Family and Rest

Family: Work and Rest

The NEED to BALANCE WORK and REST in FAMILY LIFE

7th World Meeting of Families, May 30 – June 2, 2012 in Milan, Italy

Pope Benedict XVI called for a healthier balance between work and rest.

The natural rhythms of work and recreation are essential to family life

A proper understanding of rest and recreation would help to restore family life

In our time, unfortunately,

WORK – excessive competitiveness motivated by the quest for success and the view to

maximizing profit tends to absorb so much time and energy that it is hard to meet

other obligations to the family

Exploitation is possible in the form of over-work which make family life and personal

growth impossible.

There is a risk that the power over creation which God gives to man can lead him to

forget that God is the Creator upon whom everything depends. It is all the more urgent to recognize this dependence in our own time, when science and technology have so incredibly increased the power which man exercises through his work.

CONCEPT OF REST – degenerates into “free time”

- becomes a time for evasion and consumption

- reduced to individual gratification

RESULT - contribute to the break-up of families

- spread of an individualistic lifestyle.”

- A Consumeristic Lifestyle ends up tearing families apart.

It is therefore necessary to reflect and commit ourselves to reconciling the demands and requirements of work with those of the family and to recover the true significance of rest, especially on Sundays: the day of the family, the day of man, the day of the Lord

A new style of Family Life is needed. The quality of the relationship between spouses and between parents and children depends so much on the family having adequate REST and RECREATION.

Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote in Familiaris Consortio "of the need to help society rediscover true family values at a time of moral crisis". Family,...