Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 329

King Solomon and the entire community of Israel present for the occasion sacrificed before the ark sheep and oxen too many to number or count.

Efficiency is the watchword for much American business. No corporation, corporate division, or single employee should spend more time, money, or energy on any project than it requires. If risk management calls for redundancy to assure safety and mission success, that is not inefficient but added insurance. 

So how many sheep and oxen should be enough to satisfy the Lord? "King Solomon and the entire community of Israel" offered "too many to number or count." 

Josef Pieper, a post-war, German Catholic philosopher, mourned the loss of festival in western culture. Hyper-anxiety about productivity consumes our leisure time and  activities since they seem to have no practical purpose. 

If people are allowed vacations and open weekends, it's for more efficient labor. After Rest and Relaxation workers should come back ready and refreshed. Conscientious employers enforce these breaks because obsessiveness about work -- sometimes call workaholism -- has been shown to be inefficient and wasteful. (But some workers return so stressed by their frantic travels they say they need to get back to work so they can catch up with their sleep!)  

Retirement may be a gift of leisure to the deserving; but it also allows a younger, livelier, up-dated generation to step forward and take the place of older, slower employees. Senior workers remember too much; their experience has taught them caution and warns them of dangers we can afford to risk. But if we still need their skills and experience they can stay; we'll find ways to use them! 

But leisure for the sake of leisure? What is that? What is its purpose? If it has no purpose, should it be permitted at all? 

Pieper recalls an older western civilization when labor was relegated to the lower classes, to servants and slaves. Leisure belonged to the upper castes of society. They studied philosophy, literature, the arts, and history with an eye to the future. Their schools for privileged youth inculcated appreciation for beauty and ideas. They had time to study, explore, and research. 

But in those ancient times entire societies -- rich and poor alike --  often indulged in festivals. The medieval calendar was thick with the cycles of Christmas and Easter with their fasts and festivals. It included many holy days of saints, both local and universal, with their required customs. 

Festivals invited huge consumption of food and drink, lavish decorations, and prodigal expenditures of time in parading, dancing, and singing. Deuteronomy 16 describes three annual festivals which consecrate time, labor, and people to the Lord. The whole society should prepare throughout the year, storing food and drink in preparation for the holy days. 

Pieper points to the word  culture, and recalls its etymological sources. Cult is about the worship of God; and, until modern times, every culture acknowledged the sovereignty of God and invoked the deity's blessing. In Catholic usage cult refers to particular devotions, like the cult of Mary. But its roots are in leisure with that awareness of God's gracious presence and lavish generosity. Openness to God's dignity and omnipresence cultivates an appreciation of beauty and the ability to see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and sense beauty. The arts from singing and dancing to painting, sculpture, and architecture originate in sacred ritual.   

All creatures great and small are beautiful beyond measure, and we discover our purpose within creation when we appreciate its beauty. We have eyes, ears, tongue and skin to sense beauty. Our hearts, minds, voices, and bodies sing and dance our gratitude. 

A secular society, given to industry and efficiency has no time for God and little concern for beauty. If, in ancient times, labor was the burden of servants and slaves while the wealthy indulged in culture, everyone today must prove their worth through labor. Only the children of the super-rich may shun labor without guilt or shame. (That vacuous life is described in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Beautiful and the Damned.) 

For efficiency's sake, secularity often destroys historic and natural works of beauty because, "They have no practical purpose!" They forget human beings have no practical purpose either. A society that cannot sacrifice before the Ark of God sheep and oxen too many to number squanders its moment to praise God. It cannot answer the brutal question of our time, "Why should I not kill myself?"