Today is Tuesday, September 29th. It’s the Feast of the Archangels, and I’m William Michael, the headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. It’s been a long time since I’ve made any Walk Talks, and I was encouraged to pick up the practice by a friend, Kenny Bershard, with whom I sat for a discussion which was published earlier today. And he recommended Walk Talks on my YouTube channel for other listeners, and I said, you know, I probably need to get back to the old Walk Talks. And as we’re moving into the fall, it’s a perfect time to do that out here in the country, where the temperature comes down a bit and it’s actually very pleasant out.
So beginning today, I’ll try my best to get out for a walk on the farm and answer questions that I receive and discuss topics that are proposed to me. And the purpose of these talks—they’re not scripted, they’re not intended to be formal in any way. They’re exercises in simply thinking through complex questions or topics that I hope will help you to develop your own thoughts, and maybe draw some new conclusions on topics we don’t get to discuss much.
The topic that I’d like to talk about today is one that I get asked about a lot: the topic of leisure. And I know that things have been written on leisure. But I’d like to talk practically and realistically about the subject, because I think much of what is said is taken from books that aren’t even written within our own American culture or economy. And when we take things from other countries or other generations and we read them in our own generation, in our own context, we can often get some pretty ridiculous ideas about what we should do, or what’s best for us, that really have no connection at all to real life.
The problem of “need”
And so I’d like to talk about this topic of leisure. It’s one that I think about a lot, because I’ve got ten children, seven of whom are already adults or just about to become adults, and I talk to them about these things all the time. This question of leisure has to do with rest. And one of the reasons I think we talk about it is because we’re tired; we’re not sure of what we should do. We feel like our lives are split in two different directions, with religious thoughts calling us in one direction and temporal affairs or material needs calling us in another. And it’s frustrating. And we feel like we could just work forever.
And this is what leads some to complain about work. It doesn’t seem that there’s any natural end to work. You could say, “Well, why don’t we just work for what we need?” But defining what we need is just as difficult. What do you mean, what do we need? For example, my wife just talked me into buying her a new car. And if I was asked, “Does she need that car?” I would say no. She doesn’t need that car. You mean for her life? She doesn’t need any car. We could probably discuss whether she even needs shoes.
So this question of needs can become ridiculous. Need to survive, need to get one’s work done, need for the sake of convenience or happiness—what does “need” even mean? So when we’re confused about this question of work, saying to someone, “You should just work for what you need,” only raises a different dilemma. It doesn’t solve the problem at all. And it’s this kind of hopeless questioning that can be pretty depressing and leave us in a state where we just feel that there are no answers at all—which is modern agnosticism. We just don’t think these things are knowable, and that ranges from the most profound questions in modern science all the way down to “What do I need to live?” In modern society, it feels like there are no answers to these questions.
The chief end of life: doing God’s will
And so what I always tell myself, when I find myself feeling like I’m lost at sea and there’s nothing to get a foothold on, is to ask myself: What’s the chief end of my life? And that makes things pretty simple. As a Christian, I know that the chief end of my life is to do whatever is necessary for the salvation of my soul, because this life is not all that there is. And that’s obvious to anyone who reasons about this life. It’s obvious that this cannot be the life for which we’re created—that this life must be followed by another, more perfect and permanent life. And it becomes clear that this life is something of a trial, or a probation, for that future life.
And when we ask the question, as the Philippian jailer did in the Book of Acts, “What must I do to be saved?”—or, like the rich young ruler in the Gospels, “What must I do that I may inherit eternal life?”—the question is answered pretty simply. In order to have eternal life, you need to do God’s will.
In the Old Covenant, the Law taught us what God’s will is. It gave us commandments, gave us lists of obligations, taught us how God desires to be worshiped by fallen, sinful creatures. But there was a problem with the Old Covenant. It wasn’t the final answer to that question. It was only a temporary answer. It was intended to teach us God’s will and to reveal to us our ultimate need, which is strength to do God’s will. The Law exposed our weakness and revealed our problem.
