No Time for Prayer?

In Lent the church calls us to renew our spiritual lives in preparation for the feast of Easter. Christians all over the world resolve on Ash Wednesday to make personal sacrifices and devote additional time to prayer during this penitential season. But many of us find that our initial enthusiasm tends to peter out as the weeks pass and Easter comes without appreciable spiritual improvement.

Now, Easter has come — and we are in the Easter season, longer than Lent. Why not join forces with the members of your family? Make growth in the spiritual life a joint family effort. Make specific plans to do together what will help all of you grow in holiness.

After all, your lives as members of the same family are inextricably intertwined and, even if your own individual resolve tends to weaken as time goes on, your love for each other should prompt you to be faithful. For holiness promotes happiness and your own fidelity will benefit not only yourself but your whole family as well. Furthermore, the Lord has told us that he is present where two or three are gathered in his name, so when you pray as a family you have not only the support of your family, but you also have the Lord's support as well.

The biggest obstacle to any joint family enterprise today is lack of time. Today in most households both parents have to work. Keeping up your home, shopping, getting meals and transporting children to school and to sports events, leave little time for family prayer. In addition, electronic communication, for all its efficiency, has not increased our leisure but added to our work and increased our stress.

For now we take our work home and are accessible to everyone by e-mail, faxes and cell phones. Where, indeed, can you find time for family prayer?

Strictly speaking, we can’t “find time" just as we can’t “make time" or “make up time" lost. It passes inexorably at the same rate even though it seems to pass quickly when we are doing what we enjoy and to drag on interminably when we are bored. It is so precious that we even say that time is money, and feel obliged to make the best possible use of it. What we have to do is to “take time,” to “spend time" on what is worthwhile. What we choose to spend our time on tells us much about ourselves.

If we use our free time to get ahead in our work, it could indicate that financial gain and our careers are our top priority. If we use our free time for golf, fishing, reading or listening to music, we do so because these are our real loves. If we spend time in the meditative reading of Scripture and prayer, we have a clear indication that union with God and holiness of life are our first loves and the source of our greatest enjoyment.

Prayer, in fact, will be our top priority if we have tasted the sweetness of the Lord and experienced the peace and joy that he alone can give. And if we ourselves realize the value of prayer, then we will want the members of our family to appreciate it too. And Easter season is the ideal time to learn to enjoy prayer together.

During Easter this year, with the telephone off the hook, take the time to gather your whole family and spend 20 minutes together reading the Scriptures. Have someone read an agreed-upon passage. Spend a few minutes in quiet reflection. See how the passage sheds light on your own lives and the problems you have to face.

Father Thomas Feeley, C.S.C., is Vice Postulator of the Cause of Canonization of Servant of God Patrick Peyton, C.S.C. and Director of Evangelization for Holy Cross Family Ministries in North Easton, Massachusetts.