Hajja Salesjana

Top photo by Artem Kovalev, bottom photo by Adrian Hernandez - Unsplash.com PRAYING THE ROSARY Do you have trouble paying attention while praying? Does your mind wander? Do you sometimes fall asleep? Do you forget where you were and stop? Do you then feel ashamed and disappointed in yourself? Do you get frustrated? Do you want to give up trying to pray long prayers like the Rosary? Do you give up? Or do you keep trying? I can answer “yes” to all of these questions except the italicized one. After ten years of developing a prayer routine for myself andwithmy children, I have lost track, fallen asleep, stopped, felt ashamed, felt frustrated, given up at times, but ultimately kept trying. Still, when I sit the kids down to pray, there are sister-slap fights when they think I’m not looking, the little brother won’t be still and join in, the dogs take up the couch and distract everyone, somebody always touches somebody else who doesn’t want anybody in her space, and by the end of the prayer, almost nightly, there are sleeping kids intertwined with Rosaries sprawled across the sofa. This is not the perfect picture of discipline and reverence I envisioned. With his typical real life wisdom, St. Thomas Aquinas addressed this question. He asked whether “attention” is a necessary condition of prayer. The answer is: It is and it isn’t. Attention is necessary in the original intention. We have to intend to pray to fix our minds on God, but if our minds wander during the prayer, the loss of attention does not render the whole prayer void, nor is it necessarily a sin. “In order to realize this effect [that the prayer is meritorious], it is not necessary that prayer should be attentive throughout; because the force of the original intention with which one sets about praying renders the whole prayer meritorious, as is the case with other meritorious acts.” When we intend to pray so that we are closer to Christ and willing to open ourselves to the will of God, and when we actually do pray , even if we only begin the prayer and Does Your Mind Wander When You Pray? by Stacy Trasancos (Faith And Science, Regular Feature) 8 April-Ġunju 2024 hajja