 I want to share with you something real quick here. I just got back from Rome recently. Has anyone been to Rome and gone pilgrimage? You've been to Rome? So when you walk into St. Peter's Square, it's just for the first time, it's awesome. You're just like, whoa, this is so big. Then you go inside the Basilica and it's even bigger. It's amazing. But as you're walking into the square itself, you're greeted by this half circles of columns that are coming out towards you. So there's over 200 and I think 48 columns coming out like this. But it's designed to represent the arms, like the arms of mother church. And so you have the big dome of St. Peter's and then the two smaller domes are like the shoulder. This is the head. But these are the arms of mother church reaching out to you and welcoming you in. But as you walk into the square, you can't help but notice as you're looking to the sides, there's all these statues up above. You see the statues up above those columns and there's 140 statues up there. What are these statues? These aren't just famous poets or famous people of history. You know what they are. They're the saints and it's awe-inspiring to be a pilgrim entering into St. Peter's reminding us that we are part of the pilgrim church and we're not alone. We have a cloud of witnesses that has gone before us. These wonderful men and women transformed by God's grace the great saints. That being said, I just want to ask you a question. Do you ever feel intimidated by the saints sometimes? Or is that just me? Sometimes you just feel like, whoa, that's intense. I don't know if I could ever do that, right? I mean, you look at them and you just see how holy they are. And then I look at my own life and I realize I fall short in holiness in so many ways. I see how perfect they are. They're just so perfect and I just am acutely aware of how imperfect I am. And then my wife reminds me and my children. We can be intimidated by the saints and then you read all these stories of these extraordinary events that happen in their lives. This saint stayed up all night in prayer. This saint fasted for several weeks. This one bi-locates. This one levitates when they pray. I just can't relate to that. They stay up all night in prayer. I like sleep. They fast for a week or two at a time. I like food, especially bacon. They levitate in prayer and I'm dozing off sometimes in prayer. I mean, I admire them. I'm in awe of them, but sometimes we could feel like we can't relate. They're almost like these spiritual superheroes. You know, the spiritual superheroes that have their own special spiritual superhero power and it's really cool to see them use it, but I don't have that superhero power, so I can't relate to them. Have you ever felt that way before? What if I were to tell you, however, that the saints actually were ordinary human beings like you and me? God did extraordinary things in them, but they were ordinary people like us. They had complicated problems. They had disputes. They made mistakes. They didn't get it right every single time. They were one of us, but God met them in their weakness and transformed them by His grace. This conference we're talking about holiness. Can I really hope for holiness? If holiness in my mind is some kind of perfectionism, that's not what God reveals. We're called to be perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect, but that perfection does not come from my own self-willed perfectionism. I do not put my hope in myself as Father was describing earlier tonight. We put our hope in God, beating us in our weakness. There's a beautiful quote I like to highlight here from Pope Benedict. He underscores just the humanity of the saints and God met them and changed them. He says this about real holiness. He says, holiness does not consist in never having aired or sinned. Holiness increases the capacity for conversion, for repentance, for a willingness to start again, and especially for reconciliation and forgiveness. It is not the fact that we have never aired, but our capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness, which makes us saints, and we can all learn this way of holiness. Do you want to learn this way of holiness? Do you want to live this holiness? We're going to turn to the real story of the saints, and we're going to turn to the wisdom they offer us for the place where we are transformed the most in holiness, the place where we find our true hope, and that's going to be in prayer. We're going to talk about that here, but let's turn to the great queen of all the saints, the woman who kept and pondered all things in her heart, the woman that models for us the interior life. Let's ask Mary to pray for us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Jesus, holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I want to share with you some insights from that new book Kimberly mentioned that I had that just came out on prayer. It's called When You Pray, and I want to talk first of all about the importance of daily prayer. I want to highlight the importance of daily prayer. All right. They told me this was going to be hard to use, and wow, it is really hard. There we go. Okay. Whoa. Okay. Now I went too far. Yeah. I might just have to cue you in the back if these don't work. So, okay. I'll talk about daily prayer here. Nope. See, there we go. Okay. I really do want to talk about daily prayer. Can we just get that on daily prayer, please? Thank you. If there's another one of these, that would be awesome. If there's another one of these I could get, that would be awesome. We're all just cue you in the back. It will all work out. Okay. Are you ready? So, I'm going to talk about daily prayer, but what do we mean by daily prayer? I want to talk about the importance of daily prayer. Daily prayer isn't listening to a great Catholic podcast. I hope you listen to a great podcast that can enrich your life, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm driving the car listening to Catholic radio. Catholic radio is awesome. Many of us are on Catholic radio often. It is great to enrich your spiritual life, but that's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about daily prayer. And I'm not talking about simply saying prayers. I'm not talking about simply what the church calls vocal prayers, like an our father, Hail Mary, Glory, B. That should be a part of your spiritual