It has taken fifty years to understand the necessity of a strict daily prayer schedule, I confess. I talk about this as much for my own advancement in the spiritual life, as to impress upon you this truth for your own growth.
I understand now in a very visceral, deep way how a strict daily schedule of prayer, which includes weekly Mass, monthly confession, and the Eucharist, since those three include prayer on those days you participate in the sacraments. Prayer helps prevent anxiety and bad stress. It helps keep you focused on making the best choices. It keeps you motivated to do God’s Will according to your vocation and state of life. And when things get rough, a strict schedule of prayer gets you through it even better than any psychological meditative practice, exercise session, or counsel you might receive from someone. In addition to all of those things, no matter how hard your situation is, actually the harder your situation is, the more consistent you have to be with prayer, and the better prayer will pull you through it, and out of it.
Growing up I said morning and evening prayers including the rosary, but not as strict and structured as it could have been. In my adulthood, gradually over the years, I confess, despite perceiving myself as a devoted Catholic, my daily prayer schedule became inconsistent, with less structure, still praying often in the morning and evening, and the rosary, but without a formal structure. So my prayer life could fluctuate based on how busy or distracted I was. In hindsight, I didn’t deal with life’s stresses and crosses as well as I should have. This is not to say I didn’t pray daily, as often my prayer life is a conversation with God, an internal dialogue, often with ejaculatory prayers and certain prayers like before and after meals, when I get in the car, pass a cemetery, see an ambulance with its lights on, etc. However, I did not have the habit of certain times a day to sit down and pray the rosary every day, and use a prayer book like the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
And the thing is, if you do not have a devotion to a daily schedule of prayer, when you go through any kind of crisis, you will be rocking around your boat in panic weathering the storm, rather than calmly sitting in the boat no matter how bad the storm. Prayer keeps you very calm and not anxious or at least less anxious. There is a story in the New Testament that goes into this, involving s boat, after all.
I have learned this recently in my life the hard way. Before my medical condition I am recovering from, which is psychosomatic pain disorder, I was not following a strict schedule of daily prayer. Had I been, I may have had less anxiety and stress that led to the sudden outbreak in symptoms, and dealt with the situation better after the outbreak.
When you are in a lot of pain and sickly state it can be difficult to keep a formal schedule of prayer or even to do formal prayer, but all the more reason to do it. When saying the rosary, you can do it in a contemplative way as a mantra rather than focus on the words, as it may be difficult to focus. Likewise, if it is hard to read a prayer book, there are YouTube channels you can listen to with your eyes closed of someone reciting former prayer, whether it is the Liturgy of the Hours, i.e. Divine Office, the rosary, the chaplet of Divine Mercy, or the like. There is one channel I now frequent when it’s hard to focus and read my own book The Imitation of Christ, which is a man reading it with a serene British accent chapter by chapter. Just set aside time each day to sit on your couch and listen to it in a state of meditation, as priests traditionally recommend the laity to spend 15 minutes a day in mental prayer.
During my condition, I learned this wisdom the hard way, not trying at all to maintain a formal daily structure of prayer thinking it was too hard. I thought it was better just to follow the more informal schedule I had followed for years. But I was wrong. This was unwise. Even though it felt like the best thing to do, I still could have designated formal times for prayer and consistently prayed formal prayer the best I could. I think one stumbling block was a perfectionist mindset, thinking if it was hard to read and consecrate I couldn’t do it. But even without these YouTube channels which I did not think to discover until later, you can still pray the three mystery rosary daily, the chaplet, and the Angelus at noon and at 6 pm even in an altered mental state if you are ill
I has actually made a bargain with God that I would say so many holy hours one day if He would heal me, but that bargain was for after He healed me. Meanwhile, my daily prayers were inconsistent. What God was after was not a rigid schedule as much as to rely upon Him throughout each day, and that doing so would help me cope better, and at help indirectly heal. Since for many years in hindsight I was not as dedicated to a prayer schedule as I should have been, I was in a certain limited mindset not realizing how important this was, not only for my spiritual life, but for my healing and recovery.
As an aside, I should clarify that I am avoiding scrupulous thoughts about this. I do not think I was committing any grave sins in this regard, and most of the time probably not venial sins. When I started having my medical condition, because of what moral theologians call the force of bad habit, it was difficult not only to switch gears and restructure my prayer to have better structure, it would be difficult to understand why that would be critical to do, and for it to occur to me to do.
It was some months ago that God showed this to me. As I described in a recent post, my symptoms had returned after several months of almost entirely resolving, then obsessing all over again if the diagnosis of psychosomatic disorder was correct, I turned more intensely to prayer. This included a certain miracle following that intensified prayer, which I also blogged about, which confirmed it is in fact psychosomatic disorder.
And then there was the novena to and visiting the incorrupt body of Sr. Whilhelmina that opened my eyes. My wife and I had interviewed for the blog the Sister who cared for her most in her final years. I had already been thinking lately about the power of prayer and the need to intensify my prayer life. So when I asked Sister what advise she thinks Sr. Whilhelmina would tell people going through extreme suffering or hardship, such as people in a lot of chronic pain, she said two things: a) to always go to Mary, our mother for help, and b) to be devoted to daily prayer, that is to a discipline of daily prayer. She said those two messages were something she most heard from Sister Whilhelmina in her last years of suffering when she mentioned the second part, not simply to pray, but to be devoted to prayer itself, that is the daily discipline of prayer, that hit home for me in a very personal way. And then shortly after this pilgrimage, I commuted myself formally to God to once and for all follow a daily program of prayer, including the rosary, fifteen minutes of mental prayer or meditation, and twice a day the Little Office.
So in a sense, in a round about way, it has taken a half a century to fully learn the necessity of not just daily prayer, but a commitment to a basically strict daily prayer schedule.
And the more I think about it, the more I appreciate this lesson, that prayer really is the answer to everything, not only prayer, but first and foremost prayer, because whatever good works we do, ultimately it is God who converts us and provides for everything we need.