6: Everything You Need To Know About Prayer

I literally have My stack of books right here. I've got the catechism of the Catholic church. I have the Holy Bible, obviously. And then I have my notes from my mass journal from a homily that the priest literally gave this past weekend on prayer that I was like, wow, this is so Holy Spirit led, um, that the priest is talking about this because I was already planning on this episode to be on prayer. Um, so that's great. We're really going to get into it.

And I hope that you learn so much from it. I think this is a really important conversation to have. I think there's a lot of misconceptions around prayer. I think there's a lot of questions in general around prayer. Like what is prayer? Why is it important? How do I do it? all those kinds of things. We're going to get into all that today, but the baseline.

Like truth that I want us to work off of today that I want you to know in your heart and walk away like living, breathing, knowing is that prayer is the lifeline to your relationship with Jesus. Let me say that again. Prayer is the lifeline to your relationship with Jesus. I didn't know this for a long time. And so when I used to hear, Oh, I have a relationship with Jesus. Or when I used to get asked, do you have a relationship with Jesus? I would think, well, yeah, of course. I mean, it's.

Like I, I love him. I, I quote unquote know him, although I didn't really know the person of Jesus. I just knew who he was kind of like as a figure. and I came to learn that prayer is the form of communication. It's the, the route and the vehicle that allows us to know God, to know who he is and therefore to have a relationship with him, because relationship is a deep two sided thing. It's not just a one sided thing.

I think for so long, I kind of had, maybe had a one sided relationship with the Lord, which I don't really even know what side it was. Maybe it was like him loving me probably, and me not really like putting anything back. Um, but relationship takes two, it's two sided. So today we're going to get into that. Why prayers are lifeline to Jesus. Why is what's going to help you build your relationship with the Lord? so come Holy spirit, please allow these to be your words that are spoken. Not mine.

And I pray that this, uh, just touches your heart. So let's start off with the basic question. What is prayer? Okay. That's where we need to start. Um, and first I want to ask you, what do you think of when you hear the word prayer? Take a second to think about that. I just want you to think kind of like first instinct, first thoughts. What do you think of when you hear the word prayer? Because I know for the longest time when I heard that I jumped to what I now know is called rote prayers.

Um, the basically these like beautiful, like. Pre written prayers that the church has given us that have been passed down for generations and, you know, through the whole tradition of the church, or given to us by Jesus himself, like the, our father, right?

That is a written prayer that we memorize that we can just pray that we can take out of our little, like, you know, pocket when we need it, a rote prayer that is like pre written for us, words that are given to us to pray to the father or to ask him or to praise him, whatever it is, that is a rote prayer. Versus something like free form prayer. That's a different kind of prayer.

But when I used to hear the word prayer, I kind of always jumped to those prewritten prayers, those rote prayers, the hail Mary, the our father glory be maybe the rosary. but free form prayer is the Also prayer and free form prayer. There's a lot of different ways to describe it. We're going to get into it. But right now I just want to call it like free form prayer.

Cause I think it's the easiest way to understand what that is when you compare it to kind of like a pre written prayer or like a prayer that's been, you know, passed down in the tradition of the church, like the rosary. Like I said, free form prayer is mental prayer from the heart. It's really what it sounds like. It's freedom in how you pray in what you pray and how you communicate to the Lord. There is no right or wrong way to speak to the Lord. And it's just a speaking from the heart.

St. Therese of Lisieux, I know you love her because who doesn't, right? There's a quote by her that I love that says, for me, prayer is a surge of the heart. It is a simple look towards heaven. It is a cry of recognition and love embracing both trial and joy. St. Therese bless you. And what I love most about this quote is the beginning where it says, for me, prayer is a surge of the heart. And if we look in our catechism, let me get that up.

Um, the catechism of the Catholic church is the big book of everything. It's the big book that breaks down all of the teachings of the church, the traditions of the church, why we do what we do. so it's a great resource So we are going to open up to the catechism, paragraph, 2 And I'm just going to read this. So the title says prayer as a covenant. Um, so this whole section of the catechism is, is huge on prayer.

So just highly recommend starting there in general, but we're going to start at this, this paragraph prayer as a covenant. it says, where does prayer come from? Whether prayer is expressed in words or gestures, is the whole man who but in naming the source of prayer. Scripture speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit, but most often of the heart more than a thousand times. According to scripture, it is the heart that praise. If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.

So it is the heart that praise. And we see that in scripture and it is said over a thousand times. And like this said, like sometimes the soul is mentioned or the spirit, but in the end prayer is from the heart.

