When and How We Can Pray at Work

Our Stability Project continues. Again, our hope is that by so grounding our daily labors in the expert guidance this masterwork provides we will foster stability in our workplace. It's a stability characterized by calmness and peace in the midst of whatever raging storms the world might bring to our spiritual shore. As we've seen, a workplace grounded in stability founded on calmness and peace will bolster both our spiritual lives and  our business results.

We're continuing our focus on St. Benedict's specific instructions to his monks on when and how to pray throughout the day. Let's see how we can apply these enrich our time at work by looking at when and how we can pray at work.

Last time we noted the desirability of a dynamic weaving of ora et labora - prayer and work - similar to the daily routine of Benedictine monks. We do that by carving out specific times for personal prayer, perhaps even some quiet meditation. My experience has been that having a fixed plan works best. That means definite times, with specific prayers for each time.

While this depends on the type of work we do, it's doable no matter. In my own case, I work from home and spend much of my time working on a computer, along with time for business calls, webinars and Zoom meetings. Some days my schedule is tighter than others. Having recognized the desirability of more formally setting aside fixed times for my ora et labora, I began with my already established scheduled tasks. These are set up at the beginning of each week and assigned a day and approximate time.

That's the "when" of the labora. Where to fit in the ora?

I started with the Angelus. Traditionally this is prayed three times a day, morning, noon, evening. The times may vary, but that's the basic format. 

Daily mortification had already worked it's way into my work day. (Perhaps not as often or as robust as it should be, but I keep working at it.) So I moved to more formal prayer times. These began with brief morning prayers at the start of work. I already would have complete my morning routine of prayer, meditation, study and spiritual reading. After that and before starting my work, I typically exercise. But when I'm in my captain's chair firing up the laptop, there's the opportunity for some brief prayers. These could range from the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be to more "personal" conversation with one or more of my Guardian Angel, St. Joseph, my business's patron saints, or perhaps a saint of the day. It may sound like a lot, but it was usually spending a few minutes on a few items.

That was the original skeleton structure that started my solidifying my daily devotions at work, my ora, weaved into the flow of my labora.

It's really not a lot to manage, but even this basic skeleton took months, no, years, to nail down. A super-busy day would find me rush into my work first thing with nary a thought tossed God's way. After that, unless there was some let-up, the whole day could fly by and I might not even have squeezed in the noon Angelus.

Frankly, it got pretty frustrating at times. At the end of the day, tail between my legs, I might whisper an "I'm sorry" to Our Lord for my negligence. While this went on for longer than I care to remember, the first break in this woeful pattern came when it dawned on me that my ego was the cause of my negligence. On days when I hit my marks, it felt good. I had accomplished something. On days when my ora notched goose eggs, it was because I simply couldn't manage the busy work flow and my ora at the same time.

The key was "I." And so I kept coming up with little schemes to end the day in triumph. And, of course I would often - just as often - fail to get to first base.

It was only when I realized that I was leaning on myself rather than Our Lord that real progress ensued. That doesn't mean I do nothing and wait for God to do the heavy lifting. I do what I think best, but consciously, consistently defer to God's Will, ask Him for grace, for strength, remind myself that by myself I can do nothing.

With that humbling realization, the first glimmers of an ordering of ora et labora ensued. Much that followed was a bit experimental: try this, try that - not in an ad hoc, willy-nilly way. I poured thought and planning into the mix. But I checked in during my daily examination of conscience to see how well or not so well things went. 

Did I keep God's Presence in my work? Did I pray as planned? If not, what caused the disruption? Was it some emergency that couldn't be avoided, or was it laxity on my part caused by laziness or distractions caused by a lack of concentration or discipline? We're not talking about some overly scrupulous, long, extended self-grilling here; just a consistent assessment, similar to the sort of assessment I apply to my tasks at work during and at the end of the day. You know, just staying on top of things. 

Next time, how things progressed from that point to today...