Do you set aside time each day for this most fundamental practice of a disciple—daily prayer? And by that, I mean more than simply saying a few prayers each day like the Our Father or Hail Mary or grace before meals. I also refer to more than doing various devotions such as the Rosary or Chaplet of Divine Mercy. The daily prayer life of a disciple involves even more than the highest form of prayer, participating in the Mass.
If we want to be disciples who follow Jesus, we must have at the heartbeat of our spiritual life a daily encounter with him that the Church has called “meditation”—time for reflecting on Christ’s life and intimate conversation with God about how his life speaks to us today and how we can live like him more. All those other forms of prayer certainly help deepen the spiritual life. But they might only be fruitful to the extent that those vocal prayers, devotions, and graces from the Sacraments meet the fertile soil of a daily encounter with Jesus in meditative prayer.
Radiating Christ or Just Yourself?
A lot is riding on our commitment to daily prayer. First of all, our relationship with God depends on it!
Some souls wonder why their spiritual life seems stagnant. They believe in God. They say their various prayers and devotions. They go to Mass. “Why am I not growing in fervor? Why am I still struggling with certain sins? Why am I not growing in holiness?” There can be many reasons for a stalled discipleship, but one might be the lack of a commitment to daily meditation and contemplation.
But it’s not just our own spiritual lives at stake. Other people’s lives are impacted by our faithfulness to daily prayer. When we fail to live deeply, cultivating our interior lives, we live more superficially—relying on our own abilities, gifts, talents, personality, and effort more than on God’s grace. God, of course, wants to use our abilities, but even more than that, he wants us to be a channel of his love to the world. So my prayer life isn’t just for me. My wife and children, for example, need me to pray. They need a lot more than my love for them. For, as sincere and noble as it might be, my love is far from perfect. It’s tainted by pride, impatience, fears, and wounds. My family needs Christ’s love working through me.
Similarly, the people we encounter in the office, at the parish, and in our friendships need a lot more than a charming personality, hard work, organizational skills, or intelligent insights. They need Jesus radiating through us.
When we live deeply, from our interior lives, we can give our missions, our jobs, our families, and our world something much greater than ourselves. We can give Christ. A prayer St. Teresa of Calcutta had her Missionary of Charity sisters recite each day sums up well the attitude of a disciple who is committed to daily prayer: “Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus.”
The Power of Meditation
For some, however, the word meditation might sound intimidating: very complex and only for advanced disciples. We might envision a monk or some mystic sitting with legs crossed, eyes closed, breathing slowly, and communing with God for several hours straight. “I’m just a beginner. I can barely sit still for five minutes. I’m not ready for those higher forms of prayer yet!” But meditation in the life of ordinary Christians is not that complicated. If you’re a believer who loves God and can read, think, and prayerfully reflect on what you’re reading, you can do basic meditative prayer. The Catechism describes meditation simply in this way: “The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking.”
You can do meditation anywhere: at a church, in a chapel, at home, in your office, on the plane, in a rocking chair while holding a baby. Pope St. John Paul II even thought subways in Paris could be places for meditation and contemplation. And we can do it any time. While mornings are often recommended (so that we start our day with prayer), many disciples pray at their lunch break, after work, or in the evening before they go to bed.
Most importantly, though meditation demands hard work and commitment, the practice itself is fairly simple. You just need a sacred text like the Bible, the writing of a saint, a classical spiritual book like The Imitation of Christ, or short reflections in modern resources such as Magnificat or Our Daily Bread. You read a few lines, a few sentences, or even just a few words. If it’s a passage from the Gospels, for example, you might put yourself in the scene, imagining the sights, sounds, and smells, what Jesus says, how people respond, and how you would feel if he approached you in this scene. If it’s a spiritual book, you might ponder a particular insight, pausing at parts that grab your attention or speak to what you’re going through in your life now. Whether from Scripture or the Catholic tradition, the sacred text feeds our prayer. It gives us something to chew on, so to speak. It helps us to ponder God and different aspects of the Christian life and gives us a talking point for our conversation with God. It fosters an encounter with God through his inspired Word and his Church.
