Have you ever found yourself getting distracted when you pray? For me, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes, and I would assume that it’s the same answer for you. Prayer is an essential and necessary part of our lives as Catholics and with that prayer often comes distractions. We’re sitting there praying, whether on our own or at Mass, and we start to find ourselves thinking about what we’ve got coming up next, or something else that happened that day, or we realize that we need to pick something up from the store, or we remember that we’ve got to call someone. Distractions can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and almost every one of us experiences them.

An important reality to remember when we find ourselves getting distracted in our prayer is that distractions are not always sinful. Purposeful distractions, purposefully allowing our mind to wander, yes that’s sinful, but not all distraction happen on purpose. Sometimes, despite our best intent, we find our mind wandering from the prayer course that we originally set out upon. Maybe that is God’s way of leading and guiding us, His way of moving us from where we wanted to pray to where God is leading us to pray. When we find our minds going another way in our prayer, we should consider whether that is God’s way of trying to speak to us, leading us to pray over the “scriptures of our lives.” Maybe we’re focusing on one thing in our prayer and what we perceive as a distraction is God’s way of leading us to where He wants us to focus our prayer. Or, if it’s some of those more practical distractions, we might pray with a notebook where we can jot down those random ideas that pop into our minds, set the notebook aside, and go back in prayer. That way, we remember to pick up the milk from the store and we don’t completely lose our focus in our prayer.

The best strategy when we get distracted is to pause, focus, and move forward with God. The Catechism, in paragraph 2729 says, “To set about hunting down distractions would be to fall into their trap, when all that is necessary is to turn back to our heart: for a distraction reveals to us what we are attached to, and this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for Him and lead us resolutely to offer Him our heart to be purified. Therein lies the battle, the choice of which master to serve.”

Have a Blessed Week! I will be away this upcoming week. I will be back in the office on Tuesday, February 15th.