June 20, 2025 // Perspective

Faith and Leisure: Don’t Just Do Something, Sit there!

It’s summertime, “and the livin’ is easy,” as the classic song goes. It’s the time of year for road trips, baseball games, family reunions, beach reading, and endless glasses of iced tea on the porch. I, myself, have dusted off the bin of T-shirts and short pants and banished the puffy coats and wool socks to the attic. The dogs even got haircuts so that they can stay cool as they sun themselves on the patio. Bring on the leisure!

In our faith life as well, we’ve moved from the liturgical celebration of the Easter season into the longer portion of the year that we call “Ordinary Time.” Before the reform of the calendar after the Second Vatican Council, this season was known as the “Sundays after Pentecost,” which emphasized the mission the Church received from the Holy Spirit to evangelize “to the ends of the earth.” We may no longer call this season by that name, but the mandate to each of us remains the same – namely, to share with others the reasons for our hope in Jesus Christ.

This slower time of year invites us to reflect on the importance of rest and leisure. Especially in a world where everything seems to be go-go-go, what does it mean to take a break? Can we afford to do that without falling behind? More fundamentally, how can we even take a step back to rest when there is so much noise and activity around us all the time? We are assaulted by endless notifications on our phones and watches, televisions blaring in the doctor’s waiting room, pop-up advertisements as we surf the internet, and hours spent doom-scrolling on social media when we should instead be drifting off to sleep.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote about the importance of rest in relation to work in his little-appreciated 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens. He highlighted that the human person, “created in the image of God, shares by his work in the activity of the Creator” (No. 25). Each of us, with our particular gifts and limitations, contributes to the building up of God’s kingdom. By their labor, humans “are unfolding the Creator’s work, consulting the advantages of their brothers and sisters, and contributing by their personal industry to the realization in history of the divine plan.”

Accordingly, God’s model of work in the act of creation, in which He labored for six days and rested on the seventh, becomes our model as well. The pope explains that human work “not only requires a rest every ‘seventh day,’ but also cannot consist in the mere exercise of human strength in external action; it must leave room for man to prepare himself, by becoming more and more what in the will of God he ought to be, for the ‘rest’ that the Lord reserves for his servants and friends.”

The weekly day of rest, therefore, is not just a day to “recharge” in order to go back to work, but is time dedicated to join in communion with and to praise the God whose work in which we participate. As Christians, we gather for this day of rest on Sunday, the first day of the new creation, which was inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection. The Eucharist that we share in our celebration is both the sacrifice that Jesus offered to the Father on our behalf as well as His gift to us to nourish us on our pilgrim journey. As we receive the body and blood of Christ from the altar, we renew our participation with Jesus in His work of salvation.

For me, sitting before the Lord in Eucharistic adoration is where I find my regular moments of silence and rest. My weekly hour of adoration has proven to be the anchor of my spiritual life throughout the past few years. I’ll confess that when I first began going to adoration, I didn’t know how I was going to fill the time, and I was worried that I was going to get bored or distracted after just a few minutes. But I have come to learn that those “distractions” are often the very things I need to offer to Jesus in prayer. Whether they be memories of conversations with friends, or concerns about things I have to do, these are what I offer to the Lord as I gaze upon Him in the monstrance or tabernacle.

St. John Vianney once asked an old farmer what he did during Eucharistic adoration, and the man replied: “Nothing. I look at Him, and He looks at me.”

May your summer be filled with opportunities to rest in the Lord, to gaze at Him as He lovingly gazes back at you!

Ken Hallenius is a syndicated radio host and podcaster living in South Bend.

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