A 2nd Sunday after Pentecost Thought About a Prayerful Sunday

Let's see if we can make this 2nd Sunday after Pentecost a prayerful Sunday. 

It should be somewhat prayerful, right? After all it's Sunday. We've gone to Mass and now we're into our post-Mass time. What's on tap?

Well, ideally we're not caught up in activities best left for non-Sundays: manual labor - unless necessary or unavoidable; shopping (ditto, and we really should do our best to avoid this); work either for business or household that could reasonably be done on another day; anything that runs counter to not just the law but the spirit of Sunday as The Lord's Day/A Day of Rest.

And in that spirit, "prayerful" logically fits the bill of a Sunday well-spent. 

So does that mean we shut out the world (including our family and friends), get on our knees, and spend the day "in prayer"? Of course not. Besides leaving our family and friends in the lurch, it's really not something God expects from us. But that doesn't mean we just treat Sunday like it's just a "weekend" day, kind of like Saturday.

Here's something from Father Vincent McNabb, O.P. that can help us in this matter:

“It is quite easy to make anything we do, that is not sin, into a prayer. In that way, it is hard for ordinary Catholics not to pray. Some particular forms of prayer may be hard, but to pray is not hard. If loving God is hard, ah, then it is hard to pray. But it is very hard not to love God, if we know anything about Him. Merely scrubbing floors is not prayer, but it can be made into a very beautiful prayer. If the prayer of the humble pierces the clouds, it is a pretty quick road from the scrubbing brush to Heaven…Very often quite simple people get hold of books or some person gets at them, and they are almost afraid to go on their knees, prayer seems to be made so difficult. But God doesn’t want us to pray only when we are on our knees. Some of our best prayers are while we are on our feet, tired feet, or when we are in bed.”

Notice Father starts right off with telling us that praying is (should be?) quite easy. Even us ordinary folks can do it - and do it virtually all the time. And we don't even have to take time from our work, our time with family and friends, or any recreational activities that help us get a break from the daily grind.

For some of us, this may seem obvious. But for many it could be a revelation. And that's why we need to stop thinking of prayer and our spiritual life as something "special" that requires some sort of training, or where we have to set aside discreet chunks of time where we formally recite this or that prayer.

If nothing else, just re-read Father McNabb's remarks and get right down to applying these immediately. It will not only address making Sunday a prayerful day, but it will make all our days prayerful.

Happy Sunday!