If we don’t take time to pray, we could not do this work.
—Mother Teresa
If anyone in the world might have seemed to have an excuse for “not having time to pray,” it was Mother Teresa and her tireless sisters in the Missionaries of Charity.
But Mother Teresa never allowed any amount of work to encroach on her prayer time or that of her sisters. The good Mother knew that, without prayer, everything else failed.
Prayer is the heart of every Christian life—not just that of religious orders. If you take the heart out, the body will die. If you make the heart stronger, the body will be stronger. If you make greater demands on the body, the heart needs to be extra-strong.
It’s easy to sideline prayer amidst the constant demands of work, family, school, and other practical things, but if we aren’t praying, every aspect of our lives suffers.
One way to make prayer a consistent practice is to schedule regular prayer time for yourself at home. A holy hour at home—perhaps weekly, perhaps biweekly—can keep you centered and spiritually strong, even if the pace of life seems overwhelming at times. It’ll help you to keep praying even if you can’t make a holy hour in church as often as you’d like to.
Mike Aquilina and Regis J. Flaherty’s The How-To Book of Catholic Devotions: Everything You Need to Know but No One Ever Taught You provides a step-by-step guide to making a holy hour—and you can use it for your at-home holy hours too! Put prayer on your calendar—and don’t dare to cross it out when the laundry starts building up or the lawn needs mowing! You’ll be amazed at how prayer can transform your life. Pick up a copy of The How-To Book of Catholic Devotions here!
