Blessed is the Kingdom

Seeking The Kingdom In All Things

Discipline in Prayer

Have a keepable rule of prayer that you do by discipline.

The third of Fr. Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims is once again both simple and difficult. The two words that strike me in this maxim are keepable and discipline. If we pick a rule for ourselves that we are not able to keep, we often do more damage than good. Once we find a rule of prayer that fits us the second key to success is discipline. There are going to be many days when we do not feel like praying, but having a regular place and time for prayer and being faithful to it is central to the life of a Christian. Just like regular exercise is important for the body to remain healthy, so is regular prayer for our spiritual health.

When I was first a student at Conception Seminary it was put to us in another way. We were discussing the fact that in our daily praying of the liturgy of the hours the tone of the psalms didn’t always match our mood. We might awake joyful and be met with a psalm for prayer that is sorrowful. One of our teachers suggested that since we pray not only for ourselves, we could join our prayer to those who are in sorrow in the current moment. The same is true for having the discipline to keep our prayer routine, even when we don’t feel like it. The important thing is that we remain faithful so that we can hear God’s voice through all the ups and downs of our lives.

A rule of prayer might be daily mass, morning and evening prayer, the rosary, or a multitude of other methods of prayer. What we choose doesn’t matter as much is that we choose something we are able to do and then make it a habit. We all know how hard it is to break bad habits once they are established. The same rule applies to good ones.

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This entry was posted by on Friday, December 24th, 2010 at 9:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About The Author

Fr. Christian is the pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Lenoir City, TN.

Comments

  • http://faithandfood.morizot.net/ Scott Morizot

    There is a mystery in this particular Christian discipline. It’s been referred to as a means of direct mystical connection with God (even when we “feel” nothing) and after all these years I don’t doubt it. And I think it may be for that reason that it’s so difficult to keep a rule of prayer.

    I am somewhat known among my friends and coworkers for my will. As a rule, when I decide to do something, I do it. And I’m familiar with the discipline of meditation from my formation and past experience. I have kept a variety of different rules of meditation and similar practices over the course of my life with little difficulty.

    My efforts to keep a Christian rule of prayer constantly humble and defeat me — even the simplest and least rigorous rule. Of course, coming to Christian faith as I did in an SBC context didn’t help. But even once I discovered what the fullness of prayer should be and how a rule should join you with other Christians and order time, I still struggled. (Oddly, Billy Graham didn’t follow the rule that evangelicals typically proclaim. He prayed the psalter with the intensity of a monk.) There is nothing about any rule of prayer that is intrinsically more complex or difficult than a rule of meditation. And yet I found the latter easy and the former almost beyond my capacity. In some sense, I think it’s because we still want to hide from God and prayer renders that impossible.

    But still, it’s better to keep a rule of prayer poorly than not keep one at all.

  • Fr. Christian Mathis

    “But still, it’s better to keep a rule of prayer poorly than not keep one at all”

    Amen to that!

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