When Christ came into the world, He said, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” And He lived, and He did in fact fulfill God’s law. He lived perfectly according to God’s will, and then took that perfect body and soul and offered Himself as a sacrifice to make reparation—to make atonement—for the sins of men. In so doing, He modeled for us God’s will, which is to love God and to love our neighbor.
Christ didn’t abolish the law; He fulfilled it. And He didn’t tell us, as the Protestants do, that we don’t need to obey God’s law, that we don’t need to do God’s will to be saved. He told us we certainly do need to do God’s will to be saved. He told us to be perfect as God Himself is perfect. But He made us a promise. He promised us that He would give us help, and that help would take on a number of different forms. First of all, He said that He would forgive our sins; He would deal with us mercifully. Second, He said that He would give us the Holy Spirit, which would strengthen us to actually do God’s will. And He would always be with us. He would be patient with us, and through His mercy and through His grace He would sanctify us and would lead us little by little to perfection. And in that perfection, we would be made worthy of His promises of eternal life. And this is the Gospel according to the Catholic Church—the true Gospel, the apostolic Gospel.
So in answer to the question, “What do we need to do to achieve our end?”—the answer is that we need to do God’s will, with the strength that God supplies to us in the Gospel through the sacramental life of the Church. And that’s obviously a separate subject. But we need to save our souls. That’s what we need to do.
When Jesus visited Martha and Mary, Mary was at His feet listening, while Martha was running all over the place, busy. Martha complained that Mary wasn’t working, and Jesus said to Martha, “You’re busy and troubled with many things, but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Jesus said, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but work for that which endures to eternal life.” So we see this message again and again in our Lord’s teaching. He teaches us that one thing is necessary—and again, that is to do God’s will.
If we ask, “What is God’s will?” the Protestants will tell us that Jesus says God’s will is to believe in Christ. That’s God’s will. And they use that to argue this irrational and unjust notion of salvation by faith alone. But to believe in Jesus means to believe that He is who He says He is: that He is the Lord and Savior of the world, and that He is also the judge of the living and the dead, that all authority has been given to Him. And so to believe in Christ means to follow Him, to live according to His commands, to follow the Christian religion, and to do so in and through the Church that He Himself established.
God’s will in our particular circumstances
But again, to keep it simple: what is necessary for us is to do God’s will, that we may attain our chief end, which is eternal happiness. Now, God’s will is not something that’s absolute or unconditional. In fact, it varies quite significantly. It varies according to our circumstances in life. And this is where the complexity of life comes in. We’re all born into different circumstances. We all live in different circumstances. And therefore, what’s right for a person in one set of circumstances is not necessarily right for a person in a different set of circumstances. And all of us are obliged to do God’s will in our particular circumstances.
So we’ve got to have a clear understanding of what those circumstances are, and the commandments help us to discern those circumstances. If we remember that the summary of all of God’s commands is just two commands—to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves—that becomes the light for our path, as it were, which allows us to know what to do. The question in every circumstance, the question at every moment, is: What is God’s will for me in this moment, in these circumstances? And that’s really all we’re allowed to think about in this life. That’s what it means to live by faith, to live according to the law, to fear God and keep His commandments, and so on.
Jesus tells us to take no thought for tomorrow—what we should eat, what we should drink, what we should wear. He says every day has enough trouble of its own. He says to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and to trust that if we live like that—if we live in the present moment, always obedient—every step we take will be the right step, and we will by that obedience be led to our end.
That requires humility, because we want to know all the answers. We want to act as if we’ve got this whole life wrapped up in our pocket. We want to feel like we’re in control, and God never gives us that control. The world we live in is constantly changing. We control very little, and we’re left to move through this life one step at a time, asking, “What is God’s will?”—not for my whole life, not for the next year, but for this next step. What’s God’s will?
