For years, there was a term that described non-professional sports (sports played without pay). The term was “amateur,” from the Latin root for “love.” Amateurs were those who played for the “love of the game.” They played at their leisure. There is not an assumption that professionals have no love of the game – but, rather, that playing for money is a very different thing. My favorite amateur of all time was the golfer, Bobby Jones. He frequently beat even the professionals. He was the founder and designer of the Augusta National Golf Club (where the Masters is played). He retired from all competition at age 28.

We live in a world of professional sports, often marked by mega-million-dollar salaries and more than a little drama. Major college sports, once the heartland of the amateur, is now for pay. The landscape continues to change.

That sport, the quintessential expression of human leisure, has become monetized also means that it has lost its true amateur reality: we no longer love the game, or are at least in danger of forgetting the love that makes the game worth playing. In many settings across the world, sport is a substitute for war, an expression of extreme envy. It is the bearer of our passions – exhausting in the worst sense of the word.

Orthodoxy Is For Amateurs

It may seem strange to think of our Christian practice as an aspect of leisure or play. However, it is quite fundamental to our life in Christ.

“I [Wisdom] was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times” (Proverbs 8:30 Vulgate)

St. Anthony the Great made a distinction between three kinds of Christians: the slave, the hired hand, and the son. The slave works out of fear. The hired hand works for pay. The son works out of love. The first two are “professionals,” if you will. Their Christianity is utilitarian with a purpose other than itself. But the son is an amateur – he works for love. He is also the only one of the three who knows God, for only love knows anything.

The Greek word for leisure is schole, the origin of our word “school.” The ancient understanding was that leisure was the requirement for learning, at least for learning of a certain sort.

“…the highest form of knowledge comes to man like a gift—the sudden illumination, a stroke of genius, true contemplation; it comes effortlessly and without trouble.” (Pieper, Josef . Leisure: The Basis of Culture, p. 34).

In my experience, leisure itself (in its true meaning and form), often requires its own struggle. Learning to stop, to be still, to be quiet, to disengage, to listen, does not come easily to us all. I have known more than a few people for whom a prolonged illness enforced a time of “leisure” in which long-neglected reflection became life-changing.

It is not surprising that leisure has taken on meanings far removed from its origins. Like most everything in our culture, it is now a subset of work. Leisure now “recharges our batteries,” making us able to work “better.” It requires work in order to justify itself.

We are driven by the madness of acquisition. Profit, wealth, and the supposed management of the outcome of history are seen as the keys to human happiness. The wisdom of the Fathers sees this as deeply delusional. Our world of work-based acquisition is plagued by the spiritual problem of akedia, often translated as “sloth” or “listlessness.” We imagine that “sloth” is the unwillingness to work. It is, in point of fact, our inability to abide true leisure.

“…the contrary of acedia [listlessness] is not the spirit of work in the sense of the work of every day, of earning one’s living; it is man’s happy and cheerful affirmation of his own being, his acquiescence in the world and in God—which is to say love.” (Pieper, p.45).

The Christian Sabbath

This is foundational in the 4th Commandment: “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” It is incorrect to think that God worked for six days and did no work on the seventh. Genesis says that He completed (finished or fulfilled) His work on the Seventh. The text reveals that the great work of the seventh day is that God rested.

This “resting” is the very goodness of God and the goodness of His creation. We enter into that rest as we behold that same goodness, including the goodness that is our own creation. This is the fundamental act of worship. We do not seek to build or to fix, to manage or to mold by our worship. Worship is not defined by a project and a desired purpose. Worship is communion in the goodness of God in the thankfulness of our own existence and the existence of all things: “the happy and cheerful affirmation” of our own being – and that of all things.

There is a “Sabbath” theme that haunts the pages of the gospels. Jesus seems to almost prefer healing people on the Sabbath day. He is consistently confronted by the Pharisees who accuse Him of breaking the Law of Moses. It happens so frequently that we must assume a purpose within His actions that goes far deeper than mere accidents of the weekly calendar.

The Church year is instructive. The Great and Holy Sabbath is the name given to the Saturday of Holy Week. It is the day on which Christ lies in the tomb (God rests). It is also the day in which He “tramples down death by death,” completing the work begun on the Cross. The Church then speaks of Sunday (the first day of the week), the day of resurrection, as the “eighth day,” an eternal sabbath. To live united to the risen Christ is to live in God’s rest, to enter into the fullness of His Sabbath.

“There remains therefore a sabbath rest (σαββατισμὸς) for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.” (Hebrews 4:9-10)

For a Christian to “keep the Sabbath” is not a matter of observing-a-day. It is about a manner of a life, a way of being, a transformation into the sabbath-rest of God.

This sabbath-keeping (holy leisure) points towards a way of knowing – essential to communion. Here is an interesting example:

According to Kant, man’s knowledge is realized in the act of comparing, examining, relating, distinguishing, abstracting, deducing, demonstrating—all of which are forms of active intellectual effort. Knowledge, man’s spiritual, intellectual knowledge (such is Kant’s thesis) is activity, exclusively activity.” (Pieper, p. 27).

This kind of knowing is easily summed up with the word, “mastery.” How many, struggling to understand Orthodoxy, or to convert, have sought such “mastery”? How many of us still make this the goal of our knowing?

There is another kind of knowing, one that is consistent with resting in Christ. As noted above:

“the highest form of knowledge comes to man like a gift—the sudden illumination, a stroke of genius, true contemplation; it comes effortlessly and without trouble.”

It is interesting that discursive reasoning, the sort of knowledge described by Kant, was classically considered the form of thought that was particularly human. However, the highest form of knowledge was considered to be “supra-human,” something belonging to the angels and the divine. In the Eastern Church, this form of knowledge is described as noetic, and is not divorced from our humanity. It is, however, the manner and means by which we know God. It is a knowing that is not a product of work, but the fruit of love.

Noetic perception is a form of knowledge that has no mastery within it. It perceives. It is attentive, but it has no desire to control what it sees. The noetic faculty is the primary means of perceiving beauty. It is best expressed in wonder.

There is no doubt that human existence and well-being require both discursive reasoning as well as noetic perception. There is, particularly rooted in the commandment regarding the Sabbath, a hierarchy. Discursive reasoning, the “work” of thinking, is subservient to noetic perception, the knowledge of wondering.

In the life of the Church, the most singular act of wonder is found in the Divine Liturgy. It is properly an exercise in noetic perception. Indeed, the Liturgy itself describes its actions as taking place on the “noetic altar above the heavens.” Of course, in the multitude of our distractions, and in our inner habits of discursive meanderings (and worse), this noetic wonder is easily lost on us. The “work” of the Liturgy, is not a work – it is a not-working – a sabbath-dwelling in the presence of God. It is in this sabbath-dwelling, holy leisure, that we remember the sabbath day and “keep it holy.”

Our holy leisure is the opposite of listlessness (akedia). There is no boredom within it. It is, indeed, the cheerful affirmation of our own being. This comes within the blessing of God, who forgives our sins and makes all things whole. In Him, we take up our amateur status, the place of those who act for the sake of love.

Glory to God for all things!