Sunday Special: I don't need to pray because God knows everything.

God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, why would you bore Him with your troubles, anxieties joys or needs if He knows it all already?

Prayer is an invitation. God is gentle with us, and he will not come without our permission. Unless you are St Paul, in which case God will strike you from a horse (where did that came from anyway?) and make you blind. But that was quite exceptional, Paul really needed a proper shake up. For most of us poor souls, we need to say yes, even a faint one. God will enter through the smallest crack in the doors, but we need to open these doors, the handle is on our side.

Jesus on multiple occasions pointed out that we would be given what we ask for. But we need to ask.

I feel that praying and asking God for what we need in our life is a wonderful way to order our lives as well. It helps us to consider what it is that we are lacking or running low on. When I pray, I've learnt to be really specific about what I ask for. Instead of saying make me a good teacher, I ask Lord, make me more patient and positive with this year 7 class. This helps me to discover the truth about myself and to look deeply into what is important to me at a particular moment in time.

Our asking in prayer is an acknowledgement that we are entirely dependent on God. It's an opportunity to build a deeper and more perfect relationship with Him. 

Beyond this supplicatory dimension of prayer, prayer should go beyond asking and also be an act of praise and thanksgiving. It should be a time for telling God how wonderful He is. Of course, He is fully aware of his own goodness, but it's like telling your other half that you love them: they hopefully know it by the way you act, but it's important so say it often as well. It's sometime difficult to just praise God, but I often turn to psalms for inspiration. Check out the first few verses of Psalm 145:

I will extol you, my God and King,

and bless your name for ever and ever. 

Every day I will bless you,

and praise your name for ever and ever.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

his greatness is unsearchable.

Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi: as we worship, so we believe and live. Our life of prayer should reflect our belief in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Creator of heavens and earth, the one who was and is, and is to come. There are so many ways to worship. Some people simply bow down and adore the Lord. Some people read Psalms. Others sing with their hands stretched out to the heavens. Whatever you want to do, praise the Lord regularly. Maybe you need to set up a time for this. As mentioned in the previous post, I do it in the evening when I thank for everything that has happened in that day and just adore the Lord for a couple of minutes. But you can worship anywhere and anytime. God is waiting for you to turn to Him and acknowledge that He is God.

Sunday Special: I can pray whenever I feel like it.

I genuinely thought that I could go with the flow in terms of when and what I would be praying throughout the day. And I still think that there is an incredible power in a completely spontaneous prayer. Like when you see somebody in pain and just ask the Lord that He brings his healing into that heart. Or when you see a beautiful view and thank God for creating such a glorious world for us. 

But I came to realise that routines are important. They remove the decision making aspect and so you don't come up with excuses why you can't pray at that particular time: it has already been decided that that time was doable. It's a little bit like with religious sisters: they have their day scheduled so that they constantly look up to the heights, there is no escape from it and so their spiritual life is constantly refocused on Christ. And routines also give your day a prayerful rhythm, you know exactly when you will be turning to God and when you will really be intentionally focused on his love.

It's the same as your eating pattern: if you eat regularly, your body is norishrdn enough so that it can stop worrying about storing up energy for laterals can instead focus on its other functions. Or as your sleeping pattern: if you go to bed at the same time each day, and if you wake up at the same time each morning, your body is more refreshed and energetic.

For me a prayer routine is for the soul what eating or sleeping is for the body: the most effective and nourishing way to provide all that it needs to grow and become more beautiful. 

I am going to share some of my prayer routines with you now. It's by no means an exemplar one, it might not even be a particularly good one, but this is what helps me to grow in faith. It works for me personally given my pace of life, work patterns and personality, so take from it what you find most helpful.

The morning

The Church follows the rhythm of the Liturgy of the Hours: it is seven prayers, based on the Scriptures, spread across the entire day, from dawn to dusk and into the night. You can find these prayers for each day here. I don't do all seven, but each morning I recite Lauds, that is the Morning Prayer. I find it amazing that when I pray in the morning, I unite with all the faithful using the Liturgy of the Hours: the entire world reciting the same prayer. Isn't that amazing?

If I walk to work in the morning, I will pray on the way. I might say the rosary or listen to my worship playlist. I found that before this quarter of an hour was a bit of a dead time for me that wasn't spent on anything in particular. Prayer helps me to focus, gather my thoughts and generally I feel much calmer when I reach work if I concentrate on God beforehand. I truly believe that it makes me a better teacher during the day, because I am more aware of the need for patience and love for all my pupils.