St. Paul in Romans 12 tells us as Christians to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And he tells us the purpose of that renewing of our mind is that we may know God’s will. That’s the purpose. We need to learn to think as God thinks, based on what He reveals to us. And what He reveals to us are His commandments.
The Sabbath commandment
So before we can talk about leisure, we’ve got to know what God’s commandments are. And we can start very simply with the Ten Commandments. And if we look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we see the Ten Commandments teased out, expounded in all of their detail. We can look at the Ten Commandments as a simple summary of God’s will for every step, every moment of our life.
Now, when we look at the commandments, we find that they are very practical. We know the first few are religious in nature, and the latter commandments are more practical. We’re told that we may not steal, and you can see that that immediately answers a lot of questions in our life. We may never steal. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a million dollars or one penny. God’s will is that we never steal. And so the way that we discern the best path for our life at every step is to never steal. And it goes on. We’re told not even to covet—not to covet anything that belongs to our neighbor. We’re to be content; we’re to be humble; we’re to be focused on the next step. And again, this ties back to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, where He says, “Take no thought for tomorrow.” Don’t be anxious in this life, but simply seek the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you.
Now, why am I talking about the law and commandments and God’s will? Because when we come to this question of leisure, it doesn’t matter what any men think about the subject. It doesn’t matter what any political theorists or social engineers think about the topic. All that matters is God’s will. Perhaps God doesn’t even will that we have any leisure. If that was true, then that’s that. It may be true that God wills that some men live in leisure and other men don’t. If so, that’s that.
But if we look at the commandments, we see a command that addresses this question of leisure. We see the Sabbath command, where God says to men that we may work six days. It says, “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, and on the seventh day you shall rest.” So we have a very clear sense that it’s God’s will for us to rest. And when we ask who shall rest, the answer is everyone. God says in the command—everyone, including servants, even animals—God commands rest. And not only does He command rest, but He commands a quantity of rest: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, and the seventh day you shall rest.”
So why is this so confusing? It seems pretty simple. One of the reasons it’s confusing is because we don’t live in a society that is ordered by God’s commands, and all seven days are treated as workdays. And this is not something that Christians can complain about, because Christians are largely responsible for this.
How Catholics neglect the Lord’s Day
The seventh day, which in Christian culture is moved to the first day in honor of our Lord’s Resurrection, which marks the new creation—it’s called the Lord’s Day, and it’s supposed to be a day of rest. We’re not supposed to do any unnecessary work on the Lord’s Day. And if you look around, you’ll see that very few Catholics obey this commandment. We see Catholics working on Sundays. We see Catholics going out and shopping on Sundays, which requires that other people work on Sundays. We see Catholics following professional sports, where they work on Sundays. And you see that there’s a general acceptance of disobedience of the Sabbath command. And we have all kinds of excuses for it. We say, “Well, this is restful for me—you know, going out to dinner. That’s restful, right?” But that’s not what the command said. The command said that everyone should rest from servile labor.
And the purpose of the Sabbath command is for the sake of our reflection on, and ordering of our lives toward, our chief end—not to get lost in work. It has a purpose. It’s religious. It’s primarily commanded for the sake of divine worship. We’re to devote the Lord’s Day to the worship of God. We’re to devote the Lord’s Day to prayer, to works of mercy. That’s what the Lord’s Day is for. It’s a day of rest from this life’s work, and time set aside for the work of the life to come. And that work is considered rest.
Think of the paradox of what Jesus says in the Gospels. He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But then, interestingly, He says, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” So there we see that this rest that Jesus teaches is actually a kind of work. We take off one yoke and we put on a different yoke. We don’t go without a yoke; we wear a different yoke—a light burden, an easy yoke. And so we see the idea of true rest that’s taught to us by God Himself, our Creator: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest.”
