The great law of Rest

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 512-513

[About doing away with Sabbath day of rest] What has happened? The great law of rest, —that primitive charter of humanity, anterior even to our fall, —the law of rest has been sacrificed to the desires of the fabulist, and to the figures of the economist. Well, I ask you, are the poor richer, more free, less enslaved to their masters, better in health, more moral, and more happy? Who have profited by the abolition of the charter of rest, but those who make others labour, and who have no need of rest? The poor will discover this sooner or later; they will see that those who desired to free them from an evangelical duty, have, in that very act, robbed them of a precious right which was hidden behind it; that they have been cheated in regard to their money, their health, their judgment, and their hearts. They will return to their old master, Jesus Christ, who understood the rights of the poor, because he was himself poor; they will again embrace his cross, bathed in the tears of those who suffer, and they will cry out, in still stronger love than of old: I come to you, who have never deceived the child of the poor! It is by the help of Catholic society, that Jesus Christ, the first and last founder of a fundamental principle of right, of an immutable law, of a universal law, has accomplished and propagated that great social revolution. … The errors of our national character have for a century led us away from truth; our hearts will certainly, although slowly, conduct us back to it again. Whenever the experience shall be acquired, and all right founded outside the pages of the Gospel shall be regarded as selfish, the great day of faith will dawn again upon France. And if this resurrection, foreshadowed by so many happy auguries, does not become realized, —if the Gospel and the country should become divided, there will be an end of us; because our national character will be no more. France will be nothing more than a dead lion, and will be dragged with a cord about its neck to the gémonies [scorned] of history.