The pressure to respond immediately has become one of the defining features of modern life. It is little wonder that leadership educators increasingly emphasise the importance of taking pause.

Before replying to a difficult email, entering a challenging conversation, or making an important decision, they encourage leaders to create a little space. The pause interrupts reactivity and allows wisdom to catch up with emotion.

Long before it appeared in books on leadership or emotional intelligence, the Christian spiritual tradition understood the importance of the pause. One of the most striking characteristics of Jesus in the Gospels is that he is never easily hurried.

Crowds press around him, the disciples become anxious, and his opponents demand immediate answers. Yet Jesus rarely seems driven by urgency.

He asks questions and listens attentively, and on many occasions he withdraws to pray. Even on his way to heal Jairus’ daughter, he stops for the woman who quietly reaches out to touch the hem of his garment (Mk 5:21–43).

A culture of immediacy

Ours is a culture of immediacy where opinions are formed before facts are fully known.

Notifications constantly compete for our attention, social media rewards immediacy over reflection, and artificial intelligence promises instantaneous answers to increasingly complex questions.

We are quietly losing the habit of inhabiting the space between what happens to us and how we respond.

Frankl’s space of freedom

Viktor Frankl, in reflecting on his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, observed that between stimulus and response there is a space, and that within that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response.

Even in circumstances where almost everything else had been taken away, he recognised that this inner freedom remained.

It is in that small but significant space that we recover the freedom to respond wisely instead of reacting impulsively. We remember who we are, recognise the humanity of the other person, and become open to God’s quiet prompting.

The liturgy’s forgotten gift

Perhaps this is one of the forgotten gifts of the liturgy. In a world where every pause is quickly filled, the Church continues to protect moments of silence (GIRM 45).

The silences after each reading and after the homily, or the stillness following Communion, are not empty pauses inserted between the important parts. They are themselves part of the action.

They remind us that understanding is not always immediate. Sometimes it unfolds slowly through silence, attentiveness and prayer. In this way, the liturgy gently forms us into more patient and receptive people.

Reactive or reflective?

Perhaps the real challenge of our age is not simply that we have become busier, but that we have become more reactive and less reflective. Leadership recognises the value of the pause as the birthplace of wise decision-making.

Psychology understands it as the foundation of emotional maturity. The Christian tradition has long known it as the place where God quietly forms the human heart.

Recovering that often-overlooked space between stimulus and response may be one of the most important disciplines of our time. It is there, in that small and easily neglected interval, that wisdom quietly grows and our deepest freedom is renewed.

It is there that we become aware of the God who has been present all along.

• Clare Schwantes holds a PhD from the University of Queensland and a Master of Theological Studies with a focus on Liturgy, in addition to Bachelor’s degrees in Education and Psychology. She also has diplomas in Editing and Publishing and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She is the Director of the Archdiocesan Liturgy Office in Brisbane, Australia and Chair of the National Liturgical Council in Australia.
• Clare is the author of From Page to Proclamation – Interpreting Scripture in the Context of Liturgy (2024).