Prayer is a conversation with God from our heart So I just want to start with that first because I know that when we hear the word prayer or you know Prayer routine or whatever it can sound really intimidating It could sound like there's a right way or a wrong way to do it And I'm glad that you're here and you are gonna learn a lot from this episode There's definitely something to learn and to take away but I do I want you to walk away knowing essentially, like I said, prayer is your lifeline to

your relationship with Jesus and prayer is nothing but a surge of your heart. It's nothing but a conversation from the heart. I want you to walk away knowing that prayer is your lifeline in your relationship with Jesus. And that prayer is nothing but a surge of the heart, a movement of the heart, a conversation from your heart with God. Essentially, it's just a conversation with our father in heaven, right? Our creator.

And it's a vehicle, a gift that really, that he's given us to be able to connect with him, to know him, to speak to him. And a lot of the times to hear him as well, maybe not physically like audibly, but to hear him in our hearts and to hear him speak to us and speak into our lives. And again, in the catechism, it literally says prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their father.

Okay. We need to understand this to understand something about prayer that we are children of the father, God the father. Is our father, our heavenly father, and we are his children. So if you've never heard this before, you know, let me be the first to tell you like, this is your truest identity. You are a son or daughter of God. It is said in scripture a million times. The Lord said it himself. Um, let's look at scripture really quick. So open your Bibles up to first John. three verse one.

Okay. It says, see what love the father has bestowed upon us that we may be called the children of God. Yet. So we are. That was in this past Sunday's reading. I believe it was the second reading and I love, love that verse Because it doesn't just state that we are children of God, but it also says that it comes from a love of the father, right? It says, see what love the father has for us, the love that he's bestowed upon us. That we may be called children, children of God yet.

So we are, and the priest in his homily this past Sunday at mass brought this verse up in his homily about prayer and asked this question, what impact does that fact, does that truth have on our life? Okay. So we are children of God. We are sons and daughters of God. What is the impact that that truth has on our life? Why does that even matter And friends, it matters because this is our deepest and truest identity without prayer. We cannot connect with he who created us.

He who our identity is rooted in our father in heaven without prayer. We are dead. We can't connect with the source of our life because prayer, like I said, is our communion with God. In John 15, Jesus says, you can do nothing apart from me, right? And so who are we to think that we can do our life, that we can do everything he's called us to do apart from him. Sure. The Lord is with us.

He never abandons us, but prayer is this avenue that we can be in union with him and invite him in an intentional, deep, intimate way into our life so that he can speak life, breathe life, give us grace so that we can fulfill this life that he has called us to live. Okay, so I hope that we have established some, some really good basic principles as to like why prayer is important, and what prayer is?

So let's talk a little bit about the importance of a daily routine because it is beautiful to say prayers from the heart, you know, when you feel prompted to do so, But I would say that it's more important to build a consistent daily routine, even if you don't feel like praying, or even if prayer isn't coming easy to you, it's more important to build that daily routine and to make time for Jesus every single day than to just pray when you feel like it.

Because otherwise you can't really get to know God and I always use this analogy. I call it the best friend analogy Okay, so think of your best friend and think of how you got to the place that you are in your relationship with them How did you get to know them? So well, how did you get so close? How did you get to trust them? You probably spent a lot of time with them them.

You probably shared some really deep moments together or celebrated some big wins in your life or,, went through difficult times whatever it was, you shared life with this person and you shared enough life with this person that they became significant to you and you developed a deep personal relationship with them. And like I said, this all happened through time that was spent and things that were shared between you guys, things from your heart and your life, et cetera.

And so just like you needed to spend a lot of time with this person to develop a relationship, the same goes for Jesus. You need to put that same kind of time and energy and commitment into your relationship with Jesus, because he is a real person. You can't have a real like living relationship with him, but without the time, without the commitment, without, The time invested in him, you're not going to get there.

And the reason I say this is because I hear this a lot from women, you know, who say like, Mari, I do pray. I do spend time in prayer. I listen to worship music when I'm driving to work or, I say a little prayer on my way to class in the morning or, my prayer right now is doing the dishes. Like that's how I'm praying and don't get me wrong. These are all good and beautiful things. And I hope that if you do this, that you continue to do this.

It is prayer, but it isn't the true substance of prayer. That's going to really deepen and, and develop your relationship with Jesus.

Because if we go back to this best friend analogy, if the only time that you spent with this friend was in the car while you're playing music, on your way to work and all the time you spent with them in the car was, you know, kind of trying to talk over the music or talking between songs, you wouldn't really get a lot in there and your relationship wouldn't really deepen. Right. Or if the only time you spent with them was.

Walking to class, and you might have some of these friends, some of these friends that like, you're in class and the only real connection that you have is, having this class together and walking to and from this class together. but you don't really go deep with them in that time that's allotted walking from building to building.

So if you look at that in your relationship with Jesus, if the only time you spend with Jesus is in those short increments of time where you're either distracted or multitasking, you're doing something else, um, it's a beautiful way to, you know, bring Jesus into your everyday life, but still he deserves all of your attention. He deserves undivided attention and times to decide for you to know him and love him. And this kind of brings me to the very first commandment.

