“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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.”—Genesis 2:1–2
Anyone who has ever heard the creation story according to the Bible knows that God created the universe step by step. On this day, he made that. On that day, he made this. And then he created human beings.
But what’s interesting is that in the verse that I just cited above, the Lord is said to have actually rested. Yes, the good Lord, the creator of the universe, the “unmoved mover,” is portrayed to have rested. After all the action, all the creating, all the moving around and all the breathing of life, there was rest; there was silence and stillness, one can probably deduce.
A similar silence to that of the creation story echoed yesterday, Black Saturday. It’s the silent day when we wait for the glorious resurrection of Jesus. The hours before the great Easter Vigil are hours of silent anticipation. Now, of course, these events that we commemorate during Lent happened 2000 years ago. And Jesus is already risen from the dead and is in Heaven.
Guilty feeling
But I think it’s also great to remember that there was, indeed, also a silence, a sort of quietness in between Jesus’ death and his glorious resurrection. After Jesus rose from the dead, I can only imagine the scene in heaven of choirs and choirs of angels singing the praises of God. I can only imagine the joy of Jesus’ disciples, too.
I know, all this seems “religious-y,” and I get that sentiment. But make no mistake: I think we can draw great lessons from rest and silence.
We live in an overly and unnecessarily fast-paced world. Every second has to be filled with work. Every second has to be productive. Rest should be minimized; work and power have to be maximized all the time! And when one does get some time off, there’s that guilty feeling that “we aren’t being productive” and that “we’re wasting time.”
I say foul. If the holiest of Christian writings portrays the Lord God as having rested, why in the world should we, finite humans, deprive ourselves of it?
Now, of course, I’m not saying we should be lazy. We have duties as fathers, mothers, students, employees and the like. But why are we so presumptuous to think that we can function at our best without adequate rest when we legitimately need it?
Yin and yang
There’s this philosophy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) called yin-yang. Without going into too much detail, yin is associated with cold temperatures, relaxation, sleep and darkness. Yang, on the other hand, is associated with hot temperatures, activeness, energy, fire and brightness.
As you can see, yin and yang complement each other. If you want to be active (yang), then you must have the sleep (yin) to fuel your activeness. If there is a day (yang), there also has to be a night (yin). If sometimes we feel so happy and energetic (yang), there are also moments in life wherein we have to slow down (yin). The key is balance. The Chinese philosophy of yin-yang is all about balance.
And yet, what society wants and expects from us—and as a result, what we expect from ourselves—is to have so much yang. More work, more overtime, more this, more that, just more, and more and more. And we know all too well the effects of that: a drastic decline in mental health and the rise in suicide rates, broken families (due to absent parents who always have to work) and unnecessarily high expectations. Have we not experienced these things in our own lives?
Again, I’m not saying we should all just slack off and be negligent in our duties. What I’m saying is that—and I think both Catholic theology and TCM would agree with me—balance in life is absolutely necessary. Silence is necessary. Rest is necessary. Promoting balance is something we can practice in our own lives. But change also has to be societal and wide scale. Absolutely everyone should be involved!
My prayer is that we, in our personal lives and society as a whole, rediscover balance in life, that we rediscover the value of simplicity and rest. Oh, what a wonderful world it would be if only all of us were simpler. May you have a most blessed Easter season ahead! —CONTRIBUTED INQ