We all know that prayer is important and that it should be a priority in our life. We know that in order to combat satan, we must use numerous spiritual weapons. However, making prayer a priority is not aways easy to do and we seem to always fail.
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We might try to pray everyday, but something always comes up. Your boss wants you to work extra hours this week. A child is at home with the flu. Relatives are coming over for the holidays. Jonny has basketball practice every night this week and Sally has ballet. You are a member of every club, society or organization at church.
Even when we do get time to sit down to pray, a zillion cares and worries go through our minds and an hour passes by without ever getting past chapter 1, verse 1 of the Gospel we were reading.
Then we see our local priests and religious and they seem to have it easy. They can pray whenever they want to and often they live with a predetermined schedule of prayer. Not us. We live in the world and there appears to be no time to pray.
That is certainly what I thought.
When I graduated from high school, I set out on the path for the priesthood. I enrolled in college seminary and I experienced a regimen I never experienced before.
I woke up everyday at 5:30, took a shower and headed down to the chapel for a Eucharistic Holy Hour from 6:00 to 7:00. Then after Mass I went off to breakfast and then to class. I ate lunch, went to more classes and then came back to the seminary at 4:45 for Evening Prayer. After that, we went to dinner and returned to the seminary for the all-important study hour. Our night didn’t end there, as we proceeded to nightly meetings with small groups and closed the day with Night Prayer. I even squeaked in a rosary before I went to bed at 10:00.
This happened everyday and it was all laid out for me. Not only that, but I was with 100+ other young men who were doing the same thing. While it wasn’t always easy waking up so early, finding time to pray was like clockwork. All I had to do was follow the schedule.
Then I went home for summer break and, like most seminarians, I had to recreate that daily schedule on my own. No one was there to watch me. No one was there to make sure I prayed my breviary. So many seminarians falter during the summer and vacations at home. Few will go to daily Mass and some even lose their breviary in the pile of clothes on their floor and go the entire summer without touching it.
Finding time to pray is not easy outside of the seminary.
Three years later I discerned God was not calling me to be a priest and so I finished college and got married shortly thereafter. It didn’t take long for us to be blessed with children. Talk about not having any time to pray!
With a full time job, a wife and small children, it is a challenge to mow the lawn or shovel the driveway, let alone find time to sit down and pray. At the same time, I could feel myself slipping and prayer was no where like it used to be. Prayer was typically quick and dry. Squeaking in a moment here and there, but overall never feeling like I was making any progress.
Then I knew what I had to do. I had to make a schedule. Actually, I had to make my own “Horarium.”
The “Horarium” is the sacred schedule that seminarians and religious live by every day. It is a mix of times for prayer, work and recreation. Since the family is often called the “domestic church” I knew that I needed to make my own sacred schedule or else prayer would never happen.
And it worked.
Not only did it work, but I was able to accomplish much more than I ever imagined. With a full time job, and making sure I tended to the needs of my wife and small children, I was able to schedule a daily holy hour, study and achieve a Master’s Degree in Theology, write a book and start a blog whereby I posted articles every week.
Was it easy. No. But it is possible.
Over the course of our series, I am going to let you in on the key to how I made it all happen. The easy part is making the schedule for daily prayer. The hard part is actually implementing it. Here is what we are going to look at:
- Why scheduling specific prayer time is vital to a successful spiritual life.
- Examining various saints who led very busy lives and the daily schedules they designed to put prayer first.
- Why now is the perfect time to set your prayer goals.
- The secret to achieving those goals and having a consistent prayer life that endures.
- How everyone can do this, whether you are a CEO, stay-at-home mom, retiree, college student, or someone who works the night shift.
- The key to a prayer life that is not only a vital part of your daily schedule, but also corresponds to the various seasons that God gives us in life.
This is only the beginning.
Do you know someone who could benefit from this? Send or share it with them. It has the power to radically change your life or someone else’s life.