And yet my wife and I often laugh at this, because when we were really in the midst of her childbearing years, Sunday was the most exhausting day of the week. Getting all the kids together, getting to church, getting through Mass—we usually had people visiting on Sundays, dinner to make. It seemed that more work was needed on Sunday than on other days. But it was a different kind of work. It was a work that gives us rest. It was work for the food that doesn’t perish. And that’s true leisure. That’s the rest that God talks about. So it’s a complex concept.
A right to holy rest
Now, what’s interesting is that with respect to that rest, because God actually commands it, every human being has a right to it. Every human being has a right to that rest, to that leisure. And again, it’s religious—a different kind of work, a work that serves a different end than our ordinary temporal labor. Everyone has a right to that work. And not only does everyone have a right to that work, but everyone needs to plant their feet and demand that rest.
Pope John Paul II talked about the Sabbath rest, the Lord’s Day. He wrote a whole document on the Lord’s Day, which is worth searching for and reading. And he said—this is a paraphrase—that on the Lord’s Day, we revolt against materialism and this pressure to work endlessly. The Lord’s Day is a revolution against endless work. And of course, Pope John Paul II always taught with Communism and Communist society in view, which would have men live as workers and suffer under endless work. The Lord’s Day is a kind of revolution, a rebellion. And we see that that’s just and right, because God Himself commands it and gives it to us—to every one of us.
And since we’re commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, we’re also obliged to give that rest to everyone else. And that’s why there’s no justification for doing something that’s comforting to you but requires someone else to work. That’s not the Golden Rule. So there is a kind of rest, or leisure, that everyone has a right to according to the commandments. And that gives us a good answer to this question.
And I would ask you: when Sunday comes in your life, do you set apart the Lord’s Day as a day of this rest—a day of rest that you have a right to? And do you make use of the Lord’s Day not as a day for laziness, not as a day for self-indulgence? It’s not a day to be gluttonous and slothful. But do you use it as a day for true rest, the kind of rest Christ talks about? You have the whole Lord’s Day given to you by God. Do you use it for that holy resting? Do you go to Mass on Sunday? Do you spend time in prayer, reading, contemplation on Sunday? Do you take time out from work to perform works of mercy on Sunday? That’s what Sunday is for. It’s a day to visit your parents, to make sure they’re okay, to give them a hand—to honor your father and your mother. It’s a day for a working man to spend time with his wife and children. It’s a day for a working man to spend time reading the Scriptures or studying the Catechism—time to say prayers that he doesn’t get to say during the busyness of the work week. Do you use the Lord’s Day as that day of rest, given to you as a right by God Himself in the commandments?
I would bet that most Catholics don’t do so. I would bet that they don’t set the Lord’s Day aside as a day of rest, but that they waste it. And then, lo and behold, Monday arrives and they’re not rested. So what do they do? They start complaining on Monday. They start complaining about work. They complain about work on Monday. They complain about work on Tuesday. They complain about work on Wednesday—every day of the week, they complain about work. “All we do is work. I wish I had leisure. I wish I had rest.” And then on Sunday, they don’t rest.
Carnal rest and its cost to others
And so we see what the real problem is. The rest that they desire is not holy rest. It’s not the rest that God gives us. It’s a different kind of rest—a kind of rest that no one necessarily has any right to. It’s a carnal rest: a rest that consists of pleasing the body, indulging the desires, being idle, doing things that are unnecessary, doing things that are frivolous—lying on the couch and watching football for four hours, wandering around, not doing much of anything, sleeping extra. It’s not a holy rest. It’s actually a carnal rest.
So we don’t take the opportunity for a holy rest, because that’s really not what we’re interested in. What we want is a carnal rest, and we don’t want our carnal rest to ever stop. So we have this desire for inordinate carnal leisure, or rest. And this is where we get into trouble, because work has to be done. Bills have to be paid. And if our bills are going to be paid, and we’re going to rest from work—not on Sunday, but every day, every evening, half of Saturday, part of Sunday—we’re not going to make enough to live on. We’re not going to generate enough wealth to provide for our obligations.
