Week 2
Dear Friends,
Bishop Fulton Sheen once advised, “Everyone needs thirty minutes of prayer each day. And if you are busy, you need an hour!” Counterintuitive wisdom from a future saint! In other words, if the pace or intensity of your life is so high that the quiet steady prayer of your heart fades in the busyness of what fills your day, then more not less prayer is required. While someone with a slower pace of life, who can carry on a conversation with God throughout the day like a constant companion and friend, only “needs” half that. To be honest, I need more - more than an hour. But if even a half an hour of prayer sounds daunting to you, begin with ten minutes of good quality distraction free prayer, and grow from there.
Sheen’s lesson carries the main thrust of our focus in Part One of Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy. Kelly notes starkly how busy is not your friend. Having a great deal to do often means that we do not enjoy, get the most out of, or bring our best selves to the moment. He cites that when people are asked how they feel daily, overwhelmed, is the most common response (11). And while being busy really accelerated in the industrial revolution, when time became a commodified value related to earnings, even the ancients Socrates and Seneca offered sage advice against the tyrant.
This weekend we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. In our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, we were so blessed to be able to visit the place where this historical event occurred. And it is deserted. I remember thinking: “Why did they have to come all the way out here?” In fact, many of the holy places could be described as deserted. And if you can manage to peel away the church buildings, parking, and snack vendors, so many of Jesus’ original stomping grounds are quiet and out of the way. When we factor in his penchant to going off alone by himself to pray, the starkness grows. Contrast that to today when 24% of children feel “too busy all the time” and overscheduled, which creates anxiety, fatigue, and kills intrinsic motivation (8). Our society and its trajectory are not in a good way.
Kelly observes that while many experts in the 60s and 70s predicted a 24 hour work week as technological advances made work easier, what actually happened was that work, or even more subtly our work attitude has bled into the rest of our lives: “The problem may not be that we are bringing our work home as much as it is we are bringing our approach to work home and applying it to other aspects of our lives,” (20). We continue to treat time like a commodity to be valued rather than a gift to be enjoyed.
To that end, I would challenge you this week to look at your daily routine with respect to prayer. How much quality prayer time do you set aside as first fruits of your time to give to God? This is an area that I am working on too. I want to bring a new freshness to my prayer in 2026.
Look at three areas of your life: mornings, evenings and driving time. Life hacks that work great for me: do not pick up the phone until after prayer in the morning & leave the phone in the other room when I go to pray in the evening. As for the car, try ten or fifteen minutes of silence just having a little chat with Jesus about your day. And be sure to save time to listen. That is the most important time! Because God has a beautiful message to share with you: “You are my dear and beloved child, with you I am so pleased.” Yes, in the stillness, God wants us to know that we are loved, so very loved!
I hope you have a great slow week!
Fr. Joel