repertoire, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about more than just devotions. I'm not talking about just the rosary. The rosary is a very powerful prayer, the Divine Mercy Chaplain. I hope you have this as part of your spiritual life, but I'm talking about more than that. God wants so much more than just listening to something or saying some words and vocal prayers and wonderful devotions. I'm talking about even more than liturgical prayer, the sacraments and the highest form of prayer. Who knows what the highest form of prayer is? It is the holy sacrifice of the mass. Jesus is one true sacrifice made present to us so that we can unite ourselves to it and be transformed by it. That's the highest form of prayer. All of that is important. The mass is absolutely essential, but the mass will only bear fruit in our lives to the extent we are committed to a daily prayer life. I'm talking 15, 20, 30 minutes of quiet time each day for intimate conversation with God. Do we have that time every day for conversation with our God? As we look out in the culture and we see so many challenges out in the world that we face today, we look within our own church and we see our own internal challenges within the family of God, the Catholic Church. It could be overwhelming. We could be discouraged. How do we have hope in a culture that's constantly making it harder and harder for us to live our Catholic faith, harder and harder for us to pass on our faith to the next generation, to our children and to our grandchildren? They're being swept away by this secular culture. It's easy for me to get discouraged and lose my hope. And then I turned to Mother Church and Mother Church is not perfect and we're living in a time of great crisis in the church and we can get really discouraged. We might have our own troubles and our own lives and our own marriages or families and workplaces and communities or problems in our parish and we could get discouraged. How do we grow in hope? We need to be committed to prayer. Are you committed to daily prayer more than you are your favorite podcast? Are you committed to daily prayer more than you are committed to your favorite political website with awesome conspiracy theories? Are you committed to Jesus and spending time with him and his word every day? And what the church describes as meditation. Catechism emphasizes the importance of meditative prayer, meditation. I want to be clear what I mean by meditation. I'm not thinking of something really complex or esoteric. You might be thinking of some Buddhist going like this. You know, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about Catholic meditation, mental prayer. In the tradition, you know, this is where we use our mind. We maybe reflect on the Word of God in Scripture. We're not just reading it, but we read maybe a line or two and we pause. We think about it. We think about what God might be saying to me. We talk to God about it. We notice something in the Word and we ask, Lord, what does this mean? How does this apply to my life right now? Or maybe it's not a text from Scripture. Maybe it's a short text from a saint or a beautiful reflection from maybe something like Magnificat, those wonderful prayer guides that they offer each day. There's a wonderful way to practice the art of meditation. Do we have this time every day? 15, 20, 30 minutes a day. Ideally 30 would be great. My spiritual director often says, I mentioned this to the group last night, that my spiritual director says, if you're just starting, I'll give you a discount. You can start with 20. I just got back. My wife and I, as Kimberly mentioned, we just celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary just in the last week. So I checked my wife on a little fun spiritual marriage pilgrimage. It was really fun. With all the travel I do, I have a lot of miles saved up, so I was able to bring her to France in Spain for free. It was awesome. So we got to go to Lissue, France. Not Lissue. My wife is a French major. She always says, I get that wrong. It sounds like you're saying Lissue. I took my wife to Lissue. No, Lissue, or however you say it. Okay. But that's where we went on our honeymoon to pray at the tomb of St. Therese and at the tomb of, at the time, it was venerable Zalee and Louis Martin, the parents of St. Therese. They're saints now. So we got to go back there and just thank them for their intercession for us and for our family. Then we went to Spain to walk in the footsteps of St. John of the Cross. John of the Cross is an amazing saint. My wife loves John of the Cross. She just gets so excited. She reads everything of John of the Cross. Every time she hears John of the Cross's name, she goes like this and she just loves John of the Cross. If John of the Cross wasn't a saint, I think I'd be a little jealous. But we got to go. But while it was focused on Therese and John of the Cross, we did stop in Avila because John of the Cross was there and we got to see some of the sites of St. Therese of Avila. I don't know if any of you have been there. I want to share with you. This is where at the convent of the incarnation where she entered, they have in the courtyard outside these Roman numerals all leading up and you're only seeing the middle of them. It starts at Roman numeral number one and it goes all the way to Roman numeral number nine. And this is a reminder of something she writes about in one of her most famous works called The Interior Castle. She says like our souls are like a castle and the great king Jesus is not out there. You don't have to go find him. He's actually within you. He's dwelling within you, but you get too distracted by all the things of this world, the pleasures and the comforts and honors and all the things of this world. And so we live outside the castle. What we want to do is enter more interiorly to find Jesus there. And she describes that there's these nine different stages, nine different rooms or dwelling places until you get to the innermost chamber where Christ is. You know what's fascinating about what St. Teresa of Avila says? Like if you want to like read her works and figure out where am I on the spectrum? I'm at number one and number two, number three, number four, number five. A lot of Christians like to do that, but I want to highlight something she says. She says the door to enter into the castle, like before you even get into the first actual room, the