The meeting started like a lot of meetings at Catholic dioceses (or parishes, schools, ministries, etc.) - with a prayer. We bowed our heads and the leader said, “Lord, please bless our meeting as we pray, Hail Mary…hour of our death. Amen.” The closing prayer was an Our Father. In between, we took care of the REAL business. I am guessing you have experienced similar prayers at other Catholic institutions.

The norm, as it currently exists, is to give a prayer a quick whirl and then have us humans take care of the rest. If this is the case, then I would argue that we have it backwards. When prayer takes a back seat to strategy, discussion, plans, etc., then we have devalued God and decided that humans need to take the lead of the situation. While on retreat last week, this came home to me as I spent time in silence. This quote hit especially hard:

“You have not prayed about it because you did not think prayer necessary. You decided it was something which suited you, which you very much wanted to do, and that was that. Consciously or unconsciously you left God out, which does not mean the work is doomed to failure, or that sin was involved; it does mean that leaving God out is never wise.” -Dom Hubert von Zeller

Individually, more than a fair share of Catholic leaders are struggling mightily in their prayer lives. How do I know? I ask them how things are going spiritually and then I listen. Most pray, but not as much as they think they should. Many only take time out of their day for prayer sporadically, not daily. More leaders than you think aren’t praying at all.

I recently spoke to a group of Catholic leaders. After polling the group, I found that 80% of them were displeased with their prayer life. 20% were not praying at all. While we might hope that Catholic leaders are examples of interior life, the reality is they are doing just a bit better than the average Catholic. In some cases, individual Catholic leaders are doing worse.

Herein lies another issue, our assumptions are often wrong about where people are spiritually. Just because they run a diocese, work in a parish, or lead an apostolate, we shouldn’t assume everything is fine in someone else’s spiritual life. Rather, we have to break the silence and throw out the assumptions. In general, most people want to talk about important things like prayer, but they want to do it with someone that they can trust. Can you be that person? Can I? Can we help when someone needs to restart their prayer? Can we accompany others who need support?

Recently one man I am working with (who works for  a large archdiocese) told me that he went back to Confession for the first time in 5 years. If I hadn’t spent time asking questions about his prayer life, Sacramental practice, etc. - he may not have trusted me with this information (he has allowed me to share it with you as well). We need the support of other members of the body of Christ to help us. All of us need help in our spiritual lives.

Building on our own individual prayer is the practice of praying together. Yet, our corporate prayer in our Catholic institutions might be in worse shape than the prayer of individual Catholics. Very few institutions regularly pray in an intentional way for God to guide them. Even fewer have a regular process in which they share intimate moments of prayer and a way to discern God’s will for their organizations.

Just the fact that deeply and regularly praying together for an extended time in a regular way would be considered outside the normal way of operating shows just how bad things are. In Acts chapter 4, the response of the Church to persecution was to pray. The prayer was so powerful, the earth shook, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and proclaimed the Word of God boldly (Acts 4:31).

If modern Catholic leaders at your local parish faced the same persecution, I’m afraid they would start a safety committee to make sure the persecution didn’t come in the doors of the parish during Mass, teach classes on Christian persecution, and possibly hire some local off-duty police to protect them. What they wouldn’t probably do is lead with prayer.

We may not be facing any extreme kinds of persecution, but we are facing other issues. Our response has been training, classes, best practices, etc. But, what about prayer? Why is it done so little? Why have we not prioritized it?

Locally, I noticed this problem. In response, our apostolate started to gather local Catholic leaders to pray for the needs of our community. We do this several times a year - it is called PrayBCS. The unfortunate thing is only a slice of the local Catholic leaders join us to pray. But we will continue to do it as long as folks show up, because it is too important not to do it. We believe it will grow as others catch our desire to pray more with one another.

If we want to evangelize, minister to others, help Catholics grow as disciples, and be more fruitful, we have to pray individually and together. Without prayer, the church’s evangelization will:

• Feel like a duty / burden / obligation. 

• It can lead to discouragement.

• Lack discernment of God’s will

• Reduce the joy of seeing salvation in others

• Have less lasting fruit (e.g., salvation, virtue, etc)

“If you truly want to help the soul of your neighbor, you should approach God first with all your heart. Ask him simply to fill you with charity, the greatest of all virtues; with it you can accomplish what you desire.”

-St. Vincent Ferrer

So, what can we do? First of all, we must pray more. If you don’t currently have a desire to pray more, then ask God to grow the desire for prayer in you. While asking for that desire, choose to pray anyway. As for praying with others, make the invitation. Ask if you can lead the next opening prayer at a meeting and put some time in planning something meaningful that might spur others to do the same.

In other words, value prayer more. Love God more. Do what God asks.

If our leaders and institutions really valued prayer as we should, here are some things that might happen:

1. Every Catholic professional would go on a multi-day silent retreat annually. This would be budgeted and paid for by their employer. While most priests / religious have this, most lay professionals do not.

2. Every Catholic meeting would have a substantial amount of time set aside for prayer that is beyond the memorized, normal, and ordinary prayers we do when we meet. Time to slow down and truly invite God to lead us.

3. Every Catholic institution should gather staff to pray together multiple times a week, if not daily.

4. Every staff member should be expected to spend an hour a day in personal prayer.

5. Staff retreats would be spent praying together (especially in Mass / Adoration), discerning God’s will, pleading for those we minister to, and praying for our own needs.

If we started to do these 5 things, renewal, revival, and discernment would start to grow. God will not be tamed, but sometimes our priorities become more human than divine. It is time to allow God to lead rather than taking the reins ourselves.

“Spirit of Light, imprint upon their minds, in characters that can never be erased, this truth: that their apostolate will be successful only in the measure that they themselves live that supernatural inner life of which Thou art the sovereign PRINCIPLE and Jesus Christ the SOURCE. O infinite Charity, make their wills burn with thirst for the interior life.” -Jean Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O., The Soul of The Apostolate