Devoted to Prayer - May 17, 2026

Good morning, brothers and sisters.

This Sunday is an in-between time, between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost. Our first reading is set during this time: it recounts how, after the 11 apostles went down from the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, they went back to Jerusalem, to the ‘upper room’ or cenacle. There, the 11 apostles – together with the Blessed Virgin Mary and other women – prayed. Quote: “All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer”. This was the original Novena – a prayer repeated daily for 9 days, after the Ascension and before Pentecost.

Then in today’s Gospel, we have an excerpt from John, Chapter 17, which is called the High Priestly prayer of Jesus… these verses give us a window into the intimate dialogue between Jesus and God the Father, as he looks up to heaven and addresses his Father directly in prayer.

And so for this homily, I thought I would focus on PRAYER.  Read any saint’s writings, or speak to any spiritual master, and they will tell you that prayer is absolutely vital to our spiritual life. To paraphrase St Padre Pio: Oxygen is to our body, as prayer is to our soul. It is absolutely critical, yet we don’t talk about prayer much, or share tips often.

I’ll admit that I’m no expert at prayer, so in preparing for this homily, I did what we do in general medicine: I called a consult. I asked my sisters – one of whom is a nun, the other is a consecrated virgin – for some advice. So I’ve incorporated their wisdom.

First, I’ll talk about ‘continuous prayer’, and secondly I’ll discuss set times of prayer.

First is continuous, or unceasing prayer.  St Paul tells us to ‘rejoice always, pray unceasingly, [and] give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:15-18).  Pray unceasingly: how do we do that?

If you’re like me, at any given minute of the day you have a dozen distractions going on, and so prayer in that moment – let alone through every moment of the day – seems well-nigh impossible.

One suggestion is to consecrate the entire day, at the beginning of the day.  So every morning as we’re driving to school, my family prays the Morning Offering, a prayer that starts with this line:

“O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world...”

If you pray this powerful prayer, you have consecrated your day: so that all your works, joys, and sufferings of that day are offered to God. We have this prayer printed on a mug in our house, or you could print if off and put in on your front door.

‘O Jesus, I offer you my prayers, works, and joys’.  Yes, we consecrate our joys: so when something joyful happens, we give thanks to God, the source of all goodness. In St Paul’s words: ‘give thanks in all circumstances’ (1 Thess 5:18).  This is like the Christian football player who points to Heaven after the touchdown, or gives praise to God in the post-game interview.

When I was a kid, I recall that our parents always led grace before meals, and then after dinner they would lead the prayer: ‘We give thee thanks, almighty God, for all thy benefits, who livest and reignest, world without end, Amen.’ So we just enjoyed a meal, and now we give thanks for that joy, that blessing.

And every night each of us in the family would say what we were grateful to God for, from that day.

So we consecrate our joys, and also our sufferings of the day. Our second reading today reads:

“Rejoice to the extent that you share in the sufferings of Christ,”

All of us have sufferings, whether small or large.

For the little sufferings, like a car that cuts us off on the highway, or a rude colleague, or hunger pangs if we missed lunch… we can make an offering of these sufferings in the moment. When we refrain from honking our car horn, or returning a snarky remark, or complaining about being hungry… these small acts can be prayers, offered to God.

Physical exercise can be its own kind of suffering.

Recently, we had a speaker at our parish Healthcare professionals monthly dinner meeting – which by the way, any healthcare professional here is welcome to join. Our distinguished speaker, who is a top leader at major academic medical center, mentioned that he swims laps early every morning, and each lap that he does he offers for a particular person. What a beautiful way to turn exercise into a prayer.

In addition to these small sufferings, many of will go through a more serious kind of suffering: whether physical (like childbirth or injury) or psychological (like the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one). These can be heavy crosses: but the greater the suffering, the greater the offering that we can make to God.

So, for example, before giving birth to each of our children, my wife asked friends and family for their prayer intentions, which she then printed off and placed in the delivery room, as a reminder of the offering she was making.

When God gives us a cross, we have two choices. We can fight it- complain or act bitterly because misery likes company. Or we can accept the cross – trusting that Jesus suffers with us, as we are part of the same body, and our sufferings offered with joy or at least trust can effect marvels – because it is tied to the marvelous cross.

