Vacations are an opportunity not only for the little ones to have a good time, not only for the family to re-center and reunite, but also to be like a kid again. We know that children are the ones who inherit the kingdom of Heaven, and if we want to get there, we’ve got to again become like children. Vacations can reinvigorate the sense of wonder that our adulthood has beaten out of us.
Why take family vacations?
Because we don’t want to take quiet vacations. This latest generation is really good about finding ways to get around work it seems. First there was quiet quitting which sprang up a year or two ago. Now there’s quiet vacationing which sounds a lot like quiet quitting. Quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum (or embracing lukewarmness). Quiet vacationing is taking time without your boss’s prior approval or even knowledge. Shaking your mouse cursor about so it looks like you’re available on Teams or Slack when you’re actually binge-watching YouTube. But anyway… this is not the kind of vacation we’ll be talking about.
In the spirit of imitating our Lord in everything, we should recall that even Jesus took vacations. We read in Luke that he went to visit Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Everything he did was intentional. He didn’t go to get away from the stress of being God’s Son or with the intention of unplugging from work, the hustle and bustle of life, and responsibility at large. It was, presumably, an act of love for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
He deliberately chose that time to visit his friends. He relaxed, and spoke, and let Martha work and run about while Mary listened. His vacation was still an occasion for teaching.
So it seems reasonable then that we should take vacations and that those vacations should be in some way efficacious. As parents, we don’t take vacations for ourselves (though we should be in charge of the destination!).
Pope St. John Paul II took vacations, frequenting Castelgondolfo in the summers like many popes prior to him. It’s a museum now which you can visit if you’re ever in the area. On just such an occasion in 2004 and in the presence of several hundred pilgrims, he said vacations were a “favorable time to discovery the primacy of the interior life.”
I think this is a great sign of encouragement, as our culture often tries to pamper us. Hey your job is hard, you oughta get some “me” time. Ah don’t worry about finding Mass if you’re traveling – it’s alright. Back in college, I was friends with a guy who I considered to be a strong Catholic. I looked up to him. Thought he knew his stuff. When we were taking a beach vacation as a group, he remarked to his girlfriend (now his wife) who asked about there being a Catholic church nearby, “If you’re traveling it’s OK to miss a Sunday mass.” I thought, “Hey – that sounds good to me.”
Thankfully Trina was in the audience and she was firm enough to convince me that I should get to Mass, but you can see how easy it is to be duped into laziness. I tell my older kids all the time – it’s easy to be terrible. All you have to do is nothing. Vacations for parents are an exercise in doing a lot of things you don’t want to do all wrapped in one big thing you do want to do. We have far more opportunities to serve our family when we’re out of our home and out of our routine. For the sake of our wife and children and their collective enjoyment, we’ve got to keep ourselves interiorly recollected: why am I here? What is the purpose of this trip? Ultimately it should be to re-center the family on the family.
The problem with routine is that it can deaden the senses and weaken the will. Order is crucial, but we must also be supple. St. Josemaria says in the Forge, pt. 156, that “Sanctity has the flexibility of supple muscles,” and it, “is not rigid like cardboard. It knows how to smile, to give way to others, and to hope.”
When you cram yourself and a bunch of kids into a car for several hours, or into a new environment for several days, I promise you – there will be no shortage of opportunities to smile, give way, and hope for the best.
When should we take vacations?
So if we know vacations are good for us and we should take them because Our Lord and our Popes have taken them, just when should we take them? Pope St. John Paul II referred to the Summer season as the “Season of Vacations.” Blessed Montse Grases often spent the summer with her good friends and family in a small town north of Barcelona.
The summer isn’t the only time, though. Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, soon to be Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati, often skied and climbed mountains, professing that “with every passing day I fall madly in love with the mountains.”
Instead of asking, “When should we take a vacation?” it might be more useful to ask, “When was the last time we took a vacation?” If it has been more than a year, you’re due.
Vacations can be spur of the moment as well. Trina and I, shortly after we found out she was pregnant, decided we were going to take a vacation to the Outer Banks… the next day. We had little money, but found a KOA dealing out 50% off coupons since it was a late April and not yet the season for summer beach vacations. The night was spent packing a few things, and six the next morning we drove nine hours to our little cabin in Ocracoke. We knew this might be the last chance we get to go somewhere as a couple. Turns out – we were right!
And if we’re grappling with this idea of taking a vacation – obviously you need to read the room. Is my wife stressed? Has she been stressed for a while? Would a vacation help? Have the kids been burning it at both ends with homeschool and extracurriculars? Have I been a real difficult pill to swallow recently?
Once we decide it’s time to take one – how do we do it? Where do we go?
How should we take vacations?
