Quality time

Sometimes, married couples can have very busy lives together, but one will nevertheless observe, “We never spend time together anymore.”

What is missing, people usually say, is “quality time” – time when the focus is not on common tasks or activities, but on each other.

It is an important part of any deep, living relationship.

Today’s first reading (from Leviticus 23) details various festivals which God commands the children of Israel to celebrate, festivals with a common requirement:

“...and you shall do no sort of work.”

In a very real sense, these festivals are an invitation to spend quality time with God.

To be sure, God is always with us and we may be mindful of God throughout our day, but that does not take away our need for quality time with God.

Our modern lifestyle is often the enemy of quality time in our important relationships – with God, with spouses, with children, and with others.

It is particularly easy to let quality time with God slip. Even the Lord’s Day has often been overrun by errands and entertainments (the great Pope John Paul II spoke out on this in his Apostolic Letter Dies Domini “On Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy”).

Eventually, all of the things with which we spend our time in this world will pass away.

How we spend our eternity depends entirely upon our relationship with God: a relationship that needs and deserves quality time.

Not all of us are called to be cloistered contemplatives, but each of us need to devote quality time to the Lord.

Each of us can dedicate at least a few minutes each day purely for prayer. We would also do well to reexamine how we spend the Lord’s Day. (God knows I am far from perfect in all of this.)

Too often in the rush of daily life we take our important relationships for granted. We need to be careful that we do not take our most important relationship – our relationship with God – for granted.

We need to give the Lord service, worship, and quality time.