door to enter in is prayer and meditation. If we do not have daily prayer, we are not even entering in the castle yet. If I want to grow spiritually, I want to grow on my friendship with Christ and I want to be changed, I need to have a commitment to daily prayer. I think about how sometimes people say, well, you know, I go to mass maybe on Sunday and I even go sometimes during the week. Isn't that enough? Because the mass is the highest form of prayer and I think that that's true. It is the highest form of prayer. It's wonderful to go to mass, but if we don't have the daily prayer time, the graces of the mass will not bear as much fruit. I remember sometimes people would ask me and say, well, Dr. Shreya, I remember the young focus missionaries when they were first getting started, they meet some students, they would say, Dr. Shreya, I'm just so busy with classes. I love college students how they just say they're so busy. They have no idea. Right, but I'm just so busy. Oh yeah, I've got to have coffee with my friend and we're going to study and you know. Anyway, but I know they're busy, but there's a whole different level of busy that awaits them. So I'm just so busy with all my activities and everything going on in my classes. And so if I have to choose Dr. Shreya between mass or quiet time in prayer and meditation, what should I choose? And I always would just say that's just a really bad question. It's kind of like I'm going to use an analogy and I want to be clear, this is just an analogy, don't go too far with this, but it'd be kind of like a husband saying, should I have marital intimacy with my wife or should I talk to her? This is just a really bad question. I mean, we know from theology of the body, right, that the physical, you know, union of husband and wife in the marital act is meant to express a deeper, profound personal union, a profound spiritual giving of themselves to each other. In other words, like the physical act is meant to express ideally what exists heart to heart between husband and wife. And so if you don't know your wife's heart and you could just engage in a physical act and then reduce it to just a physical act, but it won't be what it's really meant to be. We want to come to mass knowing the heart of our bridegroom Jesus and sharing our heart with him in daily prayer. Listen to what one of my favorite spiritual writers says, I quote him in the book here, Father Jacques Philippe. There's somebody says about this. He says, the mass in itself is more important than personal prayer. He's acknowledging this in and of itself. Yes, this may be true, but without a prayer life, the sacraments would have a limited effect. The sacraments confer grace, but their effects are stunted because they do not find good soil in which to take root. We can ask ourselves, for example, why those who frequently receive communion are not holier. Often the reason is the absence of prayer in their life. We go to mass. We receive communion every Sunday and all those holy days. Some of us might go sometimes during the week. Some of us may go every day. Why am I not a saint yet? Do I have a committed daily prayer life? Not just saying prayers, not just reading and turning my holy hour into study hall, where I'm just reading. No, I'm actually in dialogue with God. I'm using my mind and reflecting on the scriptures. I'm talking to God about it. You know what the other challenge is I want to share with you is this. Have you ever heard people say something like this that you hear people say, oh man, I had some good time in prayer. Have you ever heard people say that? Oh, prayer was really good today. Oh, I had a good time in the chat. Have you ever heard, you know, I wonder what do people really mean by that? I think what they mean by that is I felt close to God in prayer. I got some good insights in prayer. I sense God's presence in prayer. I felt close to God. I got some guidance in my life. It has to do with something that they feel. But I think there's a big difference between feelings in prayer and our faithfulness in prayer. God many times will bless us in our time in prayer. We'll get a good insight. We'll reflect on something about our life. We'll notice something about ourselves. We'll get a sense of him guiding us. We'll get a sense of him forgiving us or healing us, encouraging us, loving us, calling us to repent, whatever. We had these wonderful moments God might bless us with in prayer. But many times prayer is just about showing up. And I don't get that much out of it. And it's dry and I don't feel close to God. The question is not, if I want to evaluate my spiritual life, like if there was a spiritual thermometer, I can go, okay, how's my prayer life? Oh, good. I grew in 10 degrees this week in my prayer. But the measure of our prayer life is not the feelings. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, they all emphasize this. It's not about, what did I get out of it? Did I feel close to God? Did I sense his presence? That is not the measure of prayer. The real measure, at least one of the basic measures of prayer is was I faithful. Faithfulness is so much more important than feelings. Did I persevere? Am I consistent? Am I loyal to Jesus every day, even when it's hard, even when I'm busy, even when I got a million things on my plate, do I still take time for the one I love? When it's dry and I don't feel like I get anything out of it, what do I do when those moments? I want to tell you a fun story about one of my kids. So he's older now, but this kid, when he was first born, it was very clear, he was the most sanguine. Even as like a little two-year-old, he just like, when he first started making eye contact, it was big eye contact. He would just get all excited seeing people and he'd be kicking in his mother's, you know, like this. He's just like all excited. Well, when he was about, you know, one and a half close, close to two, he'd come home from work and he'd see me come through the door and he'd be so excited. He would just go like this and go, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. He would just run and jump on him, dad, dad. And I was just like, oh, I just love this kid. And I was just like, oh, this is so fun. You know, those wonderful feelings as a father to just be so close to my son. So he was just such a joy until he discovered how to get out of his crib at night. And then he'd wake up at