Sabbath rest is trending. We are hearing more and more Christians lament the breakneck pace of modern life and the necessity of living out Sunday as a true day of rest. The more we welcome the gift of Sunday as the Lord’s Day, the more we can understand the heart of the Father.

Why does rest matter so profoundly to God? Why was it important enough to mandate rest on Sunday and to cement rest into the foundational document of our faith (the Third Commandment)?

God doesn’t get tired, being the source of all life and beauty. Yet, God rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done. So, if he wasn’t “filling his tank” for his sake, it is obvious that he was giving us a major clue about our design: we were created for repose, and he was showing us the way to shalom (complete wholeness and peace).

Anyone who has ever embraced a rhythm of life or developed a healthy routine (and stuck to it!) knows how liberating it is to live in a way that is ordered. It feels like we have more time and more freedom when we live in this way. We are better husbands and wives, friends and neighbours when we are able to cling to a higher ideal even if it means not always doing what we want to do. This is what God wants for us; he wants our full participation in our lives so that “in all these things, we are more than conquerors” (Rom 8:37).

Believe it or not, the rules lead to rest. True rest. Not the kind of rest that we’ve been sold. God wants rest for us that is freely chosen, not a compulsive “pastime” or addiction to entertainment kind of rest. And the only way to this liberating kind of rest is to let God be God and to trust that he will give us everything we need if we relinquish control.

Each Sunday’s “sabbath rest” teaches us how to take a break from our labours and let God do what he does best: cause unprecedented growth. “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7).

Throughout the Old Testament, Sabbath and its associated traditions were inextricably linked with Jewish identity. Every seven years, the Jewish people would celebrate a sabbath year wherein they would let their fields rest and they themselves would rest from the usual intensity of their labours.

In the book of Leviticus, we learn about the institution of the Jubilee year and its prescriptions. The Jubilee year took place after a “week of sabbath years” i.e. seven years times seven, so every 49 years. At that point, there would be the usual year of rest for the land and an additional year of Jubilee where slaves would be freed, debts would be cancelled, and everyone would return to their land and have their land returned to them if they had sold ancestral land. Essentially, God instituted a complete reset for his people every 50 years.

When the Jewish people did not observe the year of Jubilee, eventually their hearts would become hardened, and they would end up in slavery. First, slavery to their work and to their own desires, and inevitably, physical/political slavery would always follow. Does this sound like familiar territory?

In his book Jesus and the Jubilee, Dr. John Bergsma talks about the Church’s authority over time and the way it is experienced by God’s people. We Catholics are well-versed in liturgical seasons, but did you know that when Jesus gave Peter the “keys of the kingdom,” he was not only naming him the keeper of the keys but also the keeper of time?

To the Jewish ear, for Jesus to have told Peter that whatever he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven and whatever he binds on earth will be bound in heaven was serious business. He was giving authority to his baby Church to ordain the seasons and times for heaven’s purposes. Therefore, when the Church says, “feast” we feast! Similarly, when the Church says “fast,” we fast. And finally, when the Church says “Jubilee” every 25 years, we forgive, release, restore, cancel debt, and most importantly, we re-learn how to rely on God for our daily bread.

This Jubilee year—or super-sabbath as Bergsma dubs it—challenges us to step back from the way we usually do things and to recover from self-reliance, which is truly a growth-hindering disease that requires divine intervention and if left unchecked, would leave us “harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36). The Jubilee year taught God’s chosen people about how complete dependence on him is directly related to freedom and restoration. Doesn’t that sound like something we need?

If there were ever a generation that needed the full weight of a Jubilee—the full weight of rest in God’s providence—it is this one.