THE SABBATH WALK

Every year we clean the graves of those we have lost, light candles, and bring flowers. But some of us tend the dead more faithfully than we tend the living. This Sabbath story, on the eve of All Saints’ Day, is about a woman, an estranged brother, and the discovery that the best way to honor our parents may be to make peace with the people they left behind.

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“He had treated his body like a company car — something to drive hard and service only when it broke down.”

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By Raffy Castillo

Arturo heard the words “metabolic syndrome” on a Thursday afternoon, between two meetings.

His doctor said it kindly but plainly. Blood pressure up. Sugar up. Triglycerides up. Waist, 98 centimeters. “Hindi pa ito diabetes, Art. Pero papunta na.”

Not yet diabetes. But on the way.

The doctor gave him a sheet of paper with instructions: lose weight, exercise 150 minutes a week, cut sugar and rice, sleep more. Recheck in three months.

Arturo folded the paper into his shirt pocket and went back to the office. He was 52, a chief finance officer, and he had a board presentation the following week. He thought: I’ll deal with this after the audit.

The List That Never Ended

That evening, he told his wife, Lorna, about the results. He tried to sound casual.

She read the paper twice. Then she asked, “So when will you start?”

“After the audit,” he said. “Then the budget season. Maybe January.”

She didn’t argue. She knew the list. It had been the same list for thirty years: after the promotion, after the children finished school, after the house was paid off, after the next quarter. There was always an “after.”

Treating the Body Like a Company Car

Lying awake that night, Arturo thought about how he treated his body.

He fed it whatever was fastest. Coffee with three sugars to start the day. Merienda from the vending machine. Dinner at nine, usually with a client, usually too much. He slept five hours on a good night. He hadn’t walked anywhere farther than the parking lot in years.

He had treated his body like a company car — something to drive hard and service only when it broke down.

And now the warning light was on.

The First Saturday

On Saturday morning, Lorna woke him early.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

“I have reports to review.”

“They’ll still be there in an hour.”

He grumbled, but he put on his old rubber shoes. They walked slowly around the village, under the acacia trees that lined the streets. He was out of breath after fifteen minutes and embarrassed by it.

Lorna didn’t comment. She just slowed down to match him.

What He Started to Notice

They walked again the next Saturday, and the one after that.

Something strange happened. Arturo began to notice things he had driven past for years. The old man who swept the chapel steps every morning. The sampaguita vendor on the corner who knew Lorna by name. The way the light came through the acacia leaves at seven in the morning. The fishes by the creek.

He realized he had lived in this village for eighteen years and had never really seen it.

He and Lorna talked as they walked — about their children, about her mother, about things they used to dream of doing together. Conversations they hadn’t had in years, because there was never time.

The Verse on the Chapel Wall

One Saturday, they stopped at the small village chapel to rest. Painted on the wall near the entrance was a verse he had never noticed before:

“Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”

He read it twice.

He had always thought of that verse as a warning against vices — drinking, smoking, the obvious sins. Standing there, sweaty and out of breath, he heard it differently. His body wasn’t a machine he owned. It was a gift he had been given, something entrusted to him. And he had been treating it with the same carelessness he would never tolerate with company assets.

Not One More Task

Something shifted after that.

The walk stopped being an item on his doctor’s list. It became the best hour of his week. He started walking on weekday mornings too, before work. He switched to brewed coffee, then cut the sugar to one spoon, then none. He found he didn’t miss the vending machine merienda. He went to bed earlier, because he wanted to be awake for the walk.

None of it felt like punishment. It felt like gratitude.

Three months later, his doctor looked at the new results and smiled. Blood pressure down. Sugar back below 100. Triglycerides improved. Waist, 91 centimeters.

“Ano’ng ginawa mo, Art?“

He thought about it. “I started taking Saturdays seriously,” he said.

What He Wrote Before Sunset

That evening, Arturo wrote in the small notebook Lorna had given him for his birthday, the one he had never used.

“For thirty years, I treated my body like something to use up. I think God meant it as something to receive.”

And beneath it: “Rest was not the thing that kept me from my work. It was the thing that gave me back my life.”

SABBATH REFLECTION

We live in a culture that rewards exhaustion. We wear busyness like a badge, skip meals to meet deadlines, and treat sleep as optional. Then we wonder why our bodies break down.

The Sabbath offers a different way of seeing. It reminds us that we are creatures, not machines — that our bodies are not merely tools for productivity but gifts to be received with gratitude and cared for with love.

Caring for your health is not vanity, and it is not one more burden on the to-do list. It is stewardship. It is saying thank you for the life you’ve been given, and making room to keep living it well — for yourself, for the people who love you, and for the work God still has for you to do.

This Sabbath, consider: How have I been treating the body entrusted to me? What small act of care could I begin today — not out of fear, but out of gratitude?

Perhaps it starts with something as simple as a slow walk, with someone you love, on a Saturday morning.

CLOSING PRAYER

Creator God,

Thank You for the gift of this body — for breath and heartbeat, for strength and movement, for every day of life You have given me.

Forgive me for the times I have treated it carelessly, as though it were mine to use up.

Teach me to receive it as a gift and to care for it with gratitude.

Slow me down when I rush past the beauty You have placed around me.

Give me the discipline to choose what is good for me, and the grace to begin again when I fail.

Let my rest be holy, my habits wise, and my life a living thank-you to You.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.