two in the morning, got out of his crib and would wake up his sisters and say, downstairs, play Legos, play Legos at two in the morning. And then the sister would be saying, dad, look in our room now, go get it. You know, so I'd have to get up and go get him down to put it back in. He'll stay in your bed and then he'd escape again. I'd be just dozing off and I'd hear the boys' room. He's in there going outside, play soccer, outside at 2.30 in the morning and have to go get him and put him back in. He just kept waking people up. He would just go play. He would get toys out. He would give himself snacks because we'd find evidence of crumbs on the counter. One night he even made himself an espresso because every morning at this routine, I make my little espresso. I go sit by the fireplace. I do my morning prayer and he'd been watching and observing and he figured it out. And this kid's wired enough without caffeine. So as I'm chasing him around and his nightly escapades, this went on for weeks. I did not have a lot of strong fatherly feelings. I did have feelings, but they're the kind you have to bring to confession. But I still had to get up and serve. We just had another baby and my wife needed to attend to the little one and so I was on Luke duty chasing him around because I have to love. Love requires us to do things we may not want to do. Love requires sacrifice. Love is in the will. And if I love my Jesus, I commit to serve whether or not I get feelings out of prayer, will I still be there for him? Now there's another question we have to ask and that is the question of time, right? So many people say, well, I just don't pray because I'm just too busy. I don't have time. I just have so much going on. There's just so much happening at work and so much happening in the family. I just don't have time to pray. Maybe you felt that way before. What do we do in those moments? Well, first of all, we have to remember, you know, we all have time. We all give in 24 hours a day. The question is, how do we prioritize? What do we really value the most? What do we put there? But when I'll say this, I noticed when I feel so under the gun, I could be tempted to cut corners in prayer. And I just have to, at that moment, just remember the truth that this is when I actually need to pray more and to intentionally give a little more time in prayer because I'm under so much pressure. I need God's help more. It kind of reminds me of what Father was getting at here. If I put my hope in myself, in my time that I spent so I can complete this project at home or complete this project at work or deal with this thing at the office, it's all about me. If I put my confidence in me, then I don't really need that much time in prayer because I place my hope in me. But if I really, truly value God and place my hope in God, I will make time for him. One author once said this, no one has ever died of hunger because they didn't have time to eat. Can you imagine that all poor Bob? He was just so busy. Man, he just had so much going on. You know, for 30 plus days, he just couldn't feed himself. I mean, he's a poor guy. No, no, we make time for what we know is vital, right? And are you convinced that you really need God? How many of you need God? Okay, we all get that right on a quiz. If someone looks at your life on the outside and sees how you live day in and day out from 6 a.m. till midnight, whatever it is, is it obvious that you need God, that you depend on him for everything? What does Jesus say in John chapter 15 verse 5? He says, without me, you can do only about 90%. Is that what Jesus says? No, he says, without me, you can do nothing. Are we convinced of that? If we're really convinced of that, we're going to the chapel as much as we can. We're pulling out our Bibles, we're praying at home, wherever it is in the office. It doesn't matter where, but do we take that time every day? I remember years ago, in the early years of Focus, there was a chaplain we had. He was from England, but he was studying in the United States and he had his summer off, so he came and served as our chaplain up in Montana. And he was really impressed because I don't know if you know about the Focus missionaries that serve on college campuses around the country and overseas, and they do a holy hour every day because we put a priority in how important it is for all that we do flows from our interior life. And this priest was very impressed, wow, they do a holy hour every day. But then he started noticing that as the summer went on, these young people started staying up later, socializing. And as they stayed up later and later, they kept pressing snooze and snooze and sleeping in a little more. And they were supposed to show up for the morning holy hour, but they would get to breakfast later because they had to get their breakfast in and then they showed up and it was no longer a holy hour. It was about a holy, uh, 56 minutes. Then it was a holy 50 minutes. And then it was a holy 45 minutes he noticed with the number of them. So he gave a homily kind of noting all this and he says, it has become very evident to me that Focus missionaries value breakfast. It's not so clear to me that Focus missionaries value God. Now he had a great relationship with them and to kind of poke him at that. But I think that's, that's the key. We got to ask ourselves, do we, what do we really value? If we really value God, we recognize how much we need him. We will spend time with him. Now I want to share with you something about Pope Francis once said a great line about this point. He said the soul needs prayer like the body needs oxygen. The soul needs prayer like the body needs oxygen. And I'm going to go to the next slide here. There we are. So I want to talk about the primacy of the interior life. I shared this little piece last night with, with the folks that were at the biblical conference. I want to talk about Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa, back when she, you know, is starting to expand. People are, they're making requests around the world. The Pope is wanting her to travel more around the world. So she's starting to open up houses around the world. The more demands, more pressures on her time. What did she do? Did she say, oh man, I just don't have any time. How are we going to get all this done to serve the church? This is really important work for evangelization and care for the poor. Really