And so what happens? We then begin to look for ways that we can make others work more. We look to exploit others. We look to have others do work and pay them less. We look to try to save money in an unjust and selfish way. We spend all of our time talking about saving money, because we’re trying to avoid work. We’re not asking what’s just. We’re not asking what’s good for everyone, what’s good for our neighbor. We’re thinking about ourselves—greedy for carnal leisure. And the only way that we can get it is by enslaving someone else, taking away even just leisure, even holy leisure, from someone else.
And I’m not talking just about slavery or exploiting workers. We do this in a million subtle ways every day with the people around us—our own family members. It’s so common today to see a man choose to get married, have a wife who bears children, and the man is willing to work nine to five, Monday to Friday, fifty weeks of the year, maybe less. And he’ll put in those hours, and at his job he’ll do what’s required of him to keep that job. And at the end of the month he has a certain salary that he brings home, and he may find that that salary doesn’t cover his family’s cost of living. And so what does he do? He plants his feet and he says, “No, I’m going to have leisure. I’m going to work from nine to five, Monday to Friday, and that’s that.” And he pretends that the amount of money that he earns is some kind of predestined, unchangeable, fixed income, and he acts like there’s no solution.
And so what we find in most modern families is that the wife is looked at as the one who needs to fix this problem. And so for the man’s own unjust leisure—leisure that no one has ever said he has any right to—in order for him to have that carnal leisure, someone else has to do double. Someone else has to suffer. And that’s often the wife. Remember, she took upon herself the work of childbearing, and now she’s treated as if she hasn’t done anything—sort of a “What have you done for me lately?” attitude. So she’s asked to do double duty, while the husband restricts himself to doing less than his circumstances require.
And this is why this question of leisure is difficult: because different men are in different circumstances, and for many different reasons. But what often happens is that the solution to the problem they have—the solution to their circumstances—is pushed onto someone else. And I think many who talk about leisure as some kind of human right, one that really has nothing to do with the rest of the Lord’s Day, are interested in developing some kind of philosophy to justify this desire for carnal leisure, one that allows them to pretend that what they’re doing is necessary for the human good. And yet what exposes the fraud in this argument is that others are made to work even more. So the Golden Rule condemns this idea of leisure.
The learned professions
Now, we have different men in different circumstances. There are some men—let’s take men who work in learned professions, doctors, lawyers. They may make more than their families need for their cost of living, and may live very comfortably, and yet may only work two or three days a week. They can make hundreds of dollars per hour, and in just a few days have all that they need for their cost of living, and they close up the office and head out to the golf course. And if someone asks them about it—”Why are you only working three days a week, especially when the commandment actually says you should labor six days a week?”—they’ll say, “Well, because I can earn everything I need in just three days, or two days.” And we say, “Wow, that sounds interesting.” And we see many young people who say they want to be doctors and lawyers for this reason. They see this lifestyle and they say, “Man, that’s what I want. That’s the way to do it.”
But if we examine this situation, it gets a little uncomfortable. Because in order to work only three days and earn that salary, all kinds of sketchy stuff needs to happen. First of all, we’ve got this whole health insurance system, where ridiculous rates are charged for services, and it’s just billed to this impersonal health insurance company or organization. And that’s the means by which this lifestyle is funded. Or if someone is required to pay cash for these services, they’re charged high rates for very simple services—it could be a hundred, two hundred dollars per visit just for an evaluation.
And we look at this and we say, “Well, I understand that you may just work two or three days to earn all that you need, but is this really a Golden Rule lifestyle? Are you thinking of the needs of your neighbor, even before your own, as Scripture teaches us?” And we’ll find that the answer is usually no. And another solution to that will be to push legislation through government that creates all kinds of government programs that pay these costs.
