Learn how to spend an hour in prayer with this easy guide.
Has this situation happened to you before? You want to spend time in prayer. You decide how to pray for an hour and are looking forward to your time with God. You begin your prayer hour and then, after a while, you look at the time. Fifteen minutes!? That is it?!
What else are you going to say to God for 45 minutes? This was not what you expected.
Or you get interrupted by one of your kids who just went down for a nap ten minuted ago, that phone call you have been waiting hours for, or a neighbor at the door.
Often in life our intentions do not match our results. If you like the idea of spending a prayer hour with God and are looking for more ideas on how to make it work, you are in the right place.
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Do you have time for an hour of prayer in your day?
Sometimes we think we do not even have an hour to pray each day. We have so many things to do, places to go, and kids literally running around. But when we track the time we spend on things like scrolling social media, watching TV, or doing activities that are not necessary, we may find that we do have more time than we think.
When you want to spend an hour in prayer, you do not need to spend that hour all at once. You can break it up into smaller time slots in your day.
For example, you can pray a Morning Offering and read the Mass readings for the day when you wake up. You can pray the Angelus around noontime, the Divine Mercy Chaplet in the afternoon, and pray the Rosary when the time works for you in your day. Spontaneous prayers to God throughout the day also help keep your mind on God.
Pray for one hour.
Sometimes praying for one hour is easier to do all at once, especially if you get up before your kids do or they go to sleep earlier than you do and you still have the energy to pray. Plan when you will pray and what you will pray for.
In a letter quoted in With God in America, Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J. recommended to a friend that she spend time in “spiritual reading-chiefly the bible and other spiritual books you choose to read.” He recommended this to her in addition to a daily Rosary, devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, regular Mass attendance, and frequent Confession.
This is a great recommendation, but I need to remind myself that this guidance was for a specific person for a particular time in her life. I am sharing it because Fr. Ciszek gives great ideas we can use for planning a prayer hour.
We can do what we can at this time in our lives. Our lives change and we can do more or less in our prayer time depending on what is going on in our lives now. For a while, daily Mass was something I was able to do. Now I do not have that opportunity like I once did. As our lives change, our prayer life changes as well.
Plan your hour of prayer.
How do you want to spend your prayer hour? Write down how you want to spend it. Just brainstorm all the ideas you have. Don’t worry if you think they are unrealistic for you right now. Just jot down all your ideas.
Then look at your days. Can you have a payer hour every day or two or three times a week? Will you need to break up your prayer hour into sections throughout your day or will you pray for one hour straight through?
After evaluating these things, make your plan. Try it for a week. See how it goes. Reevaluate after that time and see if you need to make any adjustments. Then try those new plans for another week.
60-minute prayer guide
When I started devoting more of my day to prayer, I did not start with an hour. I started with praying a daily Rosary. I read my Bible for 15 minutes when my kids and I had quiet prayer time each school day.
Now I spend an hour in prayer on most days. Here is what my prayer hour looks like:
Read and reflect on the Mass readings of the day.
Read one or more chapters in the Bible.
Pray the Rosary.
Spiritual reading. Right now, I am reading two books: Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Phillippe and Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska. Some days I read from both books and sometimes from just one.
Some days I will add extra prayers if I have a particular intention I want to pray for on that day.
Learn how to pray for an hour and maintain your peace.
I highly recommend having a plan for how you will spend your prayer hour. I have found it very helpful to follow the same routine each day. Remember to do what will work best for you. This will help you be successful rather than doing what someone else does and being frustrated because it does not work for you.
Remember that some days may require you to be more flexible or may completely derail your prayer plans. It is okay. Do your best and then begin again when you can. Know that God is always with you, and He will help you to draw closer to Him.
One day during my prayer hour one of my kids called with some questions for me. We talked on the phone for about an hour. I was a little frustrated since I was thinking that now I would need to find another hour in my day for my prayer hour and my husband said to me, “I guess God planned how you should spend your prayer hour today.”
Yes! Sometimes our plans do not go as we intend, but when we open our hearts in prayer to what God wants for us to do, that is the entire point of spending time with Him in prayer! We can trust in Him to guide our prayer time each day.
Do you have a prayer hour or prayer time each day? How do you like to spend your prayer time? I would love to know. Please leave a comment below and let me and other readers know. We can learn from and encourage each other.
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