure of the young when they want to see and read everything in order to be up to date.

The more technological progress advances, the farther the vast field of leisure will stretch. Here is a tremendous scope for Christian influence. In the past we have sinned by our negative attitude; we have too often been content to condemn without any attempt at participation on our part. Don’t blame the young, but learn how to find them healthy and wholesome forms of amusement which respects their souls and hearts. The youth of today, for a variety of reasons, lack inner harmony, and so they try and forget their troubles by behaving badly or foolishly.

We need to get our breath back. That is why the Church is so insistent on Sunday being kept as a holy day; a day for public worship, certainly, but also a day of rest. Don’t let us make it the most hectic day of the week. Sunday should be distinguished from other days by rest, which is akin to recollection, rest which is not empty, but full to the brim. On a Sunday, when we deck ourselves out in our best clothes, we should also, on this of all days, give ourselves a new heart, or at least a renewed heart.

We must detach ourselves from our work, but only in order to attach ourselves more firmly to the one thing needful. We must stop, like the Alpine climber who has reached a high peak, to take breath for a moment, admire the view, fill our lungs with fresh air and go on to the next peak. Sunday is the day to halt so that we can resume our march with a firmer tread.

Do not let us neglect to fix our gaze on the sky until we can see the stars shining there. We make much better headway here on earth when we have a sense of direction and move forward with a firm step on solid ground. Looking at the heavens is the form of relaxation we can least dispense with if we want to keep things in their perspective and make the world a better place to live in.

From The Word August 1965.