You shall have no other gods before me. Now that wording is particular and just hearing that we might not think, that we are outwardly worshiping other gods, right? It says, you shall not have any other gods before me. Essentially you shall not worship anyone else, any other God or thing or being other than me, the Lord. And we might think that we don't have other gods and that we don't worship other things except for God himself.

In the way that we think, I will challenge you to think about this and reflect about this in your life because there's been moments in my life where I have realized, oh crap, I do have other idols. Oh shoot. I might actually find other things more important, might, you know, underlyingly be worshiping other things more than the Lord or over the Lord. And ultimately we can see that when we look at what do we love?

And usually what we love, is what we spend time on, what we deem to be important in our lives. That's worthy of our time and attention. And if we only give our time to, maybe work our careers, social media, friends, family, our kids, our spouse, our schoolwork our home, our investments, whatever it is, um, those all aren't inherently bad things. A lot of them are really good things, but if we only give our time there, then where does God stand against all those things?

Where does God stand in the midst of those priorities? If the first thing we do when we get out of bed is roll over and start scrolling, where does God stand next to Instagram? Or maybe we're drowning in work and it's a busy season maybe you're traveling a lot, maybe you're have a list full of to do's that you know that you need to get to all the time and that's all you feel like you have time for. So where does God stand in the midst of all those things?

He has provided for us a job, a home, a family, the means to travel, to be busy. The health to be able to do these things with our bodies to not have any other gods Above God is to love God above all things It's to place God as number one on our list of priorities And to love God above all things to make him the very first priority in our lives is to give him our first and last moments of the day at the very least, at the very least you guys.

Minimum, we should be giving him our first and last moments of the day. When we first open our eyes, maybe a quick, prayer of gratitude. And before we close our eyes and go to bed, a prayer of Thanksgiving, a praise of intercession for our lives or for the people in our lives, at the very least, you know, and some of this might be kind of a humility check for us.

I know that it has been for me many times before to kind of look at my life and realize like, wow, there are a lot of other things in my life that I actually am placing above the Lord that are actually taking priority above the Lord. And it may not sit right in my heart when I say that you may feel like, no, but I do love God. And I get that. I bet you that you do. So many times I felt the same thing. And yet I say, but I don't have time for him right now. I love him, but I don't have time.

I love him, but this work is so important. I love him, but I have so many things on my calendar that I have to get to. I can't, don't really have time for mass or time for prayer or whatever it is. And so it takes a moment of humility for us to recognize that first of all. And actually, if we go back to the catechism, it says humility is a foundation of prayer. We're opening up the catechism again. Okay. And we're going to paragraph two, five, five, nine. It's called prayer as God's gift.

And it says prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God, or the requesting of good things from God. That's a really simple way to put prayer. But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and our will, or out of the depths of a humble and contrite heart, he who humbles himself will be exalted. Humility is the foundation of prayer. Only when we humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought, are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer.

Man is a beggar before God. Wow. That is so good. Humility is the foundation of prayer. That just brings me back to John at 15, five apart from me. You can do nothing. Think believe the lie that the evil one tells us all the time that we don't need God, especially in our world today. We're so obsessed with.

productivity and success and making it and whatever it is that we're doing, that we feel like we can do everything ourselves, that all of our success, all of our goodness, all of our good fortune comes from us. And this is just a reminder. Man is a beggar before God. Humility is a foundation of prayer. We need Lord. We can't do anything apart from the Lord. And prayer is this vehicle for us to beg him to, to give us his grace, his mercy, his blessings upon our life.

And so when we approach prayer, we want to come to him with a humble heart, with a contrite heart, and an open heart to receive whatever he has for us. Okay, so I hope that establishes, again, a little bit of context as to why a prayer is important. why taking the time to speak to him daily is important to allow silence and space for him to be a character in our lives, right? To allow him to have authority and say in our lives, or to just comfort us and bring us love and peace and understanding.

And to just be with him, to be with our father, to be with our creator, whom is love himself, to experience love and peace himself. He wants all of it. You guys, he wants to be with you in all of it. And so before we get into the practicals of how to pray, I want to say this, I want to say that you don't have to come to the Lord.

in a polished way, you don't have to have the most beautiful, most perfect words to say when you come to him in prayer, you just have to be yourself and it can be messy. It can be raw. It can be confusing. You can be honest. He wants all of you. He wants to be so intimately invested in your life as your father, because you are his child and he loves you and that's it because he loves you because he loves you because he loves you.

That's the only reason he wants to be so intimately a part of your life. The reason he leaves the 99 for the one for you, right? It's just because he loves you. So how do we pray? How do we receive this love from God? How do we give him our love? It's important to recognize that prayer in itself is a response to God. Okay. So like we just said, The Lord wants to be a part of your life and it is he who initiates the conversation.