The day

During the day, it is often really busy with the children, planning, photocopying etc, so it is usually the time for all the spontaneous prayers, whenever I need those. I might pray before a lesson with a particularly tricky group. I might thank for a really good lesson that has just happened. Or if I become aware that one of the children struggles with something, I can say a prayer for him or her.

The evening

In the evening, I do Lectio Divina, which is prayerful reading of the Scriptures. You read a passage through once and then go verse by verse, looking at the meaning of the text in a literal and spiritual dimension. I love this part of my day, I get to talk about Jesus for 15 minut non stop (though only to myself so far). This is a recent addition to my prayer routine: I haven't been particularly good at reading the Bible so far and I am so glad that I've finally found a way that really makes sense to me.

The night

Finally, just before going to sleep, I kneel down in my bedroom for a couple of minutes to thank God for very specific events of the day. This is often my favourite part of the day, not only because it's bed time, but also because I get to clearly see what blessings I've been given. It might also be the only time during the day when I get to kneel down under the cross hanging on my wall. I've found that kneeling down is so powerful and important, making me see the greatness of God so clearly and my reliance on Him for everything.

This is roughly what I do every day. It gives me a great comfort that each day is the same. Maybe it's to do with my personality, I love organising everything and so I have organised my prayer life quite meticulously. Not everybody will want this level of organisation, but even simply setting particular times for prayer is such a good practice. I feel that it is important to grow in faith. I suppose it's a little bit like scheduling a coffee date with a friend: you wouldn't just hand around town hoping that you would meet each other and have a coffee - you would schedule a time that you purposefully set aside for this activity. Prayer is like that. Even though God, unlike people, is constantly and permanently available for a chat, you are not, so make room for Him.

Sunday Special: I have no time to pray.

Here's a real story: I'm really bad with calling people, except my parents whom I call almost every day. All other people, even though I care deeply for them- I'm not so great at getting keeping in touch. There was a time when I didn't call my grandma for ages, and she fell poorly, I didn't know about it at all, and when I finally called, she said "I thought you have forgotten about me". Even now, thinking about it, I have tears in my eyes. My Babcia thought that I have forgotten. How could I? But I didn't talk to her for so long, and I missed so much from her life. The truth is, other things were priorities over somebody I love deeply.

Prayer is exactly like that. We don't find time to pray, because it doesn't seem important enough. But when you love someone, you have desire to spend time with that person. You want to talk to him and share your love for them. Talking to that important person in your life helps you to get to know him.

Do you love Jesus? Do you know Jesus? Do you want to know Him? Then you need to pray.

If you pray 7 minutes in the morning and 7 minutes in the evening, that 14 minutes of your day. That's about 1% of your day. I find this amount of time pathetic. It is simply not enough. It's a really good starting point, so if you struggle to find time to prayer, aim for that 14 minutes a day for now. But, ultimately, we should spend so much more time in prayer. It doesn't need to be a single block of time, it doesn't need to be the same sort of prayer. I have different kinds of prayer for different times of the day or different days. At the end of the day though, we need to really strive for what St Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians: "pray constantly" (5:16). Our whole life should be a hymn of God's glory.

I used to think that I had no time to pray, or no time to do all the prayers that I wanted to do over the course of the day. And then I had a close look at the way I spend my time outside of work and thought: "I spend so much time doing nothing in particular." You probably know the feeling of browsing aimlessly through Youtube, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram hoping to find some form of entertainment. Before you know it, an hour flies by and you haven't really achieved anything, ou haven't relaxed and you are just more restless than before.

Use that dead time for prayer. Put your phone under a cushion on the sofa so that you are not tempted to have a little peek at the screen, and talk to the Lord (I seriously do that, removing temptations is the best way of fighting temptations). Pray while you drive. Pray when you wash up the dishes. Controversial idea, pray in the shower. Pray wherever you are. The space is unimportant. Just turn your attention to God and praise him. Tell him all your sorrows and ask for healing.

And, if you have to, wake up early (or stay up late). When Mr Magic lived in the US, I used to wake up ridiculously early to talk to him before he went to bed. It was important, so I made time for this. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but that was the only way at the time. The thing is, God is waiting for you with such longing to hear about your day, to hear what's in the depths of your heart. Make time for Him. It's so worth it.