important work. So we need to cut back time and prayer. You know, is that what she did? No, no, you know what she did? She added a holy hour. This is the mentality of the saints. She added a holy hour. And every day Mother Teresa's religious order, the missionaries of charity, they start the day with Mass. They do a holy hour. And then they pray a prayer called radiating Christ. It's based on something St. John Henry Newman wrote. And I'm going to share with you this line in this prayer. I think it's so powerful. It says, they're praying to Jesus. And they want Christ to dwell in them so much that everyone they meet encounters Christ. Listen to this prayer. The prayer says, shine through us and be so in us that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us, but only Jesus. That'd be a wonderful thing if all the people in our life looked up and saw not just us, but they saw Christ. They encountered something of Jesus. This is what I want from my wife. I want her to look up and see not just Edward III, but to encounter Christ through me. I want this for my kids. I want this for the people who read my books, for my friends, my colleagues. I want them to encounter not just, oh, actually, there's a good turn of phrase. I like how you worded that. No, I don't want them to encounter simply something of my own creativity or my personality or my organizational skill or the way I just, it has to be Jesus. Because here's the thing. Let me tell you a story. So I'm going to put this up on the screen here. So this is my wonderful wife. There's Beth. And as I mentioned, we just celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. And I love my wife. I really do. But I know my love for her falls short. I know there are many ways because of my own original sin, my own weaknesses, my own pride, my own selfishness, and my own things from my past that just keep me from being able to love her the way she needs to be loved. I need Christ to love her through me beyond what I could do on my own. I need Christ. And I want to love her supernaturally. In other words, above nature, that's what supernatural means. I want Christ to radiate through me. But that could only happen with a committed daily prayer life. This is so important. We want to pray every day, first and foremost, for the virtue of religion. We owe it to God out of justice to give God this time. But secondly, we're made for this. This is where we're going to find our fulfillment when we worship and praise and thank God. And it's also good for our own transformation as we've been talking about. But there's a third reason we want to pray every day. And this is an often highlight is because the people in our life are depending on us too. My wife needs me to pray every day. When I fail to pray, I'm not able to give the best of myself to her because the best of myself isn't me. It's Christ radiating through me. The same thing with my kids. So this is the picture from the wedding we had just this last December. There's my oldest daughter, marrying her husband, Caden, and there's our crew. And I love my kids. I really do. They're awesome. But they'd be the one of the first people to tell you, Dad, it's far from perfect. And my love for them falls short in many ways. And I can't, I don't have enough to give what they really need. I need Christ radiating through me. I want to tell a story about my wife here. So years ago, she was in a big coffee kick. She still drinks some coffee, but she was really into a big coffee kick a few years ago. And what she did every, every night before she went to bed, her commitment to prayer every morning began the night before when she would go and make in the kitchen a pot of coffee and she put it in one of these super duper thermoses, take the thermos and put it right by the bedside. She would go to bed. Then she'd wake up in the morning. She'd open up the windows, fall on her knees, do a morning offering. Then she would begin her prayer time. She had her Bible. She had her coffee so she could be awake for Jesus during her prayer time. Look out at the Colorado Rocky Mountains where we live. And she would do her prayer time. And then after prayer, she'd get ready for the day, go down, get the kids ready, get them ready for school, and then we're off for the day. Now, some of you may wonder, why would she make the coffee the night before? Who wants to drink lukewarm at best coffee from a thermos in the morning? Well, it's because if you have eight children and you go downstairs in the morning and just one of the kids hears you, it's game over. Mom, mom, I need something to eat. Mom, I'm thirsty. Mom, mom, did you sign this for me? Mom, I need my shoes. And like, she would just never get her prayer time in. But she committed to really want to make sure she got that prayer time in early and first so that when she did walk downstairs, the children would encounter not just her, but Christ radiating through her. I think this is so important. St. John of the Cross, I was just sharing, we were walking in his footsteps. He makes an important point. I'm not going to read the whole quote here, but he was writing about priests in his day who were busy running around doing many good activities for the church, leading retreats, preaching the gospel, doing parish missions, doing all this great activity. But he noted that they, that all that activity wasn't rooted in a deep prayer life. And they were running around doing a lot of things, but they would do so much more. It would be so much more fruitful if it was rooted in prayer. But the key line, he says this, says if they don't pray, their lives would be reduced to just making a lot of noise and accomplishing little more than nothing, if not nothing at all, or indeed at times, even doing harm. This, I read this, this is, I really hit me here at realizing that when we don't pray, it's not just, oh, shucks, I, you know, I'm not the best I can be. It's actually, I might end up doing harm because I'm doing what I think my family needs. I'm doing what I think my wife needs. I'm doing what I think the company needs or my parish needs. I'm focused on me. It's not coming from Christ radiating through me. And so I might end up actually hurting the people in my life when I don't give them the best of myself, which is Jesus that comes from my interior life. Now all this is, is, is making the point very clear. We need to have a daily