I lead a book study group we call Good Books. Our most recent book was the very lavish treatment of the Jewish Sabbath by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man.

Although much of the book is devoted to the celebration of the Sabbath by observant Jews (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset) he also addresses the larger issue ? of concern to all of us ? about the critical importance of time devoted to the sacred in our lives. He tells us that you can see the great significance of the Sabbath if you take a close look at the first account of the creation in Genesis 1-2.4. There you will see that after each of the first Six Days of creation, God notes how ?good? all this activity is. But the Seventh Day, on which God rested, he blessed and called ?holy.? God was not endorsing idleness, but blessing that time which we are to give over to a deeper relationship with God. That time came to be called ?Sabbath? and it sank deeply into the heart of the Jewish tradition. We do not rest so that we can work harder the next six days. We work the Six Days in order to achieve blessing on the Seventh. We do not rest in order to work; we work in order to rest. So taken is Heschel with the beauty of the Sabbath that he personifies it as ?bride? and ?queen.? The survival of civilization and religion, he concludes, does not depend on the activity of the Six Days, but the holiness of the Seventh. We will never understand the significance of the Six Days if we do not pause on the Seventh, to reflect, to pray, to rejoice.

In the midst of our discussion, one of the women in the group posed the poignant question: ?What if there were no Sundays (The Christian Sabbath)?? We sat in silence for a few moments as it dawned on all of us that if Sabbath/Sunday had not, like Elvis, entirely left the building, it was being brusquely shown the door by the dynamics of our feverishly busy civilization.

What indeed has happened to Sunday? Sunday morning may be the last we see of the old Sunday, for it is estimated that 25-40% of Christians still go to church. Even committed and loyal Catholics however are known to kick back and skip Sunday Mass from time to time. But Sunday morning is also the preferred time for the Talking Heads in Washington D.C. Like preachers of yore they go on the air to publicly proclaim their viewpoints, hopefully making some news. They wouldn?t do this if nobody was at home listening. And, of course, there is the bulky, ad-congested Sunday paper, which functions as a kind of scripture for the day. Sunday afternoons are largely given over to the shopping malls, sporting events and home improvements. I have a suspicion that the big Sunday dinner at home is also a thing of the past. Sunday evenings we watch more sporting events, ?feel good? movies and, on Public TV, shows imported from England that are deemed to be of superior quality to American productions ( thus perhaps a slight gesture to the unique quality of Sunday.) One of the great ironies, of course, of the modern Sunday is that Sunday evenings seems to have become a preferred time for church events and meetings, (I must confess that our book group meets Sunday evenings ? at church!) Thus the last vacant beach head of the week is now being stormed by the Christians. Clearly gone forever are the old Catholic days of obligatory attendance at Sunday Mass (made light of even in the teeth of the Church?s refusal to back down on this precept), no physical labor (except by farmers and the housewives who made those big dinners) and no shopping (nothing was open anyway).

I am sure the above is an overstatement. Many people still observe a more-godly Sunday than most. I recall sitting in on a young adult retreat nearly 20 years ago when nearly 100 20-35 year olds were asked to share how families made Sunday special. Many of them told such stories, even if it were as simple as always having spaghetti that day. But, the great maw of stimulus and activity ? symbolized by that ominously possessive phrase, ?24-7?, increasingly sucks up all the time and energies we might have for a more spiritual and restful observance of how God is to be the center of our lives.

As someone engaged in spiritual formation, I am seeing this phenomenon in a larger and more disturbing context. Fewer and fewer Catholics are making retreats. There are exceptions. St Margaret Mary?s Parish in Naperville offers five retreats a year to parishioners, all of multiple days, and all are well subscribed. But in general, reports coming in from all over the country tell of serious, even catastrophic shrinkages in the numbers making retreats. Sadly, even the national organization sponsoring the retreat movement, an organization that has thrived for eighty years, Retreats International is closing up shop this year. Interestingly enough, people in the retreat ministry are responding to this development in a predictable way. They are shortening retreats, luring people in by asking them to spend not more but less sacred time. No longer do they ask people to come out for 2-4 days over a week-end. They offer a few hours on a Saturday morning (busier even than Sunday), or on a weekday for those on flex time. Programs sometimes last as little as one hour. Parish missions are held not for four nights and days, but for two or three nights only. These activities are often graced with the ancient and respectable name of retreat.

People are not staying away from retreats because they hold them in contempt or do not appreciate their value. They tell us ? sadly ? that they?d like to come ? and I think they really would ? but they ?just don?t have time.? Time. How we spend it is one of the two most reliable predictors of our real values (the other is money.) There are two Greek words for time widely used in religious literature ? ?chronos? and ?kairos.? The former is chronological time, the measurement of ?24/7?, the time of the Six Days. ?Kairos? signifies holy time, sacred time, the time of the Seventh Day, the time of rest, and the time of Sabbath. It is the time we used to honor on Sunday! We might urge the churches to undertake yet another activity calling on us to reflect on the loss of Sunday. But, can we spare the time?