Memorial of Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs
How is your prayer life?
It’s a necessary and important question. Possibly THE most important question. So take five minutes, stop reading, and honestly reflect – how is your prayer life?
It is so easy to forget to pray. I seriously do it all the time. Prayer is essential to living lives of faith, and that seems obvious, in theory, but it’s a lot harder to recognize and put into practice. I work as a youth minister, so I’m surrounded by the church all the time – my office is literally the closest office to the church. It’s so tempting in my 40 hour week to tell myself that “my work is my prayer” and put off any other types or forms of prayer. After all, I’ve given God my nine to five, am I supposed to give Him more than my full time job??
The times that I most lean into “my work is my prayer” are also the times that I am the most spiritually restless. Maybe, on second thought, considering my work to be my prayer isn’t actually engaging myself in prayer all that much. There’s no doubt that I work for God through His Church, but fighting the copier for thirty minutes should hardly be chalked up to much of a “prayerful experience”.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells someone in the crowd what is required to be as close to him as possible – “my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it” (emphasis added). It’s easy, as Catholics, to “fake it” when it comes to our prayer lives. If you’re like me, a cradle Catholic, you’ve learned all your life what it looks like to be a good Catholic. You go to Mass on Sundays, give to the poor, volunteer sometimes, talk about parish events with other parishioners, and do your best to live the life that you know, intellectually, you are supposed to live.
But look again at what Jesus says in the Gospel. Acting on the word of God is only one part of what Jesus is looking for. To be considered a part of Jesus’ family, we must hear the word of God. Last time I checked, the easiest way to hear anything is by opening ourselves up to listen. It is not enough to strictly do the right thing or “be a good person.” We must invest our entire selves, and actively strive to listen for God’s voice. It is only by hearing God’s voice that we can truly know, on a deeply personal level, how to act on it.
So I want to ask again – how is your prayer life?
- Marty Bagatti