Prayer demands one of the scarcest resources of our era: time.  We are expert utilitarians with time, skilled in filling every moment possible with productive activity.  Our schedules have returned the favor and demand a maximum of our waking hours and cerebral powers.  Many of us are nearly exhausted by the pace.  We begin this pace at an early age, enrolling our children in numerous lessons and sports.  A “spare moment” is an anomaly, as if something is wrong.  

Prayer is difficult to fit into this picture.  Prayer appears not to produce anything, or at least, anything worthwhile to Americans: it doesn’t improve my resume, it does not exactly entertain me, and it does not make me sexier, smarter or more muscular.  So, what is the value of prayer?

First, prayer is not primarily an action but a relationship.  The first relationship of prayer is me with God.  And to be clear about it, it is not something that I initiate: prayer is a response.   I can get very little from prayer if I remain convinced that I am the source of this relationship and that I should be heard.  God is not a counselor or a ‘sugar-daddy’ doing all of my bidding.  God is the immutable Almighty and most intimate person close to my inner soul.  In order to prayer, I need to slow down, mentally and physically.  It would do me well to slow down the pace for a little while anyway.  By becoming receptive in a quiet mode I can begin to enter into that “space” where God can abide with me and I with God.  So, along with re-locating prayer as a relationship it is also best when I am not busy.

Second, because prayer is a relationship its primary purpose is not to produce something ‘useful,’ that is, external.  We spend plenty enough waking hours producing, even to the point where our value is attached so (too?) much to being productive.  Life is not what I produce; it is who I become.  Who I become produces what the world truly needs.  Prayer assists in this person-making.  The Lenten practice of prayer, by slowing me down enough to listen, will begin to highlight for me what is important and what is secondary.  Arranging my priorities is not a bad thing.

How shall I prayer this Lent?  I advise being very clear with myself about when I will prayer, for how long, and how I shall pray.  Anything less will quickly be absorbed by my incredible appetite to fill time with activity.  So be specific!  Consider the possibilities:

•    I will spend 15 minutes first thing in the morning—read the gospel of the day, rest with that gospel five minutes, and end by praying the psalm response of the day.
•    I will spend one hour in meditation at the Blessed Sacrament chapel at church each week.
•    I will attend one (or two) weekday Masses each week.
•    I will prayer one rosary each day of Lent.

Discover how prayer is some of the best time of the day, time for being, breathing, “timeout,” and a relationship so quietly yet strongly rooted in the soul will take on new proportions in your life.  If prayer “produces” something it is unbreakable trust in God.  When, at the end of Lent, we gaze on Jesus’ ability to pray, “Not my will but yours be done,” we will have an inner knowledge of how he could do that.  And you and I will be more solid in God!