Our roads have been choking with traffic. Rain sweeps across Morecambe Bay. The fells are obscured by clouds. It must be the summer holidays!

Even with the glorious Lake District on our doorstep, we might well have planned a break elsewhere. Or maybe we remembered the strike-bound airports, the burning Mediterranean, the price of hotels, the climate costs of flying. Perhaps we decided to stay put. Holidays have become ambiguous, even exhausting. Maybe it is time to ask ourselves: ‘What are they for?’

The original meaning of holidays was ‘holy days’. They began as community celebrations of important days in the Church’s calendar. People came together in worship: to thank God for the gift of their existence and their salvation; to honour the shared values by which they lived; to recommit themselves to living in harmony with God, with one another, and with the created world.

The impulse for ‘holy-days’ has not disappeared. This month, a million young pilgrims went to Lisbon for World Youth Day.

The shrine of Lourdes hosts more visitors each year than anywhere in France after Paris. Many thousands undertake personal retreats. One parish has been planning a week of ‘staycation’, a shared holiday at home.

For some, vacations offer an encounter with the beauty of God’s creation, in music, maybe, or in mountains; for others a precious time with family and friends. All of these can be true moments of grateful ‘re-creation’, of restoring meaning to our lives, and energy to our bodies and spirits.

Written by Sr Margaret Atkins, Boarbank Hall, Allithwaite

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