Blessed Fulton Sheen once wrote a prayer:

“Let not my abandonment, and my sorrow, and my bereavement go to waste. Gather up the fragments, and as the drop of water is absorbed by the wine at the Offertory of the Mass… let my little cross be entwined with Thy great Cross, so that I may purchase the joys of everlasting happiness in union with Thee.”

So let us not let our sufferings go to waste.

Even outside of joys and sufferings, we can offer up even the boring, routine parts of our day. Spiritual masters will talk about tying particular chores or repetitive actions throughout the day with particular prayer intentions.

I know a physician who tries to say a prayer for each patient as she enters the hospital room – and her prompt for this is the act of pushing the Purell dispenser outside the patients’ room. (Squirt, and pray.)

My sister says a prayer each time she sets out silverware at the convent – each dinner set is for one couple that she knows. Folding laundry is offered for people with disordered lifestyles. Going down the stairs she prays for those whose lives have gone downhill with addictions. And so on.  

If you are waiting for an elevator, you could pray St John the Baptist’s prayer “he must increase, I must decrease.”

Brushing your teeth, using the restroom – all of these seemingly routine tasks can become moments to connect ourselves to Our Divine Lover.

St Francis de Sales likened this practice to holding the hand of the Father while picking berries: "Imitate little children who with one hand hold fast to their father while with the other they gather strawberries or blackberries from the hedges.”

In addition to prayers attached to particular actions or routines, many spiritual masters have encouraged the Jesus Prayer as a way of praying constantly.

So you pray: ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

Then again and again: ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I know people who have prayed this prayer so much, that it becomes almost subconscious, like breathing; each breath is this prayer.

My sister has a tune attached to it, so that the song is intentionally stuck in her head through the day.

Now that we’ve considered how to pray unceasingly, let’s consider how we need to set times for prayer.

First, and most importantly, we have to schedule it. If we don’t carve out regular times in the day explicitly for prayer, it won’t happen – or at best we will do a half-hearted prayer when we are exhausted and falling asleep.

At a minimum, we should set aside some time for prayer in the morning, and in the evening. We should pray grace for each of our three meals. And of course on Sundays we should go to Mass – which is the most perfect and efficacious prayer in the world. This is why we can and should offer each of our Masses for a particular person or intention. Just like Fulton Sheen, we can place our prayer offering like a drop of wine inside the Precious Blood. It’s a powerful gift, and it’s one reason that we are encouraged to go to Mass every day if possible.

For evening prayer, some people pray a rosary. Our family does just a decade, where each person takes a turn with the next Hail Mary. After the decade, each of us say what they are grateful to God for. Our recent physician-administrator recounted a similar evening prayer routine, with the addition of 3 minutes of silent mental prayer for him and his older kids.

Most spiritual masters will talk about how critical silent, mental prayer is – often recommending 20 or more minutes in the day. I’ll admit that I struggle with this.

For silent prayer, we should free ourselves of distractions – which means setting the smartphone or computer aside. Some people recommend spiritual reading – like the autobiography of a saint – to allow the saint’s prayer become one’s own. Also wonderful is Lectio Divina – which is basically reading a small section of Scripture very slowly, stopping whenever something seems to speak to us. Many people like the Ignatian method of imaginative prayer – placing ourselves inside Biblical scenes, perhaps as one of the characters. Some use the rosary or the Jesus prayer. Religious images, like an image of the crucifixion or of Madonna and child, can also help keep us shielded from outside distractions.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have any mystical experiences or heart-warming consolations – these are highly uncommon, even if you’re praying right. If He wants to give you a mystical experience, He can; but prayer isn’t about you or your feelings. The Angels pray constantly, and they have no feelings or emotions.

My sister’s image for prayer is this: stitch by stitch, we are trying to sew or suture our heart to Christ (or better, to allow Him to suture His Heart to ours). Each ‘I love you’ that we say or offer in prayer is another stitch.

I also love the definition of prayer that St John Vianney heard from a pious peasant: “I look at him, and he looks at me.”

So we don’t need to ‘do’ anything. Simply sitting in silence with a grateful smile, like an old couple do together in front of the fireplace – that is enough too.

The couple are deeply in love, because of a lifetime of trust and knowledge of the other.

In our Gospel, Jesus tells us “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

Eternal life or Heaven is knowledge of God. Prayer is how we get to know him. Like any relationship, we have to take the time.

Through God’s grace, may we give him the time throughout the day. Like those 11 apostles in the upper room, may we devote ourselves to prayer.