And it’s funny—I was a pre-med student and got to see a lot of this behind the scenes, as I interned a couple of times and things like that. But when we’re talking about the costs of this and the costs of that, and how we need more Medicare and Medicaid, and we need better health insurance, we almost never hear any discussion of the rates being charged by medical professionals for what are relatively simple services. And so we have to ask: Is this comfortable lifestyle being billed to others? Are others being made to work more so some can work less? So just because someone can say, “Look, I pay all my bills,” that’s not the end of the story. There’s more to consider. And we could say the same about the legal profession and others as well. Are these professions—the way that they operate, these institutions—are they actually ordered according to the Golden Rule? Or are they systems of sin? And so we see this gets very confusing.
The Ten Commandments as the perfect rule
Now, if we were to imagine a perfect society—a perfectly just society—we would say that there should be some kind of equality. And St. Paul talks about this; I think it’s in 2 Corinthians. Now, I have to be careful, because when we talk about the Bible, especially the New Testament—as I just did; I just said Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians—that’s not entirely true. He talks about life in the Church, among Christians, in 2 Corinthians. So we’ve got to be careful not to take things we read about in, let’s say, New Testament epistles and think that they can be made state laws, when half the state is not even Christian. When we take principles from the New Testament and try to turn them into laws, we end up with things like socialism, and that’s not the solution.
The commandments say, “You shall not steal.” And what’s implied in that commandment is that we have the right to private property. But that right to private property isn’t absolute. It’s not the only right. And we’re not the only ones with rights.
So when we think about what the perfect society would be like—of course, it would be Christian. We can imagine that if everyone was Christian, if everyone lived under the direction of the Holy Spirit, filled with love for God, filled with love for one another, we wouldn’t even have these discussions. But if we go beyond that and step back into reality and think about a mixed society, we could say that the ideal should be, as far as possible, to have some kind of balance that allows everyone to have an equal share of rest. And if we start working through that and trying to figure out what it’s going to look like, what we’re going to end up with is simply the Ten Commandments. Because the Ten Commandments are the most perfect rule of life. And so we see that in the commandments we already have the perfect law. And we see how it’s arranged: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, and the seventh day shall be a day of rest”—for everyone. That’s the solution to the whole problem.
So not only should we not seek more rest, or a different kind of rest—inordinate, carnal rest—but we also can’t argue that we have a right to such rest as long as our own expenses are covered, because, like I said, they most likely will be covered at the expense of someone else.
Now notice, before, I mentioned one of the reasons why people complain about work. If we look at the people who complain about work, we’ll find people who don’t keep the Lord’s Day set apart as a day of rest. They seek rest at an inappropriate time. And this is a principle we’ll see all through life.
The bicycle over the mountain
All through life. I’ve argued with my children about this as they’ve reached adulthood. You know, they get to high school age, college age, and they start talking about wanting to have fun—you know, “The purpose of going to college is to have fun.” Even Elon Musk said the purpose of going to college is to hang out with your friends.
What I teach my children is that life is like a bicycle ride over a mountain. We’ve got this mountain to climb in life, and we’re like a man at the bottom of that mountain on a bicycle. When we’re young, we’ve got a little bit of strength, quite a bit of energy, and we can start pedaling up that mountain. When we come into our teenage years and early adult years, we’re at full strength. And we choose at that time to pedal with all our might, or to take it easy. And if we take it easy, we’re taking a risk. Because if we don’t get over that hill at the appropriate time—if we don’t do the work appropriate to each moment in our life—and we come to our older years, our body begins to break down, we begin to weaken, and if we haven’t pedaled over that hill, we’re in real trouble.
And so the wise young person will use his youth and strength to pedal. He’ll pedal for the sake of his older self. He’ll say, “I’m going to love myself, and I’m going to pedal while I have strength, so that when I’m old and my body weakens, I won’t have to pedal—or I might just have to pedal a little bit.” And that’s wisdom. Prudence is to see evil coming and avoid it. We see old age coming. We see unpredictable circumstances ahead. And we say, “You know what? I’ve got the present to pedal.”
