I’m sure we’ve all had our difficulties finding time for prayer. We want to have quiet time with God, but we live lives filled with rushing around. Even when we do find the time, it’s common to feel unable to concentrate or relax.
St. Vincent assures us that it is really quite easy! It is like having a conversation for half an hour. He states, with some irony, that people are usually glad to talk with a king or worldly leader. We should be all the more glad to have a chance to talk with God.
St. Vincent’s three things necessary for prayer: humility, indifference, and mortification.
- The humble recognize their absolute dependence on God. They come to prayer filled with gratitude for God’s gifts and a recognition of their own limitations and sinfulness.
- Indifference enables the person to live in a state of detachment and union with the will of God, so that in coming to prayer he or she seeks only to know and to do what God will reveal.
- St. Vincent often returns to the need for mortification in order to pray well, particularly in getting out of bed promptly in the morning. He tells the Daughters on August 2, 1640 that our bodies are like jackasses: accustomed to the low road, they will always follow it!
The next time you have 6 and a half minutes to spare, find a quiet space and play this video from the Daughters of Charity.
This video is also available in these languages: Español · Français · Italiano · Polski · Português
Something to think about
One of the Sisters once said of Saint Louise: “As soon as she was alone, she was in a state of prayer.”
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