Now, this doesn't mean that you have to wait to hear God's voice to begin to pray. No, him by his very being, love itself. And through that love created you, he loves you. And he is always reaching for you and taking that step towards you. inviting you and asking you to draw near to him. I can't seem to put this catechism down. Okay. So I'm going to read one more paragraph from here. That is so, so, so good. Paragraph two, five, six, seven.

God calls man first man may forget his creator or hide far from his face. He may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him Yet, the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer. In prayer, the faithful God's initiative of love always comes first. Our own first step is always a response. Okay? So prayer is a response to his initial step towards us, his initial love for us.

As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself. Prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama through words and actions. This drama engages the heart. It unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation. Mm. There's so much to unpack here. So much to unpack here. Okay. What can we take from this? God calls man first. Again, we just talked about this, but I think it's so important to remember this. You are not abandoned by the Lord.

If you feel like you are alone, if you feel like the Lord has never reached out to you, doesn't love you, doesn't know you. I'm here to tell you that that's not true. He knows you. He knows every fiber of your being. We see this in the good shepherd, right? He leaves the 99 to go after the one God calls man first. He goes after you. He calls you to him and waits and invites you to respond because he desires a personal relationship with us.

He's not a distant figure that doesn't want anything to do with you. He wants to meet you in a personal and intimate way and walk with you intimately in your life. And so through prayer. God reveals himself. We saw that in this last paragraph, God reveals himself through prayer and this living relationship with God, we can learn about him, about who he is and who he wants to be in our lives. And furthermore, God reveals man to himself through prayer.

God being our creator and knowing us more than we know ourselves, knowing our humanity more than we know it ourselves. He reveals our own selves to us. He reveals to us who we truly are, who we are made in his image and what our truest identity is. And you guys, we can find all of those answers through prayer. This is the craziest thing. Like prayer isn't just this like boring thing that you just like repeat out of a book and you know, be done. It's this living, breathing relationship.

Okay. Okay. Now we're really, really, really going to get into how to pray. I want to talk about the different types of prayer. Because there's a lot of them. Like I said, there's no right or wrong way to pray. There's a lot of types of prayer. And I love the church, the Catholic church, especially because she gives us so many different options and teaches us so many different avenues to pray. And it's great because we're all different people.

We all have different personalities, different temperaments, different ways that we can each connect with God. And so you're not limited to just one. Okay. There's contemplative prayer, Ignatian prayer, scripture study, lexio divina, prayer journaling, meditative prayer, like all these different types of prayers. So we're going to get into contemplative prayer first because I think this one can kind of carry us through the other ones.

And if you've never prayed anything, but like a Hail Mary or Our Father, this is definitely the place to start. So St. Teresa of Avila, she is a doctor of prayer in the church. And she says that contemplative prayer is nothing but a close sharing between friends. It means taking time frequently to be alone with him who loves us. I also call this mental prayer. You hear this a lot, you know, contemplative prayer, mental prayer. I think it's like kind of used interchangeably.

But really it's nothing else than just sharing what's on your heart, you know, plainly, simply in your own words, what is on your heart? What are you feeling? What are you asking of the Lord? And the important thing is not to think much about it, not to overthink how you're saying things or what you're saying, but just to do it out of love and just to offer it all to the Lord. I was listening to Sadie Robertson's podcast the other day.

And the guest that she was interviewing was talking about how somebody said something about prayer to her in college that stuck with her. And I think that it's really good advice. She was told that, Good prayer is like unfiltered prayer. Like you don't have a prayer voice. You don't have like a, nice polished way of coming to the Lord.

It's just using your real voice, your real thoughts, your real feelings in an unfiltered way, obviously with respect, but like just coming to the Lord as you are not worrying about how you're wording things, but just saying it and just coming to the Lord as you are, as honestly as you can.

And so contemplative prayer or mental prayer, can be you sitting down, in a chair, in a pew, and just sitting there looking at the Lord and being like, Hey Lord, It's me, you know, um, I don't really know you very well, uh, but I'd like to, or maybe you're like, Hey Lord, um, it's been a long time, you know, but I'm finally here and, and this is what's on my heart and this is what I'm struggling with.

And can you help me, can you show me the way, you know, that that's just an example of what you can say. It doesn't have to be fancy or anything. Contemplative prayer can also be silent in a way, like you don't have to use words. It can be as simple as. allowing your gaze to be fixed on Jesus, to contemplate his love for you his mercy, his face, his heart, whatever you're drawn to. It's time spent in silence, allowing the Lord to clear your mind of distractions and open your heart to him.

Okay. So now we're going to get into Ignatian meditation. It is one of my favorite types of prayer. Essentially it's a, is purely imaginative prayer. Where you visualize your prayer instead of speaking it. The style of prayer was taught by St. Ignatius, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and he uses it in his spiritual exercises. Basically you can create a scene out of nothing, right?

