Prayer tips for the easily distracted and busy people

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Praying is one of my greatest challenges in my spiritual life because I get easily distracted.  A busy schedule makes it worse since you're rushing in the morning and too tired by end of day.

For us who grew up saying rote prayers we learned from school, the real challenge kicks in when you have to pray alone.   Most of the time, your mind wanders far, far away before you realize that you're supposed to be praying!

There's one teaching from Padre Pio that I dearly hold on to because it gives me hope that even if I get distracted, I could still go on by getting back on track.  Here it goes:

“You must not be distracted voluntarily. But if you’re distracted, continue to pray … our Savior knows that you are not an angel praying to Him but a poor woman…. And when you find it difficult to concentrate, don’t waste more time stopping to consider why and the wherefore. It’s like a traveler who loses his way. As soon as he realizes he is on the wrong road, he immediately sets himself on the right road again. So you must continue to meditate without stopping to reflect on your lack of concentration.”

Because I know my weaknesses, one way of working on them is reading up on spirituality.

The last book that I read is Fr. Joseph Classen's The Essentials of Catholic Spirituality:  Living and Breathing our Faith.

I like how Fr Classen described how we commonly perceive prayer - it's as if we're performing a task of rattling off a certain number of prescribed prayers for a certain duration of time at certain points of the day to fulfill an obligation.  He likens it to an exercise routine where people find it something fairly uncomfortable but they do it anyway to simply get it over with for the sake of one's health.

Fr. Classen points out that prayer is more than just rigorously fulfilling an obligation.   The purpose and meaning of prayer is far more than just performing a function to stay spiritually healthy, or because we're supposed to do it.

Fr. Classen reiterates that the purpose of prayer is to bring us into a real, intimate, loving relationship with God, a relationship based on good, solid, honest and open communication.

He further shares that praying shouldn't be merely confined to a few time slots. When something good happens, we can take a few moments to give thanks.  If you witness something that is not so good, we could offer a short prayer for that person.

And this is what I like best among Fr. Classen's words.  He says:

One Our Father from the heart, prayed with sincere thought and love, is worth more than a billion rosaries that one has just rattled off in order to get them done.