Summer Soul-Stretching
by Bishop Joensen | July 17, 2025
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With apologies to George Gershwin, it’s summertime, and the livin’ may or may not be easy. A lot depends on our family and work situation, as well as the personal habits and rule of life we adopt. Yet even with the necessary tasks and commitments that prevail upon us, in this month when we celebrate our nation’s independence, we’re reminded that it falls to persons of faith like ourselves to flex our own freedom and be both creative and disciplined in claiming moments of holy leisure where we let our souls loose.
God’s Spirit nudges us beyond the drive toward busyness and productivity that can be self-validating, but can likewise leave us feeling spent and frazzled. We behold the world around us, contemplate glimpses of nature’s beauty and power—as terrifying as it may be at times. Whether or not the background aroma of barbecued mammals wafts over us, we savor conversations punctuated by silence and laughter with friends and cherished loved ones where we are not arguing for our point of view or sinking to the lowest common denominator of gossip and detraction.
We open our hearts to the Source of Life, the Author of Creation in whose image we were created. God’s seventh-day sabbath rest is enjoined upon us not so we can slink into passive semi-consciousness (though I’m a big believer in power naps!) or self-medicated torpor, but so that we might be refreshed, re-created, restored to life and stirred to praise and thanksgiving simply for the fact of being the only creatures after God’s own heart. Josef Pieper, the Thomistic German-Catholic philosopher, in his classic work, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, captures this mindset: “Leisure, it must be remembered, is not a Sunday afternoon idyll, but the preserve of freedom, of education and culture, and of that undiminished humanity which views the world as a whole.”
In any given season, taking a formal vacation may seem to be a luxury we can’t afford, but three individuals whose lives might seem to be located at very different points along the contemplative-active continuum reveal in their own ways the freedom and good sense that should inspire us to pursue and preserve a Sabbath spirit of holy leisure and contemplation.
The first is St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose 100th anniversary of canonization is celebrated in this Jubilee Year 2025. Thérèse was admitted to the Carmelite monastery when she was only 15 years old. It was an answer to her heart’s great desire to be with her own older blood sisters who had entered before her, to contemplate the Lord day and night, to behold her soul’s beloved, Jesus. Yet wherever you go, there you are—she could not escape herself, her own psychological weakness and limitations. Her flawless obedience to the community’s rule, her inclination toward extreme perfectionism resulted in a refractory tendency to treat faith with a sort of therapeutic obstinacy.
Yet, in retrospect, how rapidly God transformed her desire for holiness into an abiding humility and trust in God’s mercy. In relatively short order, Thérèse let go of her perpetual discouragement in herself and fixed her sights, her desires on Jesus, both Infant Child and Suffering Servant of the Holy Face.
Thérèse’s great insight and wisdom purchased at the great price of her own total abandonment to God in trust and hope is that Jesus is loved fully when we allow ourselves to be loved by him. A pure heart is the fruit not of a program of self-denial, though this certainly takes place for love’s sake, but of complete trust and hope born of prayer which consists primarily, as her namesake Teresa of Avila observed, in the exchange of friendship.
The second person is our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV. From the moment of his election to the Chair of Peter, he hit the ground running and has sustained a formidable schedule of administering sacraments, holding public and private audiences, coordinating the responses to the 220 pounds of correspondence he receives every day, and picking up the baton of Jubilee Year celebrations from his late predecessor, Pope Francis.
Yet, in contrast to his predecessor, Leo is resuming a long-time papal tradition of venturing to the charming Alban Hills southeast of Rome to the summer residence of Castel Gondolfo for intermittent weeks of relaxation and repose, which will include celebrating Sunday Masses at local parishes. Perhaps he will get in a few sets of tennis, or maybe even avail himself of the lap pool installed by St. John Paul II, who in response to criticism of the cost entailed, quipped that “it was less expensive than another conclave.”
Finally, he is not a likely candidate for this column, but the 20th century Chilean man of letters, diplomat, and 1971 Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, though not overtly religious, embodied a childlike spirit of wonder and contemplation that irrigated his poetry, essays, and other works. His beloved home on the Chilean coast, Isla Negra, was his window on the Pacific Ocean and the world from which he drew daily inspiration. Along with his wife, Matilde, over decades they collected numerous objects of art and whimsy and even more friends and acquaintances whom they hosted at their idyllic retreat from the world.
One curious object in Neruda’s Isla Negra home that is worth noting is an old mechanical press used for making Eucharistic hosts. One wonders why this piece captured his fancy, but that is a secret Neruda carried to his grave. I might propose, however, that the press serves as a symbol that should be a reference point for all of us in our own rhythm of life, work, and holy leisure. For whether we are a farmer, a stay-at-home parent, an artist, or a worker in the IT, construction, or hospitality sectors of society, all we do should ultimately converge as the “stuff” that is shaped and formed into the basis of a Eucharistic life. For it is in sacred worship, preeminently in the Mass as an expression of sabbath rest, where all we are and do takes its proper place as the crowning act of a truly human life, where the image of God instilled in us is raised in relief, in season and out.
The Diocese of Des Moines joins the people of the Diocese of Davenport and the whole Province of Iowa in congratulating Bishop-Elect Thomas Hennen, an Ottumwa native and Davenport Diocese vicar general and rector of Sacred Heart Cathedral, whom Pope Leo XIV has chosen to succeed Bishop Liam Cary as the next bishop of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon. Baker is regarded as a mission diocese, and we rejoice that the former “Fr. Thom” will undertake this mission entrusted to him by the Lord and his Church, though we note that at 47 years of age (born on July 4th, no less!), God-willing, Bishop-Elect Hennen may well serve three decades as a successor of the apostles. It seems that the State of Iowa not only supplies 10% of our country’s food, but also grows bishops! Please continue to pray—perhaps adding a sixth decade of the Rosary for vocations—that God will continue to raise up priests from all four of our state’s dioceses, some of whom might be called to be missionaries beyond our borders!