7 Simple Ways to Pray When You're Busy

Prayer is of the utmost importance in our spiritual life.

Few have captured its significance so well as Pope Benedict XVI who said:

If the lungs of prayer and of the Word of God do not nourish the breath of spiritual life, we risk suffocating in the midst of a thousand daily cares. Prayer is the breath of the soul and of life.

The importance of prayer is reflected in how frequently we are urged to do it. The words of the Our Father make it clear that we should be praying daily. And, from the earliest times, Christians have been going beyond this, following their Jewish ancestors in praying at specific times of the day, such as the morning and evening. St. Paul takes this one step further, telling us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to "pray without ceasing."

Suffice it to say, if unceasing prayer is what we should be aiming for, all of us—no matter how busy or how much time we already devote to it—have more work to do to make time for prayer during the day. Here are some simple ways we can do this.

1. Say exclamations.

Don’t have time to say all the hours of the Liturgy of the Hours? No problem! Do you have a few seconds of free time as you’re walking out the door? Or walking into work? Or cooking dinner? That’s all the time you’ll need to say short traditional Catholic prayers known as invocations, exclamations, or ejaculations. Here are some examples:

• Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
• O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
• Mother of Sorrows, pray for us.
• Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things.
• My sweetest Jesus, be not my Judge, but my Savior.

There is no person so busy that they would be unable to say one of these short exclamations. What’s more, they are easy to memorize and so short that one could integrate them into almost any part of the day—coming close to fulfilling Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing.

One of the other advantages of saying exclamations is that they allow us to participate in longer prayers. For any line from a psalm, the gospels, a litany, or Liturgy of the Hours, can be adopted and prayed as an exclamation. (I have previously written about this topic here.)

2. Sanctify the day.

Because we are both body and soul, everything we do in the material world has a potential spiritual dimension. Most of us already prayer over mealtimes—but we should go deeper than merely thanking God for our physical sustenance by offering our gratitude for our true daily bread, which is the Eucharist.

Then we should take this approach to our whole day. For example, in those groggy moments when you are just waking up and can’t quite formulate coherent sentences, considering making the Sign of the Cross, which itself is a prayer. Then, when you actually get up say this:

In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified, I arise. May He bless, govern, and preserve me, and bring me to everlasting life. Amen. (Source: Blessed Be God.)

After you have showered and dressed don’t forget to say a morning prayer like the Morning Offering. Consider punctuating your afternoon by remembering the death of Jesus at 3 p.m.

Then, after the sun sets, say one of the traditional evening prayers. Finally, before going to bed, adopt these words from the antiphon for Night Prayer:

Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in His peace.

3. Find the right space.

Time and space are connected. So sometimes that means that finding the right time means finding the right space. For some people, visiting a Eucharistic adoration chapel creates opportunity for deep, meaningful prayer.

If one is not near you or you are unable to make it when it’s open, consider creating a sacred space for prayer in your own home—a special spot on the kitchen table, the foot of your bed, or some other place that isn’t used for anything else.

4. Running with the rosary.

Some people are in the habit of bringing the rosary with them wherever they go—saying it when they are walking, jogging, or even driving. Frequent repetition of the rosary becomes self-perpetuating: eventually we can say the Hail Mary without much effort—much like breathing when we are awake or moving our legs when we are walking it has become second nature for us. Plus, we do not need to have the actual beads to say the rosary. Mary will still hear your prayers if you count them off on your fingers.

5. Don’t confuse discipline with rigidity.

Don’t let the length of the Liturgy of the Hours scare you away. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you should only pray the Morning Prayer of the liturgy if you have time to say every single one of the psalms and prayers. That’s legalism, not love. Better to say part of the Morning Prayer well then none of it at all.

6. Pray in word and deed.

For whatever reason you might not be able to say the words out loud or you might have forgotten the words to a prayer you wanted to say. Don’t worry, you can still pray—even if you are struggling to find or remember the right words. That’s because at its heart prayer isn’t about the words that are said.

While it is true that prayer is sometimes a petition to God, St. John Damascene also defines it as “an uprising of the mind to God.” St. Teresa of Avila says that prayer consists in simply being “alone with Him who we know loves us.” St. Thérèse of Lisieux describes prayer as “a surge of the heart; it is a simple look toward heaven; it is a cry of recognition and love; embracing both trial and joy.”

Lifting your heart up to God in this way isn’t something that takes time, rather it is just simply a way of being—something you can do as easily in the quiet stillness of morning as you can during a difficult moment at work.

7. Sacrifice your time.

Ultimately, however, it’s unavoidable that you will have to make those hard choices in your schedule to make time for prayer. Maybe you don’t need to run an extra four laps during your morning jog. Maybe you can hold off on responding to those work emails until you are back in the office. Maybe cleaning the kitchen can wait.