Or read a Bible passage and meditate on that.īe open to change. Or a book about meditation-because something in your post makes me think that might be a good avenue for you. Or a book about prayer or an aspect of Catholicism. The Bible, if that isn't a regular part of your reading schedule. You could, for the next few months, spend some of your prayer time reading. You could explore the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, which is a sort of "retreat in daily life." It's a bit intense, but it might help you find the direction you want to go in. Other forms of prayer you could try are just saying morning and evening prayers, either a set prayer or a more spontaneous, meditative prayer. But is there anything else that you want prayer to bring into your life? Maybe identifying that will help to determine what type/form of prayer is best for you. Second, what you want to get from your prayer? I see in your post that you are looking to glorify God. But if it is causing this much stress for you, I'm wondering if it is the best choice for you at this point in your life. Many people pray this regularly and get a great deal of benefit from it. So why did you choose this particular form of prayer? It takes a lot of discipline to follow the Divine Office-are you seeking discipline/order/regularity in your life? (Just so you know where I'm coming from.)įirst, why do you want to pray the Divine Office? It is not a requirement for Catholics to do this. But I know it's possible that God may speak through someone else in this simplicity community - or through the community as a whole - so I ask here anyway. As a matter of fact, I am doing that right now. If you say I should pray and bring this question to God, then I agree. But if you have a suggestion how I can be sure that a simpler alternative glorifies God rather than my self-well, I'm all ears to that too. If you have a way that I can make the Divine Office really *work* as-is, I'm all ears. And by "less" I don't mean praying less times a day - as I'm sure some people will suggest that I don't have to pray *every* office, just *some* of them will do.Īs for my question? Well - it's not exactly phrased as a question, coz it's fairly open-ended. I feel very *strongly* that less is more in that regard. I feel it would fit in my life very well if I had something that I didn't need any electronic app to use and which had a very bare-minimum of fiddling-with-tables to follow.Īnd though I don't want to be quickly in-and-out with the prayers - I want to make sure that whatever prayers I say I can say them slowly and thoughtfully rather than feeling a *strong* pressure to get through the prayers quickly. Primarily, I'm not sure whether such a move would seriously glorify God, or whether it would just be my stubborn self-will acting. I'm thinking of substituting it with something, well, something *simpler*. But as an individual, I have to have a high-tech app just to keep up with what prayers and psalms to say on a given day!!!!įurthermore, often the office turns out to be so long, that I find myself rushing through it rather than saying it prayerfully as I should. It may be simple in the context of a monastery, where one of the residents can be in charge of all the calendar work of getting things straightened out. And to be honest, it seems anything *but* simple. I have difficulty working the Divine Office into my life. (And yes - unless you want to be a solitary believer who has no spiritual community, availability *is* an issue.) I'm Catholic - and I can't really say for certain whether that's because that's my true religion of calling, or if that's just because it's closer to Catholic than to anything else available around here.
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