Ahhh Cohasset, that enduring finish line of every year right before a new one begins, this is where I take my vacation drinking strange beers and smoking dry cigars, and more importantly it is here that I catch up with Jesuit brothers who I see only once in a blue moon. That picture to the right is where I am on vacation right now. Vacation is, for me, more than just a time to rest and lay out by the pool. (Which, in fact, would have disastrous results given my all too Irish skin.) Vacation is a time to gain fresh fruits even in the last moments of summer, to be refreshed, renewed, and to spend some time in gratitude, basking in the warm glow of God’s love and our benefactor’s generosity.
Benedict XVI said in his angelus address for this week that: “Vacation also makes for a precious opportunity to spend more time with family, to reunite with relatives and friends, in a word to give more space to the human contact which the rhythms of everyday tasks keep from being cultivated as we would like.” Those relationships are at the very core of my and any vocation, not just to religious life and priesthood, but in general. It is those relationships which support us, which help us to grow and become increasingly the person we were created to be, it is those relationships which are at the very heart of how it is that we experience Christ himself. Genuine companionship with others is at the heart of the Christian mystery, because Christ consistently creates community, among the apostles, disciples, and among the whole Church. In the end the mystical act of giving His body and blood to us in the Eucharist is enjoined by the prayer that they all may be one as He is one with the Father. Augustine says that by the Eucharist we become what we consume, that is the Body of Christ which Paul identifies as being the Church, community itself.
Often times it is the rhythm of mundane life which breaks those bonds, and can leave us with a feeling of loneliness, of isolation, and alienation. The desert fathers warned against just such a thing when they warned against sloth in the spiritual life, and I think it applies here. Sometimes the day to day wears us down, and makes us slothful around community life. Such is a reality for us all, when work, study, or other circumstances make us less intentional about tending to the people that we care about, especially those not immediately present to us, we lose something. We lose a sense of our deeper connectedness, we lose a sense of just how much we are genuinely loved by those friends and family who care for us, and that is a dangerous thing.
So here I am at Cohasset, on vacation, resting, recouping, and perhaps most importantly reconnecting with many of the people who make this life worthwhile, enjoyable, and living in gratitude for it.
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