But it’s important to note how meditation is not merely spiritual reading. Christians might be tempted to turn their prayer time into study hall and fail to enter into dialogue with God. We should talk to God about what we are reading and pondering. We ask the Lord how a certain point might apply to our lives and how he might be speaking to us through that insight. We also ask God to help us live it out. We should sit quietly and listen, trying to be aware of the ways the Lord might be stirring our hearts, nudging us, comforting us, or encouraging us. In the process, we may find ourselves, for example, moved to praise and thank the Lord for his goodness. We might gain some fresh insight on a certain problem or decision we’re facing. We may find a particular point offering us much needed encouragement. Or we might sense God is calling us to repent of something: to turn away from a certain sin, to express sorrow for our actions, or to recommit ourselves to following Jesus more fully.
Resolution
Whatever inspiration flows out of our meditation, we should always conclude with a resolution—a concrete action item that helps us to follow God’s promptings and put the fruit of our meditation into practice that day. For example, after meditating on Jesus’s words “Be not afraid,” we might make a resolution to confidently entrust whatever difficulties we’ll face this day to the Lord. Or after pondering Jesus’s compassion for the sick, we might make a resolution to go out of our way to be kind to people we know who are going through difficult times or to pray for those people we know who are ill.
A resolution can consist of an act of kindness. (I will praise three people today; I will thank each of my family members for something; I will offer to help someone at work.) It could be a small sacrifice. (I’m going to give up dessert; I’m going to give in to others’ preferences today.) It might involve a change in behavior. (I’m not going to watch that show anymore; I’m not going to lose my temper today; I’m not going to look at my phone after dinner.) Or it could be simply remembering something from your meditation (God’s mercy, the peace Jesus promises us, his compassion for the suffering, his admonition not to judge other people). The kinds of resolutions will vary from person to person and day to day. The resolution is a way for the movement in your soul during meditation to bear fruit in your life; it helps you take the promptings or insights God placed on your soul and apply them to your life that day.
Using our prayer time to merely ponder spiritual insights without a resolution, however, can have its dangers. St. Francis de Sales explains that our hearts can be stirred when pondering a profound insight about the spiritual life. We are filled with joy, love, excitement, and fervor. But if we don’t gather those movements in our souls into concrete plans to apply them to our lives, then correcting our faults and imitating Christ will be a “slow difficult task.” Even more, we might trick ourselves into thinking we’re progressing in our relationship with Christ more than we really are. For we might experience a feeling of closeness with God—a certain joy or delight when pondering his goodness—without taking any steps to put those insights into practice in a way that helps us imitate Christ more.
Taking time out of your day for this kind of prayer—fifteen to twenty to thirty minutes each day—can transform your life. As you fill your mind with Christ’s life and prayerfully ponder small ways to live more like him each day, you’ll find yourself, with the help of God’s grace, slowly being changed, making gradual progress in becoming more like him. You will begin to live more interiorly, more in tune with Christ’s Spirit dwelling within you, and more aware of his promptings—and thus more likely to respond to those divine nudges. In this way, Jesus changes us from within so that over time we can say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
Do it for your family and friends. Do it for the people you serve. Do it for your own soul. Most of all, do it out of love for the God who so loves you.
I Don’t Have Time
One of the biggest excuses people give for not praying each day is the problem of time: “I don’t have time. I’m too busy right now.” But we always make time for the things we think are important. No one, for example, has died of hunger because they were too busy to take time to eat. No one has ever died of asphyxiation because they were too busy to breathe. Pope Francis said disciples must take in the “deep breath of prayer.” Just as we need to breathe in oxygen to live physically, so we need the deep breath of prayer in order to live spiritually.
We all have time. The important question is, what are we doing with it? We make time for the things that we value most. If we value God and our relationship with him, then we will commit some of our time to him each day in prayer. Perhaps we just need to put first things first and ensure that we make prayer a top priority in our day.