But then we have the person who says, “No, I want to have fun with my youth. I want to use my strength and energy for pleasure seeking, for play. I want to exhaust my strength in recreation or thrill seeking,” and so on—even worse things, like sinful pleasures. So there’s no pedaling. And then, down the road, this person gets to a point where he’s now behind where he could have been, and he begins to struggle, and the years begin to add up, and his strength begins to diminish. And what does he do? What does he do? He casts himself on others and asks them to pedal more. He casts himself, let’s say, on his children and says, “Well, you know, I need your help, kids.” And he doesn’t need their help because he has any kind of disability or actual weakness. He says that he needs their help because he didn’t pedal. And so he asks them to not only pedal as much as he should have, but to pedal even more, to help him up the hill.
And you see that this desire for leisure—this desire for carnal rest—always forces others to work more. And so I would argue that what men should be asking is not, “Do I have a right to have my evenings free to sit around and flip through Shakespeare, or to watch a play, or to watch the football game, or to go out to dinner?” That’s really not what I should be asking. I should be asking myself: Do I have strength to work? And can I use my present strength to do as much work as possible?
Working that we may share
And the grace of the New Covenant goes beyond our own needs and asks: Can I use the strength that I have to not only do my own necessary work, but help others? Can I help others—not because they’re lazy and selfish, but just of my own virtue, of my own grace, for my own benefit? Can I help others? And obviously there are people who have legitimate needs—elderly people who are near the top of that hill and just need some help getting over the top. They’re worthy of our help. Young children struggling to get started—they need help. People who are trying to get things right and need some help—they have just cause. They’re fit objects for charity, as old Christians would say.
St. Paul wrote in one of his epistles, “You who stole, steal no longer, but rather work, that you may share.” So you see how that flips from one side to the other. You who used to steal—you who actually took from the work of others for your desire, you took away from others what was justly theirs—you were on the evil side of this spectrum. And now you’ve turned around, and Paul urges them not only to stop stealing, but to go further and to exercise the opposite virtue: “You who stole, steal no longer, but rather work”—not so that your costs are covered, but, he says, work that you may share.
And so you see what the question is. Which is better? Which is more noble? Which is happier? To work until your needs are satisfied and then give yourself leisure—even if it possibly puts others at risk of having to work more—and say, “Well, you know, I’m responsible. I did my work. I paid my costs. I now have this right to leisure”? Or is it better to say, “Thanks be to God, I’ve been able to work sufficiently to provide for my own needs. I’m going to continue working that I may help others”? It’s a more virtuous life.
So the man fighting for his leisure, trying to make this look like some kind of virtue, is choosing an inferior course of life—especially when there are so many needs. The most excellent life is the life that imitates Christ. Christ certainly didn’t live to check the boxes of His own expenses and then call it a day and go piddle around. Christ offered His entire life for the benefit of others. And that’s the model.
The rest that virtue gives
And there’s a mystery in that life that doesn’t get talked about. You know, some may say, “Well, yeah, that sounds great, but we need to rest. We need leisure. We need to take a break. We need to have some fun.” You’re really underestimating the benefits—the satisfaction—of virtue. You’re contradicting Aristotle. Aristotle taught that happiness for human beings consists in virtue. And all of us know this. All of us know that there’s never a moment in our lives when we feel so good, so happy, so satisfied as when we’re acting generously, helping someone above and beyond what’s required. We don’t get tired when we do that voluntarily. We’re happy to help others. We’re happy to go above and beyond the call of duty when we know that it’s virtuous, because it gives us a satisfaction. It actually gives us a sense of rest. The additional labor, the additional toil, gives us a sense of rest, of peace, of pleasure. And so I would encourage everyone not to underestimate the rest that comes through a generous life.