First – I think we can adopt a sense of being on vacation at just about any moment of the day. Can we adopt a vacation-like serenity in our daily life? I’d say so, though it’ll be a struggle. About this particular struggle – the struggle of keeping our peace – St. Josemaria says, “Peace is a consequence of war, of struggle, of the intimate ascetical struggle which each Christian must keep up against everything in his life which does not belong to God.”
Going back to earlier about the purpose of your vacation. When you lift weights, the objective isn’t to lift as much as possible as many times as possible. We’re not looking to count the reps, but make the reps count. Make the next few minutes count towards your serenity.
But when you do want to take a real vacation, there are plenty of ways to do it, as long as we keep in mind another papal vacation quote from Benedict XVI gets to the heart of this: “Every good Christian knows that vacations are an appropriate time for relaxation and also the nourishment of the spirit through more extended periods of prayer and meditation, in order to grow in one’s personal relationship with Christ and to conform increasingly to his teachings.”
Vacations are an excellent opportunity to strip away the drudgery of mundane tasks and replace it with extra time spent towards unifying the family. A local (or distant) beach, lake, mountain, town, etc. are great options… but it should be far enough away that it feels like a different place. Staycations are nice and have their place, but an annual vacation to somewhere else is the ideal.
- Holy water. You’re likely going to be staying in someone else’s home, and sleeping in a bed that a bunch of strangers have slept it. Take lots of holy water and douse the place upon your arrival. Be generous.
- Don’t sleep in. Make sure you’re getting up early to start your day off right – ideally before the kids or before the rest of the world at least.
- Have a plan for your time. You don’t need to fill all of your time, but have a plan. Even on vacation, Trina and I have downtime from either 1 – 3 or 2 – 4. We call it Quiet Rest Time, or Drop Everything and Read Time.
- When planning a vacation – check for Catholic churches nearby, as well as their mass times. Remote places often have one priest going to multiple churches in the area on different days of the week. Something to keep in mind. If work is often getting in the way of Mass, and you’re now not going to work because you’re on vacation, maybe now’s an excellent opportunity to sneak in a few more visits to our Lord. I’ll caveat that with something Josemaria said – don’t let your mortifications mortify others. If the kids don’t want to go to Mass, don’t make them, but try to get yourself there. If your vacation will take you to a place that’s a ferry ride or a long drive from the nearest Tabernacle, it is no place for you and your family.
- Keep your norms. It’s so easy to burn it at both ends on vacation and then get away from your life of prayer, but I’d argue that a vacation is the best time to reset your norms as JPII said. If we can do it when we have to combat morning and evening routines bookending an 8 – 10 hour workday, we can do it we all of that goes away.
- A long vacation far away is tempting, but a short vacation nearby is refreshing as well. Getting away for the weekend to Galveston or Surfside is a great way to let the kids blow off some energy running around in the sun and surf, and for you and your wife to enjoy some simple pleasures like big ocean views. All of creation was given to us by God as a gift.
- Don’t stubbornly insist on a vacation spot if your wife is against it. Men are problem solvers, and if the problem is the family needs a vacation, then we might look for the quickest and cheapest way to address that problem. Sometimes that works, but sometimes it’s good to give until it hurts. We can’t be frivolous, but in the end, it’s only money. The greatest investment I’m going to make as a father is into my family. The way I love my wife and children – in the small and big ways – will be how my kids ultimately experience God the Father later in life.
- Get the kids in on it in some way. Not necessarily with choosing the place, especially if their young, but with some aspect of the trip. As an example, we told our kids we were going to make a beach trip sometime in the coming months, but we wanted to save up our money beforehand to get some nice beach toys (we didn’t have any). The kids immediately emptied their piggy banks into what they started calling “the family fund,” and later when we were out grocery shopping, my oldest would say to me, “Daddy – do we really need this third bag of barbecue chips? Could we save the money and put it toward the family fund?” They enjoyed being part of the process of making the vacation enjoyable for everyone.
- If you have little kids – give them other responsibilities. Have a buddy system on vacation. Lily – you watch Joe. Teresa, you watch Henry. Henry, you watch Maryjoy.
- Keep it simple. My sister-in-law was visiting with her husband recently, and she told me they were going to Disney after leaving us. That’s great. Disney’s certainly a unique experience. Then she said, “We’re going to be the first ones to the park and the last ones to leave!” Oof. And I know her husband and children have a great love for Disney, so this is a serious statement. For them, this might be a great vacation, but I’d say it’s an exception and not a rule.
- Finally, consecrate your vacation from the start. Let’s try to remind ourselves before any adventure that we only have this opportunity because of God and the gifts and talents He has given us; we only have this opportunity because Mary said yes and gave all the moments of her life to a divine will that she adopted as her own. It doesn’t have to be in your face. Keep it natural. Hey kids, good morning, happy Monday, thank you God for another day, please keep us safe, happy, and healthy and help us to love you and each other more and more. Mary and Joseph know a thing or two about traveling and surprises, and we can ask them for help.
