Maybe it is not a lack of time, but a lack of love: choosing prayer

The most common reason people don't pray: "I don't have time".

But alas, we always make time for what we love. Or at least what we need to survive.

Perhaps it is not that we lack the time, but that we lack the love... or because we don't know how desperately we need prayer to live.

Saint Padre Pio says that "prayer is the oxygen of the soul". If we really believed this, and we cared for our souls and our relationship with the Lord, we wouldn't hesitate to make time for daily prayer.

Maybe other's commitments to prayer make us feel despondent or discouraged because we have little to offer. Turning away from comparison to others, examining our own hearts, we all have some time and attention we can offer the Lord, even if it is a small widow's mite.

If all you can give the Lord is 15 minutes of quiet prayer in the morning, give Him that.

If you can pray the Rosary for 15 minutes instead of listening to a podcast or music as you run errands or make your commute, do that.

If you can listen to the daily Gospel being read while you get ready in the morning, do that.

If you can do a 5 minute morning offering and a 5 minute examen at the end of the day, do that.

If you need to sacrifice 15-30 minutes of sleep in the morning to pray, do that.

You need prayer to live, spiritually speaking.

Imagine a marriage where the spouses never sit alone, attentive to each other, speaking with each other, listening to one another, resting with each other. The marriage would dwindle and suffer. So it is with our Lord. If we do not sit alone with Him, speak with Him, listen to Him, rest in Him, then our relationship with Him will suffer.

He is calling you into His Heart, into His peace, into His gaze.

He does not condemn you for your busyness and the times you do not choose prayer.

He wants you to come, to rest in Him, to let Him hear you and for you to hear Him.

Choose prayer, my friend. It will change everything.