There is rest and… rest

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

Nowadays we often talk about stress longing for summer and for “a well deserved rest” that sometimes is more stressful than the need for rest itself. Certainly in the Middle Ages this issue did not exist but maybe Saint Anthony could suggest us a favourable approach for our need. In fact in one of his Sermons the Saint does not seem to offer us a break soon: “The world is so called (from the Latin mundus, motus) because it is always in motion, its elements are not allowed to rest. So man, who is a little world, is always in motion from the beginning to the end of his life and he will rest only when he reaches “his place”, that is God. We will have peace only in him, therefore we must return to Him”.

This expression is clearly Augustinian and it could be understood in relation to the ultimate goal of our life: we will find rest only in Paradise! But we must understand what Saint Anthony means. First of all he suggests that all rest is not the same: and the rest with a flavour of eternity is not given by human things but by the relationship with God. The peace that the human heart desires is rooted in the possibility of living in friendship with God, in knowing that He loves us and that the he seeks harmony with us and for us. In another passage of the Sermons St. Anthony seems to suggest to us to practice a virtue that we could call “a slow down”, to loosen the grip on the activities that we have to carry out that can turn into worries.

For example if we are asked to take care of someone to worry about what the others could think is a useless burden that risks absorbing our inner resources. To let things be, and to seek in them first of all to live them as an opportunity to know the love that the Lord has for us, without over-exposing ourselves to what is not required of us, gives us an authentic and “deserved” rest of the heart!