prayer life, but I just want to be honest. Prayer is hard. And many times we struggle. I'm just going to ask all of you, I mean, because you all, I mean, you've got, you're in like the top 10% of Catholics. I mean, you flew from all parts of the country, some from out of the country, you drove here, you're taking a whole weekend to be with crazy people like us and to talk about the Bible and the Catholic faith and prayer and worship God and Eucharistic adoration and sing. I mean, I mean, you all are amazing. But I'm just going to, I'm just going to ask this question. I don't know if you struggle with this like I do. I'm just going to throw it out there. Does your mind ever wonder when you pray? Does that ever happen? Do you ever get distracted? Do you ever get restless in prayer? Like I just, I just want to be anywhere but we're here right now or, or does your prayer ever feel really dry? Like you just feel like you just don't get anything out of it. You don't feel close to God. You wonder, where are you God? I'm showing up for prayer. How come I don't sense it's working? How come I don't sense you're here? I don't, I don't feel like I really know how to pray. I'm not good at prayer. How many of you ever felt that? I want you to be encouraged. Many of the saints felt those same things. The difference between the saints and us is what they did with those struggles. I want to share with you some wonderful wisdom from a great medieval saint, St. Catherine of Siena. First point though from the Catechism, like why, why might I be not feeling close to God in prayer? It could be because I have some serious sin and I need conversion. That's what the Catechism says. But St. Catherine of Siena writes about how there are many good Christians. People really love Jesus. They want to pray. They want to pray well, but it's really hard for them. What's going on? Why is this so difficult and why do they not feel close to God? One point Catherine says is that it could be because of something the devil's doing. That the devil is discouraging us. She writes and says the devil discourages us to get us to think our prayer is not pleasing to God. To get us to think we're not good at prayer. That prayer isn't worth it. And so we're tempted to give up. You see, the devil knows how powerful daily prayer is and he'll use anything he can to get us to stop praying. He'll even use our good sincere intentions. I want to pray. I want to do something. But my acute awareness, I'm not good at this and it's not going as great as I thought. He'll even use that and exploit that to get us to think, oh, this isn't worth it. I'm not good at this. I'm just getting an F on prayer so I shouldn't even bother. That's not from God. If you have this in your head, I stink at prayer. I don't know how to pray. I don't get anything out of prayer. Maybe I should give up. That is not from God. That is from the devil. The great St. Thomas Aquinas. I want to read you something from the great Aquinas. He writes about how important we want to try to pay attention to prayer in prayer, of course, but more important is the intention that we bring to prayer. Aquinas says this, it's not necessary that prayer should be attentive throughout because the force of the original intention with which one sets about praying renders the whole prayer meritorious. What does he mean by that? Again, we want to try to pay attention, but we're human. We're not angels. Our minds are going to wander. We're fallen human beings especially. So we're going to get distracted. That's normal. That's going to happen. What do we do in those moments? The key is, did I come with a good intention? Did I start my prayer reverently, maybe making the sign of the cross, calling on God's name, telling Jesus, I want to give you this time? Do I come to mass wanting to give God my best? Do I come with a good intention? That intention makes the whole prayer meritorious so that even if I lose attention, I've given God a good intention and God sees that and he rejoices in that. Now, that doesn't mean I show up to prayer and I'm just checking messages on my phone the whole time. No, no, that's not a good intention. I'm saying you're sincerely trying. I think about my kids. I remember a few years ago, my two little girls, it was Mother's Day and they went out in our backyard. We had the big fields out in Colorado and they were picking flowers for Mom. They put them in a vase and we're all excited for her to come down the stairs in the morning. Sushi comes downstairs. They rush to the, rush to the stairway and give her this vase of flowers. They were so excited to give their Mommy a present. Now, what kind of flowers did they give their Mom? I'll put it on the screen here. Was it a nice little bouquet of flowers like this? No, it was not this. It was some weeds. They got weeds. But what kind of weeds did they get? Was it nice? I mean, at least dandelions are kind of cute weeds. That's not what they put in this vase. You know what they did? You know those evil, wicked, spiky kind of weeds that, you know, I don't know where they came from before, I'm sure. And they put this in the vase and they gave them to Beth. And what does Beth do? Beth's a little surprised. But she sees more than what's in the vase. She sees their hearts and she just goes, thank you so much. These are so beautiful. And she gives them a big hug. And it's because she saw more than what was in the vase. My question for you is, what's in your vase that you bring to prayer, that you bring to God in prayer? Sometimes your vase might be a beautiful flower, but sometimes it might look like this. You might feel like I just wasted my time. I accomplished nothing here. God sees not just what you put in the vase, not just the performance of your prayer. Did you use the right technique? Did you pay attention? Did you get at least a B plus on being focused in your prayer? That's not what prayer is. God sees your heart and he's drawing you. He put the desire for prayer in your heart, the desire, he loves you so much. You put a desire on your heart for him and he uses that to pull you back to him. So just the desire to say, I want to pray, Lord. I want to start praying. That alone is a great thing. God put that there. I think about something Mother Teresa once said. There was a priest that had a rough time in the chapel just getting really distracted and just feeling like it just wasn't a good