We live in an age that has forgotten how to rest.
Not how to stop working. Not how to be entertained. Not even how to “relax.” We are highly skilled at distraction. But we are increasingly unpracticed in restorative leisure, the kind that leaves the soul collected rather than scattered.
On the First Sunday of Lent, during the Angelus, Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics to create space for silence: to turn off televisions, radios, and cell phones for a time; to meditate on the Word of God; to approach the Sacraments; to listen to the Holy Spirit and to one another.
His invitation may sound simple. It is not.
What the Holy Father is pointing toward is not merely reduced screen time. It is the recovery of something older and deeper, a specifically Christian form of leisure once called otium. And without it, the spiritual life quietly erodes.
This Lent, it may be worth asking: Have we forgotten not just how to work well, but how to rest well?
A Lost Vocabulary: Otium and Negotium
In the ancient Roman world, the word otium meant time free from necessity, leisure not ordered toward production or transaction, but toward reflection, study, conversation, and interior depth.
Its opposite was negotium, literally “not-otium,” referring to business, public affairs, and practical duties. Our modern word “negotiate” preserves this root, even if its original association with leisure has been largely forgotten.
But the classical world did not equate all non-work with true leisure. There was a distinction between leisure that elevates and leisure that dissipates.
Seneca, in On the Shortness of Life, warned that many who claimed to be “at leisure” were in fact merely drifting. The tragedy was not overwork alone; it was wasted leisure. One could be free from labor and yet never encounter oneself.
Thus, even in its classical origins, otium was not simply the absence of activity. It was the presence of depth.
This distinction, leisure that forms versus leisure that anesthetizes, would be taken up and radically transformed by Christianity.
The Christian Transformation of Leisure
Christianity did not abolish otium; it deepened it.
For the Christian, leisure becomes ordered rest, time deliberately cleared so the soul may become receptive to God.
The Desert Fathers withdrew into silence not to escape reality, but to see it clearly. Monastic life structured time around prayer, sacred reading, and manual labor — ora et labora — “prayer and work”, cultivating interior freedom rather than frenzy.
St. Benedict famously wrote, “Idleness is the enemy of the soul” (Rule, ch. 48). But Benedictine life was not frantic. It balanced work and contemplation. The problem was not leisure; it was empty leisure.
St. Augustine expressed the deeper theological dimension: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” Christian leisure is ordered toward that rest.
In the twentieth century, the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper described leisure as a “form of silence,” the condition that allows reality to be apprehended. Leisure, he argued, is the basis of culture precisely because it is receptive rather than grasping, contemplative rather than productive.
Christian otium, then, is not idleness. It is not mere relaxation. It is not killing time.
It is the preparation for prayer.
It is time in which the soul is allowed to breathe.
It is deliberate interior clearing so that one may become available, not manufacturing spiritual experiences, but cultivating receptivity.
And its opposite is not busyness alone.
Its opposite is something called acedia.
Otium and Acedia: Rest That Enables Love vs. Restlessness That Resists It
Acedia is often mistranslated as laziness. It is something far more subtle.
The spiritual tradition, from Evagrius and Cassian to St. Thomas Aquinas, describes acedia as a sorrow or resistance toward spiritual good. It is a quiet refusal of the demands of love. It flees interior encounter.
Acedia does not necessarily look like inactivity. It often hides behind stimulation, and it hates being interrupted.
It prefers:
- compulsive entertainment
- endless scrolling
- noise to avoid silence
- novelty to avoid reflection
Otium, by contrast, can tolerate silence. It does not require constant novelty. It leaves the soul more present afterward. It does not panic when interruption comes.
Acedia scatters attention.
Otium gathers it.
Acedia anesthetizes desire.
Otium restores it.
This is not a condemnation of technology or recreation. But it is an acknowledgment that the human heart requires space if it is to hear anything deeper than noise.
The Anesthetic Age
If earlier centuries struggled with overwork, ours struggles with overstimulation.
Our devices ensure that boredom rarely surfaces. Streaming eliminates empty time. Social media fills every pause. We carry in our pockets the means to avoid silence at will.
None of this is evil in itself. But it reshapes the soul.
When every pause is filled, we lose the capacity to dwell. When every silence is interrupted, we lose the habit of listening. Leisure becomes sedation rather than formation.
The Catechism reminds us that “the desire for God is written in the human heart” (CCC 27). But desire requires space to surface. If we continually anesthetize ourselves, we may never encounter the deeper hunger within.
The prophet Elijah did not meet the Lord in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12). Silence is not emptiness. It is the condition for hearing.
We are not merely overworked. We are under-silent.
Lent as Recovery
Lent has always involved fasting. But fasting is not an end in itself. It clears space. It exposes attachments. It reorders desire.
In previous centuries, fasting primarily concerned food. Today, one of the most significant Lenten disciplines available to us may be fasting from anesthesia.
What if we fasted from constant noise?
What if we relinquished reflexive scrolling?
What if we allowed boredom to surface long enough to discover what lies beneath it?
To fast from stimulation is to risk encounter, with God, with ourselves, with our unanswered questions.
Into that cleared space, Christian otium can be reintroduced.
Not as an aesthetic preference. Not as self-improvement. But as training in presence.
Practicing Christian Otium: A Simple Lenten Rule
If this sounds abstract, it need not be. Holy leisure can be practiced concretely.
A Daily Minimum (15–30 minutes)
Time that is:
- screen-free
- unhurried
- not goal-oriented
- not multitasked
- open to interruption
Concrete ways to practice Christian otium this Lent (not a checklist):
- Take a walk without headphones, allowing silence to accompany you.
- Sit quietly for a few minutes each day, simply noticing your thoughts without trying to manage them.
- Allow your mind to wander without immediately reaching for stimulation.
- Drive without radio, music, or audiobooks, and let the quiet become prayerful space.
- Listen attentively to a single piece of music from beginning to end, without multitasking.
- Sit with a psalm, repeating it slowly until its words begin to take root.
- If working with your hands, work deliberately and without hurry.
- Have a quiet meaningful conversation, give someone your full unhurried attention.
- Arrive early to Mass and remain still, resisting the urge to fill the silence.
The rule is simple: no consumption, no improvement projects, no productivity goals.
This is training the capacity for presence.
Expect resistance. Restlessness is not failure. It is often the first sign that silence is doing its work.
Leisure as Preparation for Eternity
Christian otium is preparation for communion with God and neighbor, and it also fosters genuine psychological and spiritual health.
Classical otium is the intentional cultivation of time for contemplation, study, learning, and thoughtful reflection.
Both classical and Christian otium stand in quiet opposition to a form of leisure that reduces free time to mere entertainment, time spent anesthetized, distracted, or sedated rather than awakened to reality.
Christian tradition teaches that contemplation is a foretaste of heaven, not dramatic ecstasy, but steady attentiveness. Heaven is not frantic. It is not distracted. It is not hurried.
When we practice holy leisure, we are entering more deeply into reality, quietly and gradually, often without emotional consolation. But something in us is being restored.
In a culture that confuses stimulation with rest and busyness with importance, the recovery of otium may be one of the most radical Lenten acts available to us.
This Lent, perhaps the invitation is not merely to give something up.
Perhaps it is to reclaim something forgotten.
To rediscover silence.
To allow space.
To practice leisure that awakens rather than numbs.
To make room for grace.
