Deb and I were able to get to Confession at the local church last night before Mass. Thankfully I don't have many hangups about Confession. I try to go once a month or so for a good 'soul-scrubbing and heart cleansing' and spiritual inventory. I look forward to it. In the way a piece of thread is easy to break by itself, but wrapped around your wrists a thousand times would bind the hands, little sins can weaken our spiritual resolve and accumulate, binding us. So I try to do a spiritual check-in at least once every few months. The Lord's forgiveness imparted in the sacrament is a blessing, not a punishment to be avoided, though there is a penance involved.
"Well," Deb says, "when I told the priest it was hard to find time to pray, he told me, 'people think you have to make some grandiose commitment to spend hours and hours a day praying. Sometimes you just need to take five minutes. Even if you have to lock yourself in your bathroom to get it.' So that was my penance...take five minutes a day to intentionally pray, for the next week."
"Cool," I reply. "When are you going to pray today?"
"I don't know," she says, "I'm trying to find the right time."
"Sometimes the right time is now. Yeah?"
She thought about it a minute. "Yes you're right." I offered to watch the kids while she took five minutes to close the door to our room, lock it, and spend time with The Lord.
I kind of take issue with 'prayer-as-a-penance,' since I don't see it as a kind of punishment, though I understand the rationale. Sometimes we need to force the time, intentionally interject it, or we won't do it. When the priest writes the prescription for spiritual healing, he knows what he is doing. Sometimes the prescription is standard and rote, sometimes tailored, but always with intention of repairing what was damaged by sin--namely, our relationship with God. This isn't an 'earning your salvation through works' approach. It is a recognition that sin causes ruptures, damage to relationships. In taking time to spend with God intentionally--not as punishment, but to allow for healing--even if it is only five minutes, we reorient ourselves into right relationship with the One who made us.
I think the 'five minutes a day' prescription of prayer is a good one. It may be too light for some people, but it is also not overly burdensome, so there is more chance we will actually DO it (as opposed to, say, being prescribed a 1 or 2 hr session 2x a day). I've found when I have something to do or something to remember, it's best for me to just do it right away--either so I don't forget, or so I am not tempted to put it off.
I tried an experiment last week--I would make a list of goals I wanted to accomplish each hour of the day, and would check them off as I accomplished them. They were manageable goals--do 10 pushups, pray for 5 minutes, etc. I wrote them down. Writing them down ended up being a really affective way of ensuring I actually did them. When I forgot to write them down, it was easier to forget about or rationalize away. The little accomplishments gave me momentum for bigger things, but I needed to start small to ensure success (versus guaranteeing failure through making the goals too big). I have found it's better for me to do something for a shorter period of time more consistently (praying 5 minutes a day for instance, versus praying 35 minutes once a week), because it builds habit, which builds virtue, which builds character.
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