Continuous Prayer

Sign at the entrance to the Carmel.

Dear Family and Friends,

Many of you have heard me speak about "continuous prayer"--the traditional practice of trying to pray all throughout one's day, often by repeating quietly to oneself the names of Jesus and Mary, or simple prayers such as "Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner." I wanted to share with you an experience of this that I had last night.

The occasion was a late-night exam. I have been trying to catch up on studies, preparing for a year-end final in three courses this Friday March 10th (extra prayers are welcome!). The latter part of the week I was trying to review and cram for one last smaller essay exam that I had to take in preparation for the final. After spending all day Saturday studying I still was not quite there in the late afternoon, not quite there in the early evening, and then I had to make the decision, do I stay up later tonight and finish this or hold off until Monday? It seemed to me better to get it over with rather than having it hanging over my head on Sunday, so, after pausing to go for a jog, and praying compline and matins, I returned to studying until... midnight, when I finally felt prepared enough to take the exam.

But before I got to the exam, I'd made an important decision: to try to spend the hours of study and preparation in continuous prayer: invoking in particularly over and over again the name of Mary with devotion and love. With studying being hard and fatigue setting in, and the exam appearing more and more difficult, I was extra motivated to pray. You see how poor my spiritual life is... it takes the pressure of an exam to get me to pray more earnestly...

But I thought "Well, if I spend this time studying and the exam invoking the name of Mary constantly then this time will be well spent and fruitful, regardless of whether I fail or pass the exam."And I found that when I tried to focus my mind in the first place on Mary, on constantly repeating Her name with love and devotion, over and over again, then everything in me was much calmer, and I was able to keep the pages of information that I was trying to memorize more clearly in my head even though I was "not focussing on it so much." When my studying became more difficult I would realize that I had stopped praying in this fashion and ought to invoke Her name again, and then things became more peaceful and went better. And so it went, back and forth.

It's rather hard for me to describe, but what I was perceiving was that by giving the "first and principal part of my mind" to Mary in each moment "the rest of my mind" was able to study better and more peacefully, and that somehow it was possible to have my mind "in two places at once," so to speak. It was very nice to experience this. It was something new for me.

So as the clock struck midnight I logged in to take the essay exam. I tried once again to keep Our Lady in the first place in my mind. Though to be honest I think I did a better job of it while studying. After 75 minutes of analyzing and typing furiously I breathed a sigh of relieve, said a prayer of thanksgiving, took a few minutes to stretch out the tense muscles in my neck, and then went to sleep (and I think I did well on the exam, though we'll see).

I hope I will now do a better job of living of continuous prayer on a daily basis, though that very much remains to be seen. To be honest, I forget it so easily and do quite a poor job of it. But it is a wonderful gem for our spiritual lives, and something I highly recommend, not just when studying!

Now if I can only manage to follow my own advice...

Lastly, my sister gave birth to a baby boy this weekend: Thomas Francis. So I'm an uncle once again!

With prayers for you all as we enter the second week of Lent.

In Cordibus Iesu et Mariae,
Fr. Tony Pillari