time in prayer. And then he was talking with Mother Teresa. She was the priest for their retreat. And they're talking about logistic items for their retreat as they leave the chapel together and just like this. And then all of a sudden she just stops and she says, Father, never leave the chapel feeling discouraged, feeling you accomplished nothing. Here's her quote. She says, if at the time of prayer or meditation, it seems that not only you have been distracted in your prayer, but that you have done nothing at all. Never leave that time or that place of prayer angry or bitter with yourself. First, turn to God and give God that nothing. If you feel your prayer was nothing, you feel you have nothing in your vase in prayer. You can even still turn that. You can surrender. Lord, I was distracted. Lord, I was in present. Lord, I don't think I did a good job, but I give you even this humility and humility. I give you this, this what seems like an empty vase. I can give you even that. And the Father rejoices when he sees our hearts. Now there's something else that God does. God may be doing, it might be God that's actually making us feel like he's not present. He's testing our hearts. That's what he does sometimes. He wants to know, are we coming to prayer for the feelings, the insights we get from him? Or are we coming just for him? Reminds me of, I remember when I was growing in my spiritual life when I was a young adult and I was everything Catholic. I would come to conferences and I'd go to the adoration chapel. I prayed the rosary. Everything Catholic was just so exciting for like the first year, year and a half. And then after a while it started becoming a drudgery. It became really hard and I wasn't getting much out of it. I was wondering what's happening. I thought, did I do something wrong? Am I supposed to be a priest? Is that why all of a sudden this is happening? And I just remember just wondering, I'm like, just what's going on with me? And I remember talking to my pastor and my pastor says, oh, God's just taking away the sweetness of your spiritual life. He's taking away all the lollipops and candy canes of your spiritual life. What do you mean by that? He says, no, like God will often use like the sweetness of prayer to draw you in to start praying to get you to begin the habit of prayer. But then eventually he lets go of those things to see if you will still come. He wants to draw out the deepest desires on your heart. It's like when I come home from a trip, I'll often have little candies for my girls and I'll see my little girls. I go, girls, I got some candies for them. They come running daddy, daddy. And they love the candies. But I love it even more when I just come home and I come through the door and they don't even know I have candy and they just want to see me. Do you want to just be with your heavenly Father or do we want just the candy? God told St. Catherine an amazing thing that many times we might not have the feelings of prayer. We might not sense God's closeness in prayer, but that doesn't mean he's not there. That God might withdraw the sense of the feelings, but he's actually closer to us than ever before. God told Catherine, quote, though I may take away the feelings of delight and consolation, I do not take away grace. So even though I might not feel God's there, I have to trust that he's there. So what do I do in these moments when I'm in the darkness and prayer is hard and I don't know what I'm doing? There's three things I want us to look at here. First of all, persevere. Persevere through prayer. Never give up. That's the devil. It will rejoice if you stop praying. That's exactly what he wants to do because he knows we can't enter into the interior castle at all. And he wants to keep, because he knows once we get into that castle, God's going to keep drawing us closer and closer to himself. So he does everything he can to get us to stop praying. So persevere and then trust. Trust that God is there even if you don't feel his closeness. Trust that your prayer has value even if you don't give yourself a good grade on it. I want to share with you one of, I shared this quote last night at the biblical conference from Saint Faustino. I'll share it with all of you as well. She highlighted how many times we could feel like, oh, I just didn't do well in prayer and it wasn't worth it and we feel really bad. But when we're faithful in prayer, that might be actually giving God more glory than in those times we have all those feelings. Listen to what Saint Faustino says. One act of trust at such moments gives greater glory to God than whole hours passed in prayer filled with consolations. It's great when God gives you those feelings and consolations rejoice. Thank the Lord. It's wonderful. But don't depend on them. Don't measure your spiritual life based on them. But certainly know that God actually might be more rejoicing in your prayer when it's really dry. One act of trust in those moments gives God more glory than whole hours of past in prayer filled with consolations. That's Saint Faustino. Finally know that God might be inviting you to a deeper newer kind of prayer that these difficulties aren't necessarily just problems to be solved. There's certainly not necessarily signs of a soul's going backwards. Oh, you know, if you're faithful and you keep showing up, it might be God actually drawing closer to you than ever before and inviting you to a deeper, newer relationship with Him if you persevere. I want to close with a couple practical tips on how do I, how do I get started? Okay, I'm convinced. I want, I want to grow in holiness and God has given us the pathway. There is real hope in this. How do I get started? I think one great thing is I write about this in the book is like, if you're just getting started, a 30 day challenge, it often some people say it's like 30 to 45 to 60 days to establish a habit. