Growing up, my parents very faithfully maintained an hour of adoration at my parish. It was early Sunday morning from 1-2 a.m., and as I got older, I would occasionally help cover the hour of prayer. As a high school student, my prayer life was very weak, frankly. As I would sidle into the small chapel and try to settle into some prayer, I would often be confronted with distractions, fatigue and boredom. I remember clearly, like clockwork, how the heat register would kick back on, sharply drawing me back to the moment. I would try to sit, to stand or to kneel. I would read, pray aloud and even sing, but overwhelmingly, I simply could not remain focused, and I could not feel anything.
The first and most important thing that I learned was how to shift my perspective about my time in prayer: I am not going to him, but he is coming to me.
I know that this is not an uncommon experience for many people. Throughout the year — around Christmas, during Lent, after Easter — many of the Christian faithful want to turn over a new leaf and have a more robust, vulnerable and genuinely satisfying prayer life, but to no avail. We want to pray more and pray more authentically, but how many of us, when we try, cannot help but become distracted or bored?
The first and most important thing that I learned was how to shift my perspective about my time in prayer: I am not going to him, but he is coming to me. So often it feels like our own initiative, our own plan, and then when things do not go “our way,” we become discouraged. We exclaim, “I feel nothing!” and become frustrated. But to think this way is to think of prayer as a transaction: If I say these prayers or sit quietly long enough, God will do something, anything. Instead, we have to come to terms with the truth that, whether or not you feel anything, it is good that you are there.