Just using your imagination, painting a picture of, maybe it's from scripture or maybe it's just your own scene that you paint. In time of prayer with the Lord. There's really no right or wrong way again. It's all led by the Holy Spirit. You just ask the Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, enter into this prayer. Help me to see what the Lord wants me to see right now.

And the reason I love this prayer so much is because in my experience, it has brought the person of Jesus to life in a whole new way in my life and in my prayer life.

Because I can engage my imagination, along with the truth of what I know of who he is and what he says about me to imagine what he's speaking to me, what he would say to me in a time in a time of suffering or a time of need, how he would bring me comfort, how he would bring me peace where it allows me to bring a scene of the Bible to life, to be engaged with it more and learn more about what Jesus was trying to communicate through it.

You know, scripture is a really, really beautiful tool that we can use. And so now I want to get into Lectio Divina, which is essentially, you know, scripture study. I think a lot of the times we don't know we're praying Lectio when we're reading scripture, but it's, it's just a fancy way of saying reflecting on scripture. Lectio Divina essentially is when you read a piece of scripture multiple times, you allow the Lord to show you what he wants to speak to you through it.

Maybe you have a verse or a word that's really standing out to you from that passage that you're praying with. You meditate on it. You let it simmer. You ask the Lord, what does this mean in my life? How can I apply this to my life? maybe you use a little bit of Ignatian and you imagine the scene that you're praying with.

It's all based off of scripture, but basically it's just diving into scripture into really a reflective way and applying it seeing how the Lord is speaking to us and applying it to our lives.

And I would say if you have a hard time with either like mental prayer, contemplative prayer, or imaginative prayer, this is a really good place to start because it's a little bit more structured because you're using a passage from the Bible to really dive into it and have it be kind of like a platform that kind of kickstarts your prayer.

And I think another thing that helps if you feel a little bit like this is really new to me, I'm kind of uncomfortable, I don't really know what to do in my prayer, or like I'm trying, but I don't know what to say, is prayer journaling. Journaling your prayer is something that we can all do because at one point or another, we all have journaled before, okay?

Whether it was an assignment in school, we've all like, written accounts of our life and know how to process or kind of know where to start with writing down like how we're doing or what's going on in our life. So prayer journaling is a great way, how I like to say it, to kind of like loosen your tongue and learn this new language of prayer and help open the door to the freedom that you can have in prayer. And to show you that, like, you don't have to.

Be a specific person or say things in a specific way. You can just journal your prayer as you would journal any journal entry, but just dedicate it to the Lord and speak to the Lord through it. You know, dear Jesus, here's how my heart is. Here's where I'm at. This is what happened today. What do you think about this? What are you asking me to do in this place in my life? You know, things like that.

And the more that you do that, the more you'll be comfortable with With speaking to the Lord and the more casual your words will be and the more real and more honest your conversations can be with the Lord. Another resource you can use if you are looking for a more guided prayer guide, would be a Bible study that I wrote. It's called the heart of Christ and it's basically a short Bible study to help, you know, the compassionate, merciful, all loving heart of Christ.

You can find it at westcoastcatholic. co. and essentially I created it to help you come to know the compassionate, merciful, all loving heart of Jesus. And it walks you through accounts of St. Margaret Mary Aliquo as well as scripture passages and personal reflections that I've written. Um, I hope basically is that you'll come to see that Jesus's heart yearns for you, loves you and is always reaching for you. Okay. That was a lot. That was a lot of different ways to pray.

I hope that that was helpful and know that you can do this in your home or in a church. I highly, highly recommend that you go to Eucharistic adoration. This is a gift in our Catholic church and our Catholic faith. Eucharistic adoration is basically the exposition of Jesus and the blessed sacrament and the host. So like the communion that we receive at mass, it is exposed in what's called a monstrance. And you can go and spend time with him in the chapel.

In front of him in prayer, as Catholics, you believe that the Eucharist is the true body and blood of Christ, the true presence of Christ. And so to have the true presence of Christ exposed at your church or in the chapel, and to have the gift to be able to go and just spend time in front of him and pray with him and be with him and gaze at him and give him your life and everything is so, so, so transformational.

So let's now move into what I think is one of our biggest obstacles to prayer, something that I hear all the time that I experience all the time. and it's basically how to make time for prayer in the midst of a busy life. How do I build a daily routine in the midst of a crazy, busy life? The reality is we're all busy. You guys, I know that you think you're the busiest person. I think I'm the busiest person, but we're not.

There is always, always way to incorporate prayer into our lives and to make time for God. As St. Mother Teresa once said, she said, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Period. I remember hearing this story about her and the missionaries of charity and how the missionaries of charity. All with good intention, right? These are really holy, beautiful sisters would go to mother Teresa and tell her mother, there's so much need in our community.