Here’s an analogy that can help us along these lines. Did you know that if you took three quarters of a cup of beans and three quarters of a cup of rice, you could fit them both in just one cup? Yes, it can be done. But only if you put the beans in first. If you do that, many of the individual grains of rice can fall between the cracks of the beans and take up less space in the one cup. Similarly, if we make our time for prayer a priority, putting it first each day, we’ll find that the truly essential things we need to do will somehow still get done. We just have to put God first. “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Mt 6:33).
Sometimes, however, “I don’t have time” is just an excuse. We say we are too busy, but in reality we simply don’t want to commit to prayer. We find it too hard, too boring, or too much work. Indeed, meditation demands a lot from us. It’s a lot easier to respond to email than it is to sit in the chapel and pray. It’s a lot easier to play with our phones, type on our computers, or watch a show than it is to quietly sit with the Bible and meditate on a scene from the Gospels. It’s sometimes even easier to pray the Rosary or set prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours than it is to rest in Christ’s presence and contemplate his life. While these beautiful prayers and devotions also help deepen one’s spiritual life, we want to make sure they don’t replace the commitment to daily meditation. Otherwise, we’ll easily come up with a hundred excuses for why we need to cut corners on meditative prayer to perform other “urgent” tasks. This, however, is not the heart of a disciple. A true disciple will make his daily encounter with God in meditation a priority, no matter what the cost.
Faithfulness vs. “Good Prayer”
I’ve heard some people talk about moments when they think their prayer life is going well: “Prayer was really good today.” “I had a great time in the chapel.” “I got a lot out of my prayer time this morning.” “I love doing lectio divina.” Indeed, there are times when God blesses us with a feeling of his closeness in prayer. We are more aware of his presence, we sense his love, or we get some new insight on a problem we’re facing. We should thank the Lord for those moments. But there are also many times when prayer seems dry, when we don’t feel God’s closeness. Prayer is a drudgery. It’s painfully boring. We can’t wait for it to be over. We’d rather be doing anything else than sitting quietly with God in prayer. In those moments, when prayer is most challenging, will you still show up?
Far more important than our perceptions about the quality of our prayer is our faithfulness to it each day. Are we consistent with prayer? Are we faithful to Jesus, giving him this time for prayer each day? Even when we don’t want to go? Even when we don’t think we’re getting a lot out of it? God often withdraws the feelings of his closeness to test our hearts, to draw out our deepest desires that are for him and not just for the blessings he gives us. He wants to see if we will be faithful even when we don’t feel we’re getting a lot out of our prayer time.
Real love is not about feelings. And it’s not about what we get out of the other person. It’s about a commitment to the one we love. I see this in my relationship with my irresistibly cute one-year-old daughter. When she sees me come home from work, she smiles, laughs, and says, “Dada, Dada” as she waddles to the front door to hug me. In those moments, I feel so close to my daughter. As she falls into my arms, I squeeze her tight, kiss her on the cheek, and say, “I love you!”
But when she’s sick and wakes up several times in the middle of the night, I don’t have those same warm, fuzzy feelings for her. Sadly, there are many other emotions at work at 2:30 in the morning. “I just want a few hours of rest! Why won’t you sleep through the night?” But my wife and I still need to love her, serve her, and attend to her—even though we don’t get a lot out of it. Imagine if we each said, “Well, there’s not much in it for me when she’s crying like this—I don’t get a lot out of these middle-of-the-night episodes. I don’t get good feelings taking care of her at 3:00 a.m., so she’s on her own tonight.” That’s not love. Real love is about faithfulness. And the same is true in our relationship with God. True disciples are faithful to God in prayer always, not just when they feel like it or when they think they get a lot out of it. It’s about fidelity to Jesus, making time for him each day in prayer and trusting that there’s meaning and purpose to our prayer—and that God is still doing good work in our souls, even if we don’t feel it.
From Into His Likeness, by Edward Sri, Chapter 16