This issue of the NACYML News is devoted to summer programming. There are two aspects of summer programs that have a particularly theological dimension: rest and service.

Here are some quotations from the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church that I offer for your consideration. How can they play a role in planning your summer programs?

Building your Summer Program as an Extended Sabbath Rest

• “Rest gives men and women the possibility to remember and experience anew God's work, from Creation to Redemption, to recognize themselves as his work (cf. Eph 2:10), and to give thanks for their lives and for their subsistence to him who is their author.” [258]
• Rest provides an opportunity allows for four essential ingredients special to the concept of Sabbath: “the worship owed to God, the joy proper to the Lord's Day, the performance of the works of mercy, and the appropriate relaxation of mind and body.” [284]
• Sabbath is “an appropriate time for the reflection, silence, study and meditation that foster the growth of the interior Christian life.” [285]
• Sabbath is “a day that should be made holy by charitable activity.” [285]

Building your Summer Program as an Expression of Loving Service

• “The presence of the laity in social life is characterized by service, the sign and expression of love.” [551]
• “Among the areas of the social commitment of the laity, service to the human person emerges as a priority. Promoting the dignity of every person, the most precious possession of men and women, is the ‘essential task, in a certain sense, the central and unifying task of the service which the Church, and the lay faithful in her, are called to render to the human family.’” [552]
• “The internal ‘renewal of the Christian spirit’ must precede the commitment to improve society ‘according to the mind of the Church on the firmly established basis of social justice and social charity.’” [552]
• “History shows how hearts are devastated when men and women are incapable of recognizing other values or other effective realities apart from material goods, the obsessive quest for which suffocates and blocks their ability to give of themselves.” [581]
• “Charity is the greatest social commandment. It respects others and their rights. It requires the practice of justice and it alone makes us capable of it. Charity inspires a life of self-giving.” [583]
• Solidarity with the human family “can take on the features of service and attention to those who live in poverty and need, to orphans, the handicapped, the sick, the elderly, to those who are in mourning, to those with doubts, to those who live in loneliness or who have been abandoned.” [246]

Think about it…

As time allows, review The Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church, available online at the Vatican website.