We see this in scripture in 2 Samuel 11. It was the season of battle, but instead of being out with his men King David had stayed behind and remained in Jerusalem (11:1). "After his mid-day rest" he decides to head up to the roof and falls into sin after seeing Bathsheba bathing. It was during the rest, not the battle, that he falls.
Life feels like a series of seasons. My work is cyclical--it comes in intense waves followed by lulls in action; home life too--we are in a restful period, but after the baby comes it will be different. Liturgically, we are in the anticipatory season of Advent, followed by Christmastide, followed by the return to Ordinary time.
My prayer life, too, is going through a season, and most of it is due to neglect and willful laziness on my part. It starts small--things sneak in and take the place of time set aside for God. For me, it is working on the side outside of my normal 9-5 and other home projects that begin to edge out deliberate, intentional prayer time that is set-apart. By the end of the day I am so tired I often don't have the energy to get on my knees and complete 5 decades of a rosary. So I don't. One day turns into two, and the next thing I know a week or so has gone by without setting aside quiet time and making the efforts that come with prayer.
Of course this throws everything else out of whack. It's like someone who opens up another credit card account once they've maxed out the one they have--rather than address the fundamentals of their budgets and make hard, self-sacrificing monetary choices, the debt builds, the interest payments rack up, and the hole gets bigger. The financial stress ripples out into the marriage, family, job, and mental state. The little $5 here and $10 there purchases suddenly become $100, $1,000, or $10,000 of debt if you let it get away from you.
Which is exactly what it feels like when you drift away from prayer in negligence.
We often have a misguided notion that prayer should always be inspiring or consoling. The fact is, sometimes it is just putting the time in. When that time-box remains empty on the table--"wasted space"--the temptation to fill it up with other things becomes strong. We become like Judas who complained about the costly nard that Mary pours on Jesus' feet in John 12:3, objecting that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Of course, as Scripture says, it was not because Judas cared about the poor but "because he was a thief." When we steal time set aside for God to use for other things--trifles and money-making and squandering it online--we become thieves in a sense, robbing a shop owner at gunpoint for a handful of dollar bills.
I don't sit still well, but before the baby comes I need to get my focus back, because this laxity in prayer has made me spiritually vulnerable. And when I am vulnerable, my family is vulnerable. And when my family is vulnerable, I am like David on the rooftop, neglecting to go to battle in Springtime, which is my raison d'etre as a man, father, and husband. Setting down my rosary, renting out my time in the home chapel, losing focus--all these things are dangerous chinks in the armor to which Satan will not ignore.
The Catechism speaks of Christian prayer in this way--the two-prongs of grace and effort-- and it would be good for us not to forget it:
"Prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort. The great figures of prayer of the Old Covenant before Christ, as well as the Mother of God, the saints, and he himself, all teach us this: prayer is a battle. Against whom? Against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God. We pray as we live, because we live as we pray. If we do not want to act habitually according to the Spirit of Christ, neither can we pray habitually in his name. The "spiritual battle" of the Christian's new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer." (2725)
It goes on to describe my current situation of forgetting to be vigilant and gritty, and how easy it can be for things to sneak in to usurp the rightful place of prayer in the life of the Christian:
"We must also face the fact that certain attitudes deriving from the mentality of "this present world" can penetrate our lives if we are not vigilant. For example, some would have it that only that is true which can be verified by reason and science; yet prayer is a mystery that overflows both our conscious and unconscious lives. Others overly prize production and profit; thus prayer, being unproductive, is useless. Still others exalt sensuality and comfort as the criteria of the true, the good, and the beautiful; whereas prayer, the "love of beauty" (philokalia), is caught up in the glory of the living and true God. Finally, some see prayer as a flight from the world in reaction against activism; but in fact, Christian prayer is neither an escape from reality nor a divorce from life." (2727)
Finally, if we ever are struggling to find things to confess in the Sacrament of Penance, we should not forget that our violation of the first and most important Commandment--to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind--is a convicting one when we are neglectful and lazy in setting aside time and effort to pray:
"Finally, our battle has to confront what we experience as failure in prayer: discouragement during periods of dryness; sadness that, because we have "great possessions," we have not given all to the Lord; disappointment over not being heard according to our own will; wounded pride, stiffened by the indignity that is ours as sinners; our resistance to the idea that prayer is a free and unmerited gift; and so forth. The conclusion is always the same: what good does it do to pray? To overcome these obstacles, we must battle to gain humility, trust, and perseverance." (2728)
To stay vigilant in prayer, we need to make efforts, and effort is arduous. Due to our fallen nature, that which is arduous is not attractive, not "pleasing to the eye" (Gen 3:6). And yet prayer and true devotion requires we do our part to fight against that which seeks to take God off the throne in our hearts, souls, and mind--whether that's money, sports, shopping, or simply laziness. There are many "holes in the fence" presently in my prayer life that need mending, and fast, for as scripture says, "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man." (Prov 6:10-11). Once an intruder gets it, they can be hard to drive out. And the damage they can do is real.
When you don't feel like praying, when you don't feel like putting the effort in, when you don't feel like getting up in the cold of night to mend the fences--that is when prayer becomes the most vital thing in the world. A little reminder for all, but mostly for myself.
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