What Do I Do With My Free Time | Dr. R. Jared Staudt

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. R. Jared Staudt argues that the problem of our time is acedia, a spiritual sloth manifested through frenetic activity and distraction. He proposes leisure, defined as the freedom to engage in our highest human actions, as the solution to this problem. The talk explores the nature of leisure, its relationship to contemplation, and how it can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves, reality, and ultimately, God.

This lecture was given on February 29h, 2024, at University of North Texas

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events

About the Speaker:

Dr. R. Jared Staudt servers as Director of Content for Exodus 90 and an instructor for St. John Vianney Seminary. He earned his BA and MA in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas and his PhD in systematic theology from Ave Maria University, writing his dissertation on the virtue of religion in St. Thomas Aquinas's thought. He has taught at the Augustine Institute and the University of Mary and has authored and edited many books including How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization and The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture Yesterday & Today. Dr. Staudt has worked in various capacities in Catholic education, as a catechist, professor, administrator, associate superintendent, and founder of schools. As a Benedictine oblate, he works to foster the renewal of Catholic culture by helping Catholics to live out their faith more robustly. He works from his homestead in rural North Carolina, where he and his wife, Anne, homeschool their children.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:24.9	We recently moved out to North Carolina, where we now live on a homestead of nine acres,
0:30.3	just the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
0:33.1	So it's really wonderful to be with you all.
0:37.1	Even though it's via Zoom, I'm sorry that I was not able to make
0:40.9	it in person. And of course, we're here talking about what do I do with my free time? And I'm just
0:48.8	going to answer that question immediately, you know, with the original title that I was given,
0:53.6	and I'm just going to kind of stick
0:54.9	with it, which is leisure and contemplation. So, you know, when you think about, what do
1:01.3	do with my free time? You know, I'm married with six kids and multiple jobs and, like I said,
1:06.8	trying to get a homestead set up. So I'm like, free time. Yeah. What is free time? I don't know.
1:13.5	Leisure is not free time, right? We're going to unpack what it does really mean, though. What is leisure?
1:23.4	One time I was actually writing a piece about leisure for a blog called Those Catholic Men.
1:29.7	This was, I don't know, like six years ago or something.
1:33.1	And so I wrote something like, what's the purpose of leisure?
1:36.3	And the guy who was setting up the blog post chose these people like playing Frisbee, you as the image uh for leisure and i was like
1:45.5	that's not really what i'm saying in the piece that i wrote so we're going to unpack what is
1:51.1	what does that word really mean and we're going to look at one particular aspect of what we can and
1:59.6	should be doing in the midst of genuine leisure,
	...

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