Summer Vacation, No Vacation from God

My brother Tony and I fishing with Dad circa 1972

Tomorrow marks the end of school for many Dallas area schools. This is the time of the year when most of us begin planning a summer vacation. This planning may involve booking flights and hotels or simply mapping out the most scenic route to take on the road trip. In all the planning done for summer vacation, do we take time to plan our "God time" into the mix?

One of the responsiblities we have as the spiritual leaders of our families is to raise our children properly in the faith. This also means we need to insure that our summer plans include our spiritual lives. Taking a vacation does not mean taking a vacation from God or Church.

It's easy to fall into the mindset of self-indulgent comfort, kicking back, doing "nothing." We should heed the advice of St. Josemaria who wrote in The Furrow #514 that rest was not intended by God to mean simple idleness, but instead to be a time to recharge so that we could return to our work with a renewed vigor.

So what do we do? For starters we need to make sure that our vacation is family oriented, that it adds to the family, not take away. This means choosing wholesome destinations that will not place your family in near occasion of sin. For example, this would mean being prudent about taking your family to certain European beaches or to Las Vegas.

This does not mean that every family vacation has to be a pilgrimage to a holy place, but it does mean building in prayer and worship into the vacation. You could start the trip with a prayer for travelers. While you are in route, you could pray the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet. It certainly means building in time for Sunday mass. I recommend using Mass Times to find the nearest Catholic Church and their mass times. They also have an app for that. This can be an opportunity to visit some fabulous churches. Using this site, Stacey and I have stumbled across some wonderful churches both old and new.

The greatest combat against this culture of death and decay, which we live in, is to have a vibrant healthy Christian family. We are all called to be holy in our ordinary lives, not just Sundays. We can set a long lasting example for our children by how we live our lives, including how we spend our vacation.