If you’ve spent time in Catholic circles for long enough you’ve probably heard of “making a holy hour.” Modern spiritual giants like St. Theresa of Calcutta and Venerable Fulton Sheen both considered the daily practice of spending an hour in silence before the Blessed Sacrament the sine qua non of their apostolic work. Maybe you have tried making a holy hour before, or you are interested in making the practice a part of your spiritual regimen, but you have the burning question, “But what do I actually do there for an hour?” You are not alone.
Here are five basic “to do’s” for those who are beginning the practice of the Eucharistic holy hour, or for those who feel stuck and want to go deeper in their prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.
1. Show Up
This is the simplest but often the hardest step for those starting to make a holy hour. There are so many things competing for our time and attention, it can feel almost impossible to stop what we are doing, turn off our phones, and go spend an hour in silence before the Lord. But we must do this consistently if we are serious about learning to pray.
If nothing seems to be happening during your holy hours, try not to get discouraged. Be patient with yourself and with the Lord. Like the apostles who walked with Jesus every day for three years, but only slowly became aware of who he really was, it may take time for your heart to truly awaken to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Show up, and you will see.
2. Don’t Run Away
This second step can be almost as hard as the first. If you’ve ever tried to pray in silence for any length of time, especially when nothing seems to be happening, you almost certainly have had the temptation to cut and run.
St. Ignatius of Loyola advises us to emphatically resist the temptation to end our prayer early. If your prayer feels boring or distracted, rather than ending your prayer time early, his advice is to stay one extra minute instead. This act of defiance in the face of temptation is a simple but powerful act of faith, and a statement we make to our hearts that God is real, whether we feel him there or not. Many times it is that final, extra minute in prayer that is the most fruitful and full of grace.
3. Acknowledge God’s Presence
This may seem obvious, but we must believe in God’s presence in order to pray. It is surprisingly easy to forget this fact and act as if prayer is something we can do on our own. Even during Eucharistic adoration it is possible to forget how close the Lord is to us. A friend of mine jokes that instead of praying to God, he often catches himself praying to the “anti-trinity”: me talking to myself about me.
We believe that God is real, and that he is everywhere. As baptized Christians, we already belong to God and have a deep relationship with him at the level of our being. This is true whether we “feel close” to God or not. Not only are you close God, you are in God, and God is in you. Christian prayer, which is the conscious cultivation of a more intimate communion with God, is possible only because God is already close to us, and he is actively inviting us at every moment to commune with him.
A good way to start your holy hour is to make an act of faith in this truth. St. Ignatius again has advice for us here. He suggests taking the space of an Our Father (about 30 seconds) to contemplate how God looks upon you. A spiritual director once put it to me this way: “If you opened the door to a room with no light on, you wouldn’t just start shouting things into the darkness. You’d first turn on the light to make sure someone was in there.”
Don’t get discouraged if this practice does not always conjure a felt experience of God’s closeness. What God chooses to do in your soul is not in your control. If distractions and worldly anxieties crowd out the awareness of God’s presence in your heart, ask him to help you. Someone who asks God for help, regardless of how he feels, is making an act of faith, and that is what is important here.
4. Acknowledge Your Distractions and Share Them with God
Speaking of distractions, the most common question people ask about holy hours is this: “How do I get rid of all these distractions?”
First, just because your mind is racing, or there is an annoying song on repeat in your head, or you feel tired or hungry or angry or homesick, or you keep comparing yourself to the other people in the chapel, or you can’t stop rehashing an argument you had with your spouse: that doesn’t mean you can’t be praying at the same time. Just by showing up and not running away, you are choosing to make time for God, and regardless of what is happening inside of you, God is pleased.
Second, these thoughts, feelings, and desires are exactly what you should be bringing to the Lord. Imagine you decided to spend an hour with your closest friend, and instead of talking about what was really occupying your heart and mind, you distractedly tried to guess at what he or she wanted to talk about instead. God is the friend of your soul, and he has gone to great lengths to prove his love for you. Instead of spending mental energy trying to purify your heart of distraction in order to talk to God, simply acknowledge what is going on within you and relate it to him like you would to a close friend.
5. Listen for God
Now that you are talking honestly with God, now is the time to listen to what he has to say to you. Unless you are one of the Church’s rare mystics, you will not normally hear God speaking audibly in your ear. The normal way God reveals his heart to us is through our own human faculties—our memory, imagination, affections, etc. Here it helps to remain as open and docile as possible. Does a scripture passage come to mind? Search it out and read it. Does an image or a memory come to mind? Dwell with it and see how it rests on your heart.
Often during this step we have the thought, “Am I just making this up? How do I know this is God and not just my imagination?” Try not to get into an internal argument about this, lest you fall into the “anti-trinity” exercise from step three. Instead, repeat step four, relating to God as honestly as you can about what is going on in your heart. Say something like, “Jesus, I don’t know how to tell the difference between your voice and my own imagination. Please help me.” Then sit back and listen again. If your entire holy hour is a back and forth with Jesus asking him to help you discern his voice in your heart, what a wonderful use of your prayer time!
Step by Step to God
There you have it. If you’ve followed these steps, you are praying. I encourage you to revisit these steps periodically, especially when you feel stuck in your prayer. If nothing seems to be happening in your holy hour, acknowledge your boredom, your sadness, your emptiness, and simply relate it to God. You could tell him something like “I miss you, Jesus. Please help me feel your closeness.” Then listen for his voice. Rinse and repeat.
If you spend time like this in prayer consistently, I promise that you will grow. Your hunger for spiritual things will increase, and your attachment to sin will wane. You will receive fresh insights and more confidence in your decision-making. But above all, and this is important to remember, you will grow in closer communion with God. That is always the purpose of prayer, and even if you receive no other grace from your prayer time, you can always grow in intimacy with him by these simple steps. Now that’s enough listening to me—go spend some time with the Lord!