We need to maybe shorten our prayer time so that we can go out and help more and to serve the poor more. And mother Teresa said, Oh, Okay. If you feel this way, it seems like we need to add a second holy hour to our day. And so she added not just one, but now had two hours dedicated to praying in front of Jesus in the Eucharist to the missionaries of charities schedule. Because in the end, prayer is what's most important. Prayers are lifeline to Jesus.

And if we like we are too busy to pray, then we are just too busy period. and there's priorities in our life that need to be rearranged. Like I said earlier, the priest that gave the homily at mass this past Sunday was talking about prayer. And one of the things he said that stuck with me is we have to stop thinking about ourselves as CEOs of fortune 500 companies.

Okay. And even if you are a CEO of a fortune 500 company, it's not like this advice doesn't apply to you because the Lord is still the Lord and you are still his son or daughter and prayer is still just as powerful in your life as it is to anybody else. But basically what he was trying to say is that you think that you don't have time, but you do, and you at least have the time for the things that you like and the things that you find important.

And so the question really is, What am I dedicating time to? And do I dedicate the time to prayer or not? Do I make that a priority? And if you just look at your schedule and just look at your life and you look at what are the things that I spend the most time on, that'll reveal to you, what do you love? What do you worship? What do you find important? And if God isn't on the top priority of that list, you guys.

Or on that list at all, then like mother Teresa said, you are too busy and things need to be rearranged. Something needs to change. And I just want to say, I'm talking to myself here too. I have gone through so many seasons of life where I have had a humility check, a reality check where I feel like I need to look at my life and rearrange my priorities and realize that like I am putting things above the Lord.

And. I want to say that I love the Lord above all things, but if I'm never making time for him, then that statement is empty. And so know that I'm talking to myself here as well. And this applies really to all of us. So check yourself, but also give yourself grace to start again, to start small because we all need to start somewhere. And maybe you were in a place where you had a really good prayer life and you're coming back.

Give yourself grace, you know, and, and start small and build that back up. My most practical. tips that I have for you. The most practical advice that I have to build a successful daily prayer life is number one to do it first thing in the morning. Start your day with prayer. I know for myself, I also feel like I'm super busy and I know that if I don't pray first thing in the morning, then I'm probably not going to pray at all.

Even if I tell myself like, Oh, I'll just go to the chapel later or, Oh, I'll pray before bed or, you know, I'll take time, you know, maybe in the middle of the day to, to rest and pray and be with the Lord. It just. It just doesn't happen. The day goes by so quick. And if I don't pray first thing in the morning, I don't pray at all.

And really for my morning prayer time to be successful, I have had to create kind of like a, like a prayer corner in my room or kind of like a ritual, kind of like a routine that kind of tells my body, my mind, my soul, like, okay, we are settling in. We are being with the Lord, you know, create a environment and a spirit of silence to be able to allow the into that moment of prayer.

So you can do this by, you know, maybe lighting a prayer candle at home, putting up a crucifix, or, um, I like to do like a little gallery wall of different, Catholic images or saints, or, you know, statues of Mary or images of Jesus, um, different prayers, stuff like that, that will inspire my prayer and guide my prayer and kind of direct my attention towards the Lord and towards heaven. Now you can pray at home or you can pray in a church.

And if you feel like praying at home is really hard for you, like it's really distracting or maybe you have roommates or maybe you don't really have a space that you could create a quiet prayer corner, then I really, really recommend that you go to the church or a chapel. Most Catholic churches should be open. Almost all day. A lot of them do offer Eucharistic adoration. Check with your parish and see what schedule you have and see if, adoration is offered at any time.

and I highly recommend that you go there because church is the house of God. Church is a space of prayer already in itself a place of worship. So it allows us to physically put in ourselves in a space that's going to direct our mind, our heart and our soul to God. My last piece of advice is to habit stack. This is something that I did to kind of get into a routine of praying the rosary daily. If that's a prayer that you want to incorporate into your life.

And basically as you pick a habit or a routine that you already have in your life daily that you do pretty much every day, or as often as you want to introduce this new habit, and then you stack this new habit. onto that habit. So you piggyback it on so that whenever you do the habit that you normally do, you're now adding the new habit and it becomes a new habit. Essentially. Part of your routine. So an example of this is I wanted to pray the rosary every day.

And so when I was missionary, I would drive to work and my drive to work would be about 15 to 16 minutes a day. And that was something that I was doing every single day. And so I got into the habit of getting in my car and And putting the rosary on, I use the hallow app to pray the rosary. They have different times, like links that you can pray the rosary. And so I would set like, I think like the 16 minute one or something, and then I would pray the rosary while I drove to work every day.

