Prayer is a Battle

Praying is not easy. This is why many of us “forget” to do it- or don’t have much of a prayer life all. St. Padre Pio said, “Prayer is the best weapon we possess. It is the key that opens the heart of God.”

Prayer is a battle against distractions. These distractions challenge us with extreme difficulty in our attempt of silent prayer. Because of this, it frequently becomes overbearing to sit in silence with our thoughts.

In prayer, we encounter two types of distractions.

We face smaller, more concrete distractions like our cellphone being near us, the TV being on, or that ridiculously loud air conditioner in the other room. When presented with these types of distractions, we must swat them away quickly and immediately turn back to God. Turn the phone off or put it in the other room for 15 minutes. Go to a quiet place. These small distractions should be under our complete control. Just as parents put things outside of the reach of their children, we must do the same to ourselves during prayer.

On the other hand, we have larger, more remote distractions. Every day, we are constantly accepting information into our minds and our souls. We consistently consume music, T.V. shows, social media posts, and more.

What we put into our minds and souls are stored as memories. If we distract ourselves with worldly junk, like bad YouTube videos, pornography, awful music, and movies, that junk will be present in our mind when we decide to pray. Intruding thoughts will be there viciously fighting for our attention as we try to get closer to God.

We must fill our minds and souls with heavenly things. As we pray more we learn to battle. As we fill our minds with things above, we pray better.

When a large distraction attacks, take that struggle and talk to God about it in that very moment. Use the enemies tactics against him and bring all you have back to God.

This excerpt is a summary of an amazing homily I heard from Father Mathias at Our Lady's Chapel in New Bedford, MA.