Lord, Open My Lips and I Shall Yawn

This year’s summer and fall terms brought two significant changes to the otherwise repetitive routine of my graduate school life. First, after years of living alone, I moved in with two Catholic buddies. In some ways this was bit like an outdoor cat learning to live indoors. Second, with graduate school course work done, I have begun studying for my general exams in the spring term.

Both of these changes brought with them a change in lifestyle that required looking both long-term and outside myself. Living with others has called me to be more aware of others and how my actions may impact others and, therefore, my relationship with God. The marathon-level of studying from now until April requires scheduling, perseverance, and discipline. With these changes I needed a way to organize my life and confront the challenges that developed.

Both a priest and a professor suggested creating a rule of life for myself. The short hand is simply a schedule to follow to ensure that both my spiritual life and professional goals received the proper attention with discipline.

Marking the Hours

I never possessed a schedule outside of given times, such as class, office hours, or events, prior to this past month. Instead, I would simply take inventory in a to-do-list or take a gander at my due dates and set some vague work times for the week. Lather, rinse, repeat each week. But, with the loss of solitude and the dramatic increase in workload this proved inefficient before the race even began. My professional and spiritual lives needed a firm schedule in order to be productive, reduce stress, and not be in conflict with one another. But, academic life doesn’t necessarily have a consistent day-to-day schedule. In order create a solid, productive work routine I needed something that would be consistent each day of the week to allow me to schedule the rest of my day around that activity.

Holy Mother Church had the answer, the Liturgy of the Hours. For those who may not be aware, the Divine Office is the prayer of the Church, only below the Mass, and is prayed throughout the day by priests, seminarians, religious, and lay people and answers God’s call to ‘pray without ceasing’. Since Lent, I have prayed the Liturgy of the Hours on a consistent basis and thoroughly enjoyed how I relied on those moments of prayer throughout my day. While I do not pray all five hours (Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer), I enjoy praying morning, evening, and night prayers.

Daily prayer is fundamental to a healthy spiritual life. But, finding time in our busy schedules is difficult, especially at the start. In addition, we may struggle with what or how we should pray: rosary, Scripture, meditation, etc. In the Divine Office the Church has given us the complete package. The prayers (Psalter and Scripture) and times (roughly) are given and praying with others is simple since the breviary is universal.

Morning Prayer– Regardless of how my day looks, stressful, hectic, or happy, my first act out of bed is speaking with God and giving Him praise and thanksgiving. Our voices, and minds, may fail us in prayer, especially if you’re struggling to wake up, but the Office gives voice to the movements of our souls through a four week Psalter, Scripture readings, and intercessions. I noticed an immediate change in how I related to others. When the first words of the day are, ‘Lord, open my lips. And my mouth shall declare Your praise’ a peaceful tone is set.

Evening Prayer– Good days, bad days, we all have days where we come home exhausted or distracted.Once our day is in full swing it is easy to let all of our responsibilities snow ball until we hit the hay. Evening prayer is an opportunity to pause and speak with God.

Night Prayer– While most would pray this hour in the late evening, I pray Night Prayer just before bed, whenever that is. I’ve chosen to do this for several reasons. First, during Night Prayer an examination of conscience is done. This is a good spiritual practice whether you pray the liturgy of the hours or not. When we reflect on our day and how we responded to God’s grace we can better understand where we struggle and succeed, aiding us in our life-long conversion. Second, sleep and a peaceful mind are easier to find after a few minutes of silent prayer (away from a screen). Finally, our prayer should include more listening to God than speaking. By praying Night Prayer before bed the last words I read are the words of the Lord.

Struggles, Intercession, and Unity

I wish I could say that once I planned out a schedule my productivity increased greatly and discipline set in immediately. But, this has not been the case. Unfortunately, one of the ironies of attempting to develop good habits and discipline is that your bad habits and lack of discipline become painfully obvious. I have learned, however, a few things within this struggle which are worth sharing.

In most Christian social circles prayer requests are incredibly common. After a while they can almost fade into background noise with knee jerk promises to pray for them. I have been guilty of this in the past. Someone makes a request and, with good intentions, I plan on praying later. But ‘later’ never occurs. Now, with three moments of prayer set aside each day, not including adoration or daily Mass, I find myself remembering not just the requested intentions but being more conscientious of the needs of others in my prayer. After a while I took a mental note of just how many different people, events, places, etc I had prayed for and was a little shocked. Knowing the world needs prayers seems obvious until you actually begin praying with intentions. Then you realize the need for God in the world and among friends and family is far greater than previously thought, which is frightening.

A priest once related some advice he received while in seminary. If you don’t pray the Hours, make your holy hour, study, etc don’t assume you will suddenly do them once you’re a priest. For my state of life, I should not assume I will suddenly pray regularly, work with discipline, cultivate virtue, etc once I’m married and out of graduate school. Attempting to implement a rule of life has been difficult but the regime of prayer has been incredibly helpful in cultivating discipline by giving me small moments of peace and a sense that at least some level consistency. These little triumphs in prayer give me consolation for those days I am not as productive or as discipline as I could of been and encouragement to continue to grow.

Praying the Liturgy of the Hours is often misunderstood as a simple reading of a breviary. During his last days, Blessed Cardinal Schuster took great comfort in reciting his breviary. Praying the breviary unites us to the universal church, though we pray as individuals or small communities. Whatever my struggle I take heart in the knowledge that throughout the western hemisphere men and women are rising to pray morning prayer and interceding for the world through our prayers.

Final Thoughts

Combining my professional and prayer lives into one has provided equal measures of joy and frustration while I struggle to grow. I feel that this is the best way forward. Compartmentalizing my life only works to a certain extent. Prayer should never be compartmentalized. Our relationship with God should permeate our lives. Through the Divine Office and my new schedule I’ve found a way to live out ora et labora, pray and work. My stress levels are slowly coming down because my day is ordered around God rather than tasks to complete. I still have a long way to go but the discipline I have gained in prayer has already begun to influence my work because I have allowed God to become apart of my work.