And that just became a daily habit. You can do this with other things. You can do this while you're getting ready in the morning, doing your makeup or while you're making breakfast or, maybe if you already have a cup of coffee in the morning, you can stack that with some scripture reading things that you already do in your day. You can just add a new prayer habit that you want to incorporate into your life on top of that. Woo. Okay. This is so good. You guys, we are really getting into it.

I also just feel like we could go on and on. I know that this is going to be a little bit of a lengthy podcast, but it's going to be a good one. And at this point I feel like we need to start splitting it into different sections. I feel like we've covered a lot of really good stuff, but there's always more that we could go into, right?

So before we close out, I do want to address some questions that came in on Instagram just a few days ago when I asked you, what are your biggest struggles in prayer? Or what are your biggest questions about prayer? So I want to answer these questions right here, right now on the show, because these are the real questions and struggles that you feel like you have right now. So I'm going to pull them up.

And if you want to put your input in on future episodes, input future questions, make sure that you're following along on the Instagrams at ever be podcast or at Mari dot C dot Wagner. This is where I'm going to be asking for feedback and you are able to input and tell me what you want to hear or your questions that I'll be addressing on the podcast here and there. Okay. Question one, how to pray politely as to not offend God, rambling thoughts everywhere. I get distracted easily.

This is a good one. I think this is something that a lot of people fear. And we did touch on it a little bit earlier in the episode of the way that you word things or what you're saying, or this fear of like not coming off in a polished way to the Lord is something that a lot of us struggle with. So pretty much, Don't worry about not praying politely, or not saying things the right way. Obviously give the Lord the due respect that he deserves, but don't worry about being perfect.

Um, don't worry about not being able to even be mad at the Lord or be angry or bring him your, your anger and your hurt. You know, there's times when, you know, I go to the Lord and I, and I bring him all ugly stuff and that's okay because the Lord isn't just. there for you in good. He's there for you in the thick of all of it. So you don't have to worry about being perfect in front of the Lord. rambling thoughts are okay.

If you get distracted easily, try and take those thoughts that are distracting you and write it down on a notebook. You know, maybe while you're praying, have a notebook next to you, write it down, to get it out of your head. A lot of the times our brain just needs to get those thoughts out of our head, write it down, set it aside and ask, the Holy Spirit to come to help you focus.

the evil one is going to try and distract you in your prayer because His ultimate goal is to pull you away from God. And if prayer is the ultimate way that we are in union with God, aside from the mass and receiving him in the Eucharist, he's going to do that and he's going to distract you. So try and beware of that. Next question. I don't have a consistent prayer life anymore and in battling with habitual sins, where do I start? Thank you for your honesty and your vulnerability.

I know that this is hard. And what I would say to this is you are always welcome back. You know, welcome back. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're starting over and you want to build your prayer life back up again. My number one recommendation, especially if you feel like you're battling with habitual sin is to go to confession. The sacrament of reconciliation is truly Jesus present, through the priest, right?

It's called in persona Christi where he is absolving us of our sins, giving us his mercy, giving us his love and welcoming us back into his arms. So go to confession and then just start small. It's okay if you took a break from your prayer time, if you've been gone from the church, you're always welcome back and just have grace with yourself and start small. Start with 15 minutes a day in the morning and maybe build up. Maybe you then.

Do 20 minutes the next week and then 30 minutes the next week. This goes for everyone. I would highly, highly recommend that you have about 30 minutes of prayer a day. And when you're just starting, start with a few minutes and build up, but if you can have 30 solid minutes of prayer a day, That is gold. That is the sweet spot.

If you can do one hour, I personally love to do 30 to 60 minutes because I feel like that's when I'm really, really able to be in union with the Lord and to get into everything that I want to get into. Sometimes it takes me even like 15, 20 minutes just to focus. so 30 to 60 minutes, but if you can shoot for 30, do that. Okay. Next question. How do you know what to pray? When do you pray all kinds of prayer every single day?

And then how do you keep a prayer routine, but still spice up your prayers with different methods? So basically I think this person is asking, like, how do you know which type of prayer to pray when, and Do you do things on certain days or how do you make sure that your prayer life is being, you know, switched up and how do you change up your different methods of prayer?

Um, ultimately it's up to you, whatever works for you, whatever you feel like is helping you focus in prayer, connect with the Lord. There is no right or wrong way to do it. And so listen to those movements of your heart. Listen to where you find peace, to where you find comfort, to where you feel like you're connecting with the Lord. And maybe in some seasons, prayer journaling is going to be where it's at.

Maybe you just have so much on your heart and you just have to spill it all out to the Lord. Maybe sometimes you don't have a lot to say. And so you go to scripture and you do Lectio Divina because you use. The word of God to guide your prayer. Or maybe you, you bring in like spiritual reading, a spiritual book, to form your prayer and to learn from the saints and to, bring their teachings into your life and reflect on what God is trying to tell you about your life through those readings.

