After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.
When it was evening he was there alone (Mt 14:23)

“After doing so,” is referring immediately to the preceding verse where Jesus dismisses the five-thousand after he had fed them and forced his disciples to go ahead of him and sail off to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was now alone, which was the reason he originally came to this deserted place but the people had followed him. Though weary, and worn, Jesus “went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”

We need to do the same. In the midst of our business, we need to make time to be alone and pray. Like Jesus, we have many demands on our time. We may have many obligations, many people, and many challenges pulling at us. We also may have many distractions, anxieties, and fears that tempt us when we do move in the direction of making time to pray. For being quiet, being still, can be a fearful thing. It is here we are called to face ourselves, our sin, our despair, loneliness, or our pain, suffering, and hurt. As Jesus walked up the mountain, I am sure two recent events, being rejected in his hometown and the death of John the Baptist, were on his mind.

If making time for prayer has been a challenge, then the first step is to just begin with examining your days to find some “crumbs of wasted time to try to build short moments for recollection and prayer, we may discover that there is quite a lot of it” (Bloom 49). The point is to begin, and it is not so important how or what we pray, but to just make a commitment to two, three, five minutes each day to let go of time so you can just be in the present, in the moment. It is in the present moment that we can encounter God.

Choose a place where you know you will not be interrupted, set an alarm for the time you choose, so you can be freed from watching the clock, and then just take a few deep breaths and rest with God. Say to yourself, “I am seated, I am doing nothing, I will do nothing for five minutes, then relax” (52). The goal to start is not so much what you do during this time, it is that you complete the time you have committed to, no matter what arises. You can just examine the day, say the Lord’s prayer slowly, breathe, talk freely with God. Resist the temptations that will arise to stop and get up.

You may find even a couple of minutes very difficult, but once you have given yourself time each day for about a week, the exercise will become a little easier. You will begin to create a stable foundation of stillness that will begin to stay with you during the busier times of the day. You will begin to experience some more patience, begin to catch those times when your shoulders were in your ears and you were not even aware of it.

If you do not believe that this can be done, then you can use this blog post as a confirmation. I did not believe I had the time to write this, there was already too much on my plate. But I felt God encouraging me to go deeper into the Gospel readings, pray with them, and share what insights I received. The only goal was to write one entry a day. I have been doing so each day since late June.

One stepping stone at a time is the key. Choose a time and place to commit to be still, sit, breathe, and complete your time of stillness. God will take care of the rest!

Mass Readings for today, Saturday, August 12, 2017:

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081217.cfm

Bloom, Anthony. Beginning to Pray. New York: Paulist Press, 1970.