Over the course of the last few months, I have plowed my way through a lengthy collection of articles (gathered under the title The Christian World around the New Testament) by the fine Biblical scholar, Richard Bauckham. In one piece, he discusses the very slow adoption by Christians of the idea of Sunday being a day of rest. That it should be a day out of the ordinary was agreed. But the early Christians were inclined to think it should be so because of the worship of God that should fill the day, not because of any toleration of idleness, always a danger for the spiritual journey.
 
Bauckham observes that it is not until the sixth century – thus, well after society was outwardly Christian and therefore apt to give legal force to Christian ideals – that much can be found in the way of Church prohibition of manual labor on Sunday. And even that late, he notes, the Rule of St. Benedict, in Chapter 48, qualifies the endorsement of Sundays free for lectio divina with the provision that a monk too slothful to devote the time to reading should be given some useful occupation, lest idleness (and the Devil) find an opportunity.
 
Interestingly, the Master seems here to be more in tune with the tendency of the age to recognize Sunday as a free day, no strings attached. He writes:
 
[On Sunday] let them refrain from all manual labor, and even from the daily memorizing normally done for three hours a day in both seasons, winter and summer. Instead, after Mass in the Church everyone may, according to his preference, read what he wishes or what affords him pleasure as he chooses, and they also have complete freedom to go back to bed. Thus they should rejoice in having Sunday assigned to them for resting. (50:3-7)
 
One can imagine Benedict bending the rules for a monk suffering genuine physical exhaustion, but he clearly rejects the Master’s endorsement of some serious “power napping” on Sundays. Why? He certainly has no difficulty with legislating a different sort of activity for Sundays (that is, more lectio, less physical labor), but he apparently resists the Master’s willingness to permit on Sunday genuine “time off.” Time remains for Benedict a gift not to be squandered, even (or especially?) on the Lord’s Day.