So really it's just a day to day discernment or a season to season discernment of what it is that is helping you be in union with the Lord. Um, but I wouldn't say that there's one specific answer or one specific way or day that you should do a specific type of prayer. If you want a little bit more of a concrete answer, uh, this is an example of like a prayer timeline of what you could do.

If you were going to pray a holy hour in Eucharistic adoration, you could do the first 15 minutes of quieting your heart, opening your hands and inviting the Holy Spirit and just asking the Lord to, rid your mind of distractions and just use that time to focus on him. And then the next, you know, 20 minutes could maybe be prayer journaling or mental prayer where you're just conversing with the Lord. Telling him what's on your heart.

I'm asking for me, Mary's intercession or a saint's intercession, and just telling the Lord what's going on in your life. Maybe the next 20 minutes can be a scripture study or reading a spiritual book to help kind of guide your prayer, inform your heart and soul a little bit more, and then the last 15 minutes. I hope this is all adding up. Right.

Can be prior journaling and you, you know, recount what happened in your prayer time, offer it all up to the Lord, or maybe you end with a rosary, or maybe you just end with 15 minutes of silence. And maybe you just want to gaze at the Lord and just be with him and, just pray in the silence sometimes the Lord speaks the loudest in the silence. So I hope that helps. Next question. How to work through apathy towards prayer. This is a big one.

Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, you're not always going to feel like you want to pray and that's okay. And I think a lot of people say sometimes like, well, if I don't feel like praying, then it's not going to be good prayer. So I should probably just pray when I feel like it because that's a better offering to the Lord than just praying.

For the sake of praying or because I want to stick to a routine, you know, um, and what I would say to that is that if we only prayed when we felt like praying, we probably wouldn't be praying very much in those moments when we do feel like praying, that's actually a grace and a gift. The Lord has given us to desire him and to draw near to him. So take advantage of those times when you feel like praying.

Yes. And when you don't feel like praying, lean into it because it is that much more of a gift to the Lord of the time and effort that you're offering him in those times when you don't really feel like it. And you know what? It's okay to ask the Lord to give you that desire. If you are working through apathy towards prayer, it's okay to pray, Lord, I don't really feel like praying. I don't really desire prayer. Help me to desire it. Help me to want to be with you. Help me to want to pray.

Pray that every day and I promise you the Lord will fulfill that prayer. Okay. And the last question I'm going to answer is does prayer actually work? Oh my gosh. I feel like this could be a whole episode in itself. Um, yes it does. And I'm just going to cite one scripture verse here. There are so many verses in scripture that we can pull that reveals Jesus teaching us about prayer. And even that reveals Jesus praying to the father but I just want to go to one right now.

It's Luke chapter 11, verse nine through 10. Let me pull it up on my Bible because I don't have it memorized. Okay. I am a Catholic, so that shouldn't come as a surprise. The passage is called the answer to prayer. And it's Jesus speaking and he says, and I tell you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you for everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks the door will be opened.

What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg. If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Jesus, right here in scripture, says, Ask the Lord, pray to the Lord, tell him your needs, and you shall receive. So yes, prayer works, expressing your needs to the Lord. works. He wants to provide for you.

He wants to bless you. He wants to answer your prayers. And it just takes you stepping out in humility and boldness and courage and saying, Lord, I'm here. I love you. I need you. I don't know you. You know, I want to know you, whatever it is that you're feeling. And the Lord will hear you. All right. So it's time that we wrap up this episode.

One thing I want to say before we go is that my hope for you is that whenever you hear this episode, anything on the show or encounter any of my faith based content on Instagram, my hope for you is that you would get off the app, that it would encourage you to go seek the Lord and spend time with him. like don't just absorb all this advice. Although it's good. I hope it was helpful to you. Don't just absorb it and let it sit there, but truly let it inspire you. Let it transform you.

Let it motivate you to make a change in your life and actually implement this advice. Start building a daily prayer life and draw closer to Jesus. When I started building a daily prayer life. It changed my whole view of God. It changed my whole life. It changed my whole outlook, and it brought me so much more peace and joy and allowed me to truly surrender my entire life to God and to know that no matter what happens in my life, it's okay because the Lord's will will be done.

And the only way you can get to that kind of peace in your life is by giving him time every single day and coming to know he who is love himself. And if you still after hearing this whole episode are like I feel like I'm not capable of doing this. I feel so unprepared. So it feels so unnatural. I'll leave you with one last thing. Ask the Holy Spirit to bless you, ask the Holy Spirit to come and to teach you how to pray. Friends. Thank you for sticking with me through this long episode.

Thank you for asking these questions and allowing me to speak these beautiful truths into your life. I hope that this blessed you. And if it did, please reach out to me and let me know. I can't wait to have more of these conversations with you in my DMS.