Saturday, March 7 : Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [Pope Benedict XVI]

In the creation account, the Sabbath is described as the day when the human being, in the freedom of adoration, participates in God’s freedom, rest and peace. To celebrate the Sabbath is to celebrate the covenant. This means that we return to our origin and discard the blemishes that our many activities brought with them. It means setting out towards the new world where there will no longer be slaves and masters, but only the free children of God, towards a world in which man, animals and the earth will take part together and fraternally in God’s peace and in God’s freedom… [But] the human being refused rest, the relaxation that came from God, adoration with its peace and its freedom, and thus he ended up by submitting to activism. He enslaved the world to its activities and thus enslaved himself. For that reason, God had to give the human being the Sabbath, which man did not want. By refusing the cycle of freedom and relaxation that come from God, the human being drew away from his condition as God’s image and thus tread the world underfoot. That is why he had to be torn away from his enslavement to his own work. In order to do that, God had to let him find again his authenticity, had to free him from the domination of activism. St. Benedict wrote: “Nothing must be preferred to the service of God” – in first place, adoration, the freedom and the rest that comes from God. Thus, and only thus, the human person can truly live.
maronite readings – rosary,team