The Lord Provides...Even When You Have No Clue

Prayer being the first sign Matthew Kelly designates in The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic, I immediately thought after posting my intentions last week, "How am I going to focus on Prayer?!?"

I mean, I do go often to Weekday Mass, and I pray Morning prayer every morning. I stop by for adoration at a chapel close to where I work most days for at least 15 minutes if not an hour of adoration.  So, of course I could pray more, but is more really better? What am I supposed to do for three months while focusing on prayer.

But God always provides...always.  And this was no exception.

 

 

After posting, I looked at my email for the day and what do I see....My Read the Catechism in a Year email comes through (which I admit have not read many of these emails this past year or even paid attention to them) and the subject line is "Day 378- Meditative Prayer" CCC section 2705-2708! 

First thing I thought, hmmm...this is supposed to be Read the Catechism in a Year...but it's Day 378?  Maybe they got thrown off when the world didn't end according to the Mayan calendar last December?  Or you really can't read the Catechism in a year and they were just overly optimistic that we would get through all the material.  Makes me think about when you get to the last month of the school year and your US History teacher realizes that they still have to cover almost 175 years of the history lessons.

Secondly, this made me think, I need to go back to the basics and learn what prayer is and what better source than the Catechism. So I have pulled it off the bookshelf and dusted it off for some further research.  Turns out, the Church has a lot to say in it's teachings about prayer (and I'm slowly going through the Prayer section of the catechism now to make sure I get everything out of it that I can).

So beyond this "learning" more about prayer, I did one other thing in hopes of awakening my prayer life.  I actually signed up for an adoration hour.  As I said, God provides.  This week there was a sign up sheet outside the chapel I frequent. And I do stop by on a daily basis usually.  But to have an hour assigned to me does two things for me: 

A. I have to be there. People are counting on me to be there. Plus, there is something in me that lights up when I think that I have a date with Jesus.

B. I have that hour set aside from my schedule that I can't just dismiss or leave early.  God is going to get one hour from me that day. And let me tell you, sometimes it is tough to stay that long, but I know that this is helping me to become still and listen to him.



One week has just flown by, and I really cannot tell much difference for myself in my prayer life.  I'm continuing on in the hope that there will be some cumulative effect for me.  In the end, I can not see where focusing on prayer for 3 months could have an adverse effect.  I guess I will just have to be patient (not a strong area for me) to see what fruits this bears.