Prayer, Focus, and Time

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Hi, I think I’m sounding like a broken record because I’ve had similar posts before.
So after over 1 and 1/2 years of being Catholic, I recently started praying single decades of the rosary almost daily. I’ve discovered that I can’t seem to focus my prayers. When I tried to take a half an hour prayer and contemplation, I could only get through ten minutes.

I say the Three Hail Marys in the morning and evening (I recomend this for anyone), as well as the Jesus Prayer (I say this one a lot), more Hail Marys, and prayers to saints (ex: St Peter pray for us) throughout the day.
However, these are short prayers, and I wonder if I am failing to pray adequately out by not praying in a solid block of time. I think to myself, if I can spend time doing other things (sometimes focused, sometimes not so much), why can’t I just concentrate on God for more than short prayers?
Any suggestions?
 
Walk before you run. If you can make it through ten minutes of contemplative prayer, then do ten minutes, maybe morning and evening if you wish. When you master ten minutes, make if fifteen, and so on until you reach thirty minutes twice a day. It may be a very long time before you make it to thirty minutes, but it doesn’t matter as long as you keep trying.
 
Mr.Blank1.5 said:
Hi, I think I’m sounding like a broken record because I’ve had similar posts before.
So after over 1 and 1/2 years of being Catholic, I recently started praying single decades of the rosary almost daily. I’ve discovered that I can’t seem to focus my prayers. When I tried to take a half an hour prayer and contemplation, I could only get through ten minutes.

I say the Three Hail Marys in the morning and evening (I recomend this for anyone), as well as the Jesus Prayer (I say this one a lot), more Hail Marys, and prayers to saints (ex: St Peter pray for us) throughout the day.
However, these are short prayers, and I wonder if I am failing to pray adequately out by not praying in a solid block of time. I think to myself, if I can spend time doing other things (sometimes focused, sometimes not so much), why can’t I just concentrate on God for more than short prayers?
Any suggestions?
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A suggestion: Maybe reading Scripture slowly and stopping to meditate on it and applying it to your life would help? Perhaps 15 minutes?

Different ways to pray can be used. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you to what is best for you right now.

And, remember, that we all have distractions. Just let go of them and continue with the prayer. In that way you are making a good choice…to be in the Lord’s presence!
 
Mr Blank,

Great question and intention. And great advice given already.

A priest told me once when I was struggling with prayer and focus to write out my prayer in brief form…conversational tone…and then rip it up or burn it.

He also told me to “chatter” with God, like a child struggling to put sentences together but cheerfully wanting to do so.

It helped me enormously.

Start slow and small, and ask God for help.

Maybe start off with a short formal prayer…Our Father, Spiritual Communion, Hail Mary…then move to conversational prayer.

For content, God gives you your day…your duties, your meetings, your assignments, the people around you, your struggles, and successes, challenges ahead, worries, failings, stumbles.

Just look at your day planner or whatever you use and convert those items into content for prayer. There’s always something laying around…God desires communion with you…and He doesn’t really get bored with anything we do. He’s infinitely interested in it.
 
Thanks for the responses.
Is it wrong to space out short prayers, or a series of short prayers throughout the day? Theres a nagging thought in my head that says “you should have done it longer”. This is especially the case when I have free days.
 
I’m also one who isn’t good at a formulaic type prayer. I seem to veer off on different tangents and thoughts when I am using contemplative prayer. Nothing like thinking about “whats for dinner”, “I wonder if there is enough air in my tires”…but instead various other thoughts. I felt as if my prayers were inadequate. I told my priest about it and he told me that possibly God may be talking to me about something more important at the time. Maybe that he is guiding me to ask for what I really need instead of want.

Definitely interested in this topic and glad someone asked it.
 
Not wrong. It’s basically the goal. Continuous conversation with God, participating with Him as He saves the world. Pray always, rejoice always. It’s in the Bible.

Shorter prayers are sometimes called Aspirations…“My Lord and My God” “Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner.” The one I’ve been saying today is “Stay with me, Lord”.

Chatter with Him while you move about your day. He seeks union with us…this is why sincerity is more important than being articulate. Don’t let words get in the way of sincere union.
 
It’s probably part of being new to it. I’m a cradle Catholic and I still struggle. I didn’t go to Catholic school and my parents were a Catholic-Protestant marriage, so some habits of prayer I just didn’t grow up with.

I think it’s great to have a goal of praying a decent-sized block of time morning and evening. But I’m still working on it. I like to pray little prayers throughout the day too, or even simply turn my thoughts to God - like thank Him for a blessing, appreciate a nice day. Anything that recognizes Him as the author of all good.

We can offer our things we do as prayer, no matter how simple. Like Brother Lawrence in the Practice of the Presence of God book.

As far as distractions - “I haz em” as the LOLcats would say! 😃 I have ADD for one thing (started the social group on that here on CAF). But I don’t think it’s all ADD because I hear all kinds of Catholics and some of my other Christian friends voice similar concerns. And I have lazy tendencies. :o I can get a routine of prayer going and then it starts to slide. Right now I’m on the struggle side - beginning to get the routine back, but it’s not solid yet.

Don’t worry - you are right where you are meant to be now, 👍 which is, learning how you are called to pray. Different ways of praying will work better at one time than another as you go forward in the spiritual life. :signofcross: :blessyou: :amen:
 
Don’t worry about “prayers being adequate”. Go for sincerity and regularity. He seeks union because He knows it’s good for us!

"We can offer our things we do as prayer, no matter how simple. Like Brother Lawrence in the Practice of the Presence of God book. "

Yes. Exactly. We can offer everything we do as prayer, as offering, as thanksgiving, as petition, as thanksgiving, as adoration. Thoughts, actions, work, all.

Life becomes very rich this way.

Great topic.
 
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