Seasons of life
Now, I know what the concern is when most men talk about leisure as they do. We have men who have made choices in life. They’ve chosen, for example—when they were young, they chose not to study. When they were young, they chose not to pursue a religious vocation. When they were young, they chose not to work. And now they find themselves older, in a secular vocation, married, working, and they act as if they have some kind of right to the things that they didn’t do in their appropriate seasons of life. They didn’t study when they were 16 or 20, and now they’re 30, with children to provide for, a wife to provide for, a mortgage—all of these needs—and now they decide they’re going to try to act like monks.
And you see how inappropriate that is. And they try to make this case for what they’re doing, and they make this argument like, “What? Are you saying studying literature is bad?” No. But I’m saying that in your circumstances, it’s inappropriate. “What are you saying? Praying and reading the Bible, or reading the writings of saints—you’re saying that’s bad? You’re saying I shouldn’t do that?” No, I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that for a man who’s chosen to create needs—who’s chosen a secular vocation, who’s chosen to be married and produce children—now going above and beyond what’s required of you spiritually is inappropriate.
And there are different seasons of life as well. And that’s why the circumstances we’re in, and the times and seasons of life, determine what’s right—I shouldn’t even say what’s right and wrong, but what’s appropriate and inappropriate. And they often try to present some kind of philosophy of leisure as this profound and noble justification to do things that are inappropriate for men in their circumstances—usually because they didn’t do them in more appropriate times. They didn’t do them when they were younger. And now they want to pretend that they can have their cake and eat it too. And so they come up with this nonsense talk of leisure as some kind of profound, virtuous need of the human soul. And I call baloney on a lot of that stuff.
St. John Henry Newman said—just as an example—that in an age like this, where books abound, it’s very common to find the love of reading substituted for real study. In other words, it’s fake. It’s not the real thing. It’s not real study. It’s not work. It’s not the virtuous activity they pretend it is. It’s just idleness. It’s play. It’s frivolity. It’s inappropriate for the circumstances, and wrapping it up and calling it leisure doesn’t change that.
Conclusion: true rest and counterfeit rest
We all have a right to true leisure every Sunday. And as I said, most of us waste the opportunity, because we don’t like that. That’s not what we’re looking for—when it actually is what our soul and body are yearning for: true rest. And then once the work week starts, when we have six days to do all of our work, we spend our time complaining that we need rest, that we need a break, that we work too much—when we should be working that we may share, knowing that the time is going to come in our life when we’re no longer able to work. And we should be looking ahead to those days, and we should be working to provide for those days, so that we’re not a burden on anyone. And you see what a man is doing who doesn’t look ahead and doesn’t prepare himself for those days: he leaves it for someone else to worry about. And you see the selfishness in that.
So God’s commands show us what true rest and true leisure are. And most importantly, they teach us to love God, which should be the source of the rest that we seek, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, which should allow us to resist any desire for selfish, carnal rest that is always billed to other people—laid on the shoulders of other people. We should love our neighbors as ourselves, and all of us should bear our own burdens. And if by God’s grace we’re able to bear our burden comfortably, we shouldn’t retire like the foolish man in the parable, but we should look around and see if, to our own merit, we can work that we may share—in that condition of life where we go above and beyond what’s required of us and do good to others as well. That’s a source of true rest that turns our Sunday rest into a rest that extends across many days.
If we want a life of religious tranquility, we have the opportunity to choose a religious vocation. If we choose to bypass the religious vocation, we then have a life of secular work. And pretending to have an interest in religion after we’ve chosen to bypass religion is baloney. And that’s the kind of trouble men get into.
So as far as leisure is concerned, to sum this up: there’s a good rest and a counterfeit rest. Sinful men desire that counterfeit rest—the rest of the flesh, a rest for self-indulgence. Virtuous men want the true rest that’s proper to humans, that’s provided to us as a right in the Ten Commandments. And if we actually keep the commandments and maintain that day of holy rest, we’ll find that we don’t need rest from work during the six days in which we’re supposed to work. We’ll have that rest to look forward to every week, and we should make the most of it.
I hope that’s helpful. God bless.
Mr. William C. Michael, OP
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy