Pleasure and prayer

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McatholicN

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I feel guilty that I spend more time seeking out pleasure for myself (video games, shooting hoops, watching TV, etc.) than praying. I’ve dealt with pretty severe scrupulisiosity previously, and it might be making a comeback.

I guess my question is, how much time should be spent praying and seeking out pleasure.
 
All our time should be spent with God, for the love of God and others.

Some advice I once was given

Your day time belongs to your company. Your evening time belongs to your family. If you have any time and energy left over after giving them everything they need, then read a good book in prep to give to someone else (!!).

We need to relax, down-shift, but there’s a danger in that period of relaxing to become quickly pure dissipation (comfort seeking).

Jesus tired at the well is a great way to think about. Though tired and thirsty, he immediately engages the woman to help her, to draw her out. He gets her involved/doing, to give Him water, IN ORDER TO HELP HER! Simply amazing.
 
McatholicN said:
I feel guilty that I spend more time seeking out pleasure for myself (video games, shooting hoops, watching TV, etc.) than praying. I’ve dealt with pretty severe scrupulisiosity previously, and it might be making a comeback.

I guess my question is, how much time should be spent praying and seeking out pleasure.
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Tape a copy of the Morning Offering on your bathroom mirror and say it every morning when you’re brushing your teeth. After that all your joys works and sufferings are offered to God as a prayer. God made it easy didn’t He. He thought of everything.
 
McatholicN said:
I feel guilty that I spend more time seeking out pleasure for myself (video games, shooting hoops, watching TV, etc.) than praying. I’ve dealt with pretty severe scrupulisiosity previously, and it might be making a comeback.

I guess my question is, how much time should be spent praying and seeking out pleasure.
Click to expand...
Saint Paul says that we should pray without ceasing. You are seeking a balance between the spiritual and the physical. This is very good. Now, by providing good witness to your faith, you can make even shooting hoops a prayer. But, in the larger scheme of things, prayer can also become pleasure, as you are drawing ever nearer to God while you speak with Him. Oh, He knows that you need earthly relationships and activities, but these are simply His gifts. We are to love the Giver and not the gifts. We can be thankful for the gifts but, which is greater: the gifts, or the One Who both created and gave them?

As well, prayer, done right, is always prayed in the Spirit. When so prayed, it is no longer a burden, which takes us away from pleasure, but through it we experience true pleasure.
 
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