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the great Jesuit has his famous spiritual exercises. How many days is that 30 days? So if you challenge yourself, you leave this conference, say I'm going to commit every day for 30 days to pray, no matter what comes up, I'm going to try to put this first in my day, get make it a priority, get up a little bit early. I'm going to just make this the priority. I'm going to, I'm going to pray every day for like 20 minutes, say just, just to place that time for God. What do we do in those prayers? I'm going to talk about different kinds of prayer. So if you're just starting to pray, you could do what's known as Ignatian meditation. This is where you read something from scripture, maybe the gospels, for example, and you put yourself in the biblical scene. You could ponder the annunciation, you imagine the angel appearing to Mary in the middle of her day, you imagine what Mary felt like at that moment. She was a little troubled, the angel says. How would you feel if an angel suddenly appeared in your living room? You kind of put yourself in the scene, you imagine it. And then the angel reveals the message, you picture Mary giving her great fiat, be it done or to be according to your word. What is God asking of you right now? You might ask, Lord, what is it, what is the annunciation you're giving me? What are you inviting me to right now? How can I serve you and love you more? How would you respond? Would you give a fiat? So you're kind of putting yourself in the scene, imagining it with the senses, what it looked like, what the words were spoken. You just put, use your senses to enter into the biblical scene. A second traditional, classical way of using meditation is lexio, lexio divina, divine reading. This is where we take a short passage from the word of God and we read it once to familiarize ourselves with it. We read it a second time. And then we maybe notice a certain word, a certain theme, a certain phrase that stands out. And then you read it again. And this time, when you read it this time, when that you come to that thing that stood out to you, you talk to God about it, you ask God, what does this mean, Lord? Why does it say this? Why did you do this, Lord? Why did you say this? What does this mean for me? You're in a dialogue with God about it. And then at the end, you read it again and then you rest in the graces of this time in prayer. There's a lot of practical resources on these two kinds of meditation. I have a little appendix in the back on all that as well. But I want to just mention a most basic, very simple way. Four things that every Catholic should have as part of their own dialogue with God. And you could sum it up in different ways. I'm going to use this one method called acts, ACTS. What does this stand for? Four ways to simply have a conversation with God. You can do this while you're driving. You can do this when you're going for a walk. And yes, you can do it in your time in conversations. This isn't technically meditation. This is probably more in the category of vocal prayer, but it's still helpful to have this as part of our regular friendship with God. ACTS, adoration. What's adoration? It's praising God for who he is, adoring him, loving him, telling God, I love you. I praise you for who he is as God. Confession. This is where we confess our sins. We tell God we're sorry for our sins, just like any relationship. If you go with your spouse and there's little friction, moments you were selfish, moments you weren't thoughtful, and you don't say anything about it, it's just kind of like this baggage that's there and it just mounts. You just need to say, you know, honey, I just wasn't thinking about you earlier today. I really should have thought this through better. It would have helped you out a lot and just say, sorry. That's what we do in every human relationship. We need to do that with God. And when there's serious sins, mortal sins, especially those we have to bring to confession. T stands for Thanksgiving. We take time to thank God. We thank the Lord for his blessings in our lives. And then finally, supplication. This is when we present our needs to God. Our needs for other people were representing others. We intercede for them. We pray for others and their needs. And then we also bring our own petitions, prayers for ourselves. We pray for others and we pray for ourselves. ACTS, a very simple way. Let me close with this. I think one of the best ways to pray, if you can, and we're all in different life situations and locations, is to be with Jesus in the blessed sacrament. And I'm so thrilled that our bishops are drawing attention to the Eucharist because we need to. As you know, so many Catholics, the majority of Catholics don't understand the Eucharist. They don't know about the Eucharist. They outlight and reject the idea that this is really Jesus, his body, blood, soul, and divinity. We need to understand and proclaim and share with our children and grandchildren the truth about the mystery of the Eucharist, of God's amazing love for us. But that's going to start first and foremost by our own example. I think about how the same Jesus that walked the streets of Galilee, going around healing people, comforting them when there's struggles, strengthening them, doing miracles in their lives, that same Jesus is present in the blessed sacrament, in your church, in your adoration chapel. He's there. Love wants to be near the one it loves. And the God who is love loves us so much, he became one of us. He died for us, rose again, ascended heaven, sent his spirit to our hearts. But he loves us so much, he remains with us in the real presence in the Eucharist. I'll close with this quote from John Paul II. He says, Jesus awaits us in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go to meet him in adoration and contemplation full of faith and open to making amends for the serious offenses and crimes of this world. Let our adoration never cease. I love that line. Jesus awaits us, awaits us in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go meet him. When the biggest ways we're going to grow in holiness is spending time with him in front of the blessed sacrament. I was in a seizing, again, when I had tripped to Italy, and I got to go pray at the tomb of blessed Carlo Acutis. Anyone know you're familiar with him, the young man? Yeah, everyone talks about all he did on the internet and stuff. Okay, that's good. But he loved Jesus in the Eucharist. He had a great line. He said, you know, just as you, you know, if you sit in the sun, you get a suntan. If you sit in the presence of the Eucharist, you become a saint. Do you want to become a saint? Do you want to be transformed? Do you want to grow in holiness? Spend time every day in prayer. Amen. And spend time with him in his real presence in the Eucharist. Let's close in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.