There are many blessings to being a teacher. The main reason why I chose this as a career is that I desired to bring young people, especially young men, into a deeper relationship with God. Being able to go to work each day and talk about the faith with other people has been the biggest blessing. The relationships you build with your students become the avenue for sharing an encounter with Christ.
The other benefits include access to the school chapel and the daily routine of communal prayer. The school I teach at has morning prayer, prayer before every class, the Angelus, and a 3 o’clock prayer. All of these allow me to enter into prayer in an organic and meaningful way.
That all changes in the summer.
Once the last day of school ends, I enter into a void where all of the prayer habits are completely on me. No matter what your career is, daily spiritual routines are probably different–or just a struggle– for you, too, during the summer months.
As I approached the end of the school year, I contemplated how I could continue to enter into daily prayer once those structured routines ended.
Based on my research into the lives of the saints and drawing from key biblical passages, this is where I have landed: pray early, pray late, and pray in the moment.
Praying early is truly non-negotiable in our day and age. If you are like me, without some time for prayer in the morning, your entire day can get away from you. Before you know it, it is time for bed and you are frustrated with yourself because you did not make time for prayer. For many practical reasons, offering a substantial amount of time in the morning to intimacy with God is critical in order to sustain a living prayer life.
The biblical importance of offering God one’s firstfruits of harvest is also applicable here (see Exodus 23:16; Nehemiah 10:35; Proverbs 3:9-10). This was a practice that the law required as a reminder that all good things come from God and everything belongs to Him. Making this sacrifice allowed the Jews to concretely acknowledge God’s providence
Praying early in the morning is a way to accomplish the same things. We give God the first ten to thirty minutes of our day as a way to give him our firstfruits. We can acknowledge that our life is a gift each morning and that this is a new day that He has claimed for our holiness.
Praying late is also a commitment worth making. Ending one’s day reflecting on the blessings and sins of the day allows one to see how they are being called by God to move forward into the next morning. There is something about praying at night. We might be drained. We might simply desire to crawl into bed. However, giving these few minutes to Christ can bring about a beautiful encounter with him.
Jesus often prayed at night. (See Luke 6:12-13; Matthew 26:36-46). The late evenings provide clarity on what is most important because we know we are about to close our eyes for sleep. This fact ought to remind us that one day our eyes will close and we will enter into death. We will be called to give an account for how we spent this one life we had. Our death will not be the end, but we need to hand over our spirit to the Father like Jesus did. This daily nighttime reminder can only elevate our spiritual life and our promise to be faithful to the end.
Finally, the understanding of praying in the moment is probably the most helpful when our routine is disrupted. The spirituality of the present moment is meant to be grounded in the truth that God is ever-present to us. As temples of the Holy Spirit, God’s grace flows within us. The ordinary moments of life, therefore, are opportunities to gain access to His heart beating within us.
Practically speaking, we can live out the prayerfulness of the present moment by reflecting on the daily tasks we need to accomplish each day that can be sanctified in some way. Driving to work, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, and exercising can all become more prayerful. We can offer a Hail Mary while we fold the laundry. We can recite the rosary or Divine Mercy Chaplet on our drive to work. We can recite a line from the Gospel of the day in our minds as we empty the dishwasher. All of these can become new routines of prayerfulness as our regular routine changes.
So, this summer, consider praying early, praying late, and praying in the present moment. Begin reflecting now on how you will incorporate God into your summer plans and make a commitment to spend explicit time with the God of the universe each day. Because, no matter what our day looks like, there is no greater way to ground us in the truth of who we are and who He is calling us to be.
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