I was recently asked, “How are we supposed to pray always, when we have so much to do?”
Here’s my long answer.
Once while in college, I was invited to help out with a big college-wide retreat by being part of the Adoration team—interceding before Our Eucharistic Lord for the holiness and conversion of all the students involved. I readily agreed, and the organizer asked me to take the first evening hour, as well as a couple hours in the middle of the night when all the participants would be busy with other activities. I enthusiastically agreed. Since the camp site was a little far from my house, I planned to pray rosaries on the drive there and back.
When I arrived at the camp location, I pulled up to a small, single-room, unmarked building, and went inside. I was a few minutes early so I went in to wait for Our Lord to come. Inside was a white, plastic, all-purpose folding event table standing in readiness, and several neat rows of folding chairs arranged as if there were two sets of pews with a middle aisle. I took my place at the front of one of these rows and waited. I noticed the floor was a bit dusty and dirty, but there was a broom on one side of the room and a pile of debris begun, as if someone had at least attempted to sweep.
Right then, the extraordinary Eucharistic minister arrived (another college student) and hastily set up the monstrance with Our Lord inside on the event table, genuflected, and left.
I was stunned. There was definitely no altar cloth, and I cannot remember now whether there were candles. It was just Jesus and me, both of us together in a very dirty all-purpose event building. I sang Him my best O Salutaris, and gave Him all the love of my heart. I tried to concentrate on intercessory prayer, but my eyes kept straying to the broom. After about twenty minutes, I finally said aloud, “Lord, is it OK if I just clean up a bit for You?”
He didn’t say “no,” so I made a deep genuflection, and still wearing my chapel veil, started gently sweeping around the ‘altar’ table and most of the front row so that at least it was clean where He was. I swept up the piles and dumped them in a trash can in a corner. The whole time, I was intensely aware of His Presence and I never really stopped praying—really attending to Him—even as I swept.
Now that I’m in the cloister, my understanding of “praying without ceasing” is a bit like that. (I don’t think I’ve ever swept that prayerfully since, but you get the idea.) Since I live in Jesus’ house, I know I never quite leave His Presence; He is always there, watching me, smiling at me, loving me; so I should be attentive to Him and work in the spirit of prayer.
Oh…and in case you were wondering: I handed off the next adoration hour to a friend’s mom who was a woman of action. She was incensed at the lack of preparation, and declared she would do something about it. When I returned for the 2am adoration hour, the makeshift chapel was transformed. To her credit, my friend’s mom supplied the table-altar with multiple altar cloths, candles, and bouquets of flowers flanked the foot of the altar. Besides that, the room was FULL of college students deep in thought and prayer, many of them journaling, some of them crying, and most of them gazing at Our Lord in His Eucharistic beauty.
Having already prayed my third rosary on the drive up, I was content to just gaze at Our Lord and rest in His Presence. This was prayer enough: He is God, and He is good.