Praying Without Ceasing

A common morning for me looks roughly like this. I wake up and will pray in the chapel for about 15 minutes. Then we will pray Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours as a community. Then we will all meditate for about 15 minutes, and then we have Mass. While this starts the morning off to a great start, this prayer needs to be continued throughout the entire day. I cannot make this prayer and Mass in the morning my only time with God through the entire day or else I won’t be fully living for God. I need to continue my prayer throughout the day and my time with God, or else I will not have a strong foundation for the day. As I am called to carry out prayer throughout the entire day, not just in the morning, so is everyone else called to do. If you just pray in the morning and live your life like God isn’t even a part of it for the rest of the day, are you living for God? If you do not think of God, pray to Him, and live your life for Him outside of your main prayer time and mass in the morning, you are not serving God to your full potential.

We should all, as St. Paul says, pray without ceasing. St. Francis De Sales presents a three-step process for normal working-class people who wanted to be with God always. This process is Ask, Offer, and Accept. We should start by asking God to be present and attentive to us. When we ask God to be attentive to us, we are being attentive to him. Then we should offer whatever we are doing at the moment to God. If you are going to go for a walk, offer any pain to God, and any blessings you might receive like good weather or good sights to God. Finally, we should accept whatever comes out of this moment to God. Accept whatever comes out of this time with God. By constantly doing these three things, we can effectively spend more time and pray without ceasing as St. Paul tells us to do. Overall, we need to continue to constantly pray to God all day and live for him. St. Francis De Sales gives us a good way to do this in this three-step process which anyone can follow.