Lent is a good time for self-evaluation and looking at our life choices. One of the greatest challenges I see in pastoring today and for our mission at Prince of Peace is how complicated lives have become.
Harvard economist Juliet B. Schor, in her 1992 book The Overworked American, wrote that “the average employed person is now on the job an additional 163 hours, or the equivalent of an extra month a year,” compared to figures for 1969. Dr. Schor estimated that US manufacturing employees work 320 hours more than their French or German counterparts annually. This equates to two months per year. Work and creativity increase when workers are rested. But leisure time, or time for recreation is no longer a given in many American lives, and when taken, it can come with a cost.
This “busyness” in the lives of most Americans has only grown since 1992. Whether members of Prince of Peace are temporarily or chronically burned out from working, raising children, or simply navigating their weekly life load, Sunday mornings may be the only time of the week people may have any control over their lives. With depleted energy and coping reserves, many allow rest to trump religion.
But there is another growing factor at play. Sunday, and commitments to Church and time to rest are now in competition with a variety of other priorities.
One religious writer who studies sociological trends and how they affect religion and spirituality added that many parents fear that ‘If my kids aren’t busy, they’re going to get in trouble, and so I want to keep them involved in wholesome, healthy activities, and sports provides an easy way to do that. Sports has become an all-encompassing affair, where it used to be one of many ways to have fun, it is now almost an expectation that it be as competitive as possible, traveling from state to state on weekends, and night after night of practices in the hope that the child will develop a talent and a hope for a scholarship.
Work, travel, kids, exercise, social media, so much busyness. The reality is that just about anything can distract people from supporting our parish and keeping them from Mass or even doing some charitable works for those in need. As much as I, our parish staff and parish leadership might strive to encourage and support families to be active in our faith, it still is a choice that has to be made.
Are your choices taking you away from God or bringing you closer to Him? Will you choose to find time for prayer and growing in your relationship with God and the community of the Church? Is it time for a ‘fast’ from busyness?
God bless,