I mentioned before that I didn’t have the energy to pursue great spiritual endeavors this past Lent, and chose the simplicity of just tuning my vehicle’s radio to Relevant Radio and left it.  I did not anticipate how that one, minuscule step of  faithfulness would impact the totality of my daily life.  Actually, it wasn’t that act alone, but coupled with my husband’s chosen spiritual act, a daily rosary.

At the time, when I began tuning in, Relevant Radio was praying a 54-day Rosary novena on the occasion of the HHS mandate for the intention of preserving our religious freedom in this country.  My husband, at first, was praying the rosary in the evening along with either a youtube video or Fr. Benedict Groeschel’s CD.  In the morning, I noticed how much more at peace I felt, even when only catching a few decades of the Rosary on the short trip to drop off my boys at their various schools.  In the evening, I embraced the opportunity to pray with my husband. But as my husband struggled to stay awake long enough to finish a rosary, he began doing his in the midst of his day.  To continue our evening prayer time, we started using divineoffice.org.

I immediately relished the ease with which I could add regular prayer time throughout my day, and also pay attention to the many tasks my vocation requires of me.  Instead of trying to do housework, cook my breakfast, begin dinner prep, change diapers and nurse my babies, and also find time to pull out my breviary, locate the various pages required for each hour, and find the psalm tones in my hymnal (I do prefer to chant the psalms when possible), I can set my laptop next to me, navigate to the website and play the hours while I accomplish my chores.  I even set a timer to remind me at midday and evening.

Time passed, and a funny thing happened.  The TV had often kept me company throughout the day, not because I paid particular attention to it, but it filled the vacuum of the day with a semblance of energy or life.  But now, I was regularly infusing my day with the Author of Life and being invigorated with energy from the source.  Not only was I awaiting the next hour with longing, but I began relishing the quiet (relative quiet, with four children at home) in between times.

My soul responded to the pattern of communal prayer, followed by quiet and meditation repeated throughout my day with a pervading peace.  Now that Relevant has completed their Rosary novena, I have turned to starting the day with a Rosary before the children and I leave the house.  To fill the 3 o’clock hour between Offices, we pray a Divine Mercy chaplet when the children return home.  We are still working on regularly fitting the Evening Office into our evening routine, with the busyness of end of the year school activities and so on, but our efforts have born fruit which makes faithfulness all the more sweet.