How Much Time a Day Should I Spend in Prayer?
The answer is not "it depends"...
“If you are not spending at least 30 minutes in prayer a day,” a priest told us during a talk at church many years ago, “you are not having a meaningful relationship with God.”
Those words stuck with me since I heard them around 16 years ago. At that time, my prayer life was chaotic, undisciplined. It didn’t have a recognizable routine. I went to Mass every Sunday. Sometimes I even made it to daily Mass. I had times of deep prayer, hours spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament. And I had moments of dryness, with a few “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” dispersed throughout the day, like little rain drops that never made a puddle.
Perhaps this has been your experience when it comes to your prayer life. When our prayer life lacks structure and discipline, we allow the vicissitudes of life to dictate the type of prayer life we will have in each day. At best, there will be days of deep prayer, followed by days where prayer is sparse. At worst, prayer will become an afterthought. The problem is that this prayer life will not sustain the demands of holiness in our lives.
Holiness can be defined as union with Christ. The pursuit of holiness is nothing else but the pursuit of union with God. We avoid sin not just because it offends God. We avoid sin because sin is the breaker of all relationships, and most importantly, our relationship with God. When our soul’s main desire is union with God, it will desire nothing else but to be free of the slavery of sin (c.f. John 8:34).
Prayer is the vehicle to our union with God. Prayer, put simply, is how we spend time with God. The time we spend with God, of course, is essential to our union with God. Union is established by relationships. Relationships cannot be sustained without time spent together. We can’t claim, for example, to have solid relationships with our spouses or children if we refuse to spend substantial time with them.
But, more importantly, union with God requires the grace of God. Holiness is not a natural endeavor. Through prayer, God imparts His divine life in us, the grace needed to be and remain united to Him. The saving work of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ accomplishes our salvation, the healing that sin causes, and frees us from the slavery of sin. Without God’s grace, accomplished in Jesus Christ, there is no union with God the Father (c.f. John 14:6).
How much time is needed?
I still agree with the suggestion quoted above of 30 minutes a day, but only for someone who is beginning their journey with Christ. If you are new in your life of faith, then 30 minutes a day of prayer as a minimum is solid advice. This is not as hard to accomplish as it may sound. If you divide it in two chunks of 15 minutes or even three chunks of 10, it becomes pretty accessible.
But for those of us who have walked the way of Christ for some years, and especially those of us who have been called to positions of leadership, I recommend a minimum of one hour of prayer per day. Again, this can be divided in different chunks of time. If you pray the Daily Office, for example, praying Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer will take you 80% of the way.
Why one hour?
While I don’t want to propose a hard and fast rule that must be adhered or else…I’d still argue that one hour of prayer time a day as a minimum is a good practice if we want to seriously pursue holiness, or union with God. The principle behind the recommendation (again, it is nothing but a recommendation, not a rule to be imposed!) is that relationships require time and attention in order to grow.
If we want good friends, we must invest our time and attention with them. If we want solid relationships with our spouse and children, we must sacrifice our time and attention to spend time with them.
We may object, in part because of the epidemic of busyness in the West, that quality is more important than quantity. After all, if the quality of time spent together is low then simply adding more time will destroy that relationship! But raising this objection creates a false dichotomy. It seems obvious that both quality and quantity of time are important, and relationships work in such a way that quality time often won’t come unless one invests first in the quantity of time in a relationship. Time is required to build rapport, for example, and this cannot be rushed or forced, but must be allowed to flow naturally and slowly as we dedicate time together.
But who has the time nowadays…
I get it. I have 4 kids under 6 and many times I struggle to find the time. This is also a good time to confess that I don’t always follow this advice, and that I am currently working on finding the time. Some days are easier than others, but whenever I have followed it, I have never regretted it!
But, if we are too busy for us to spend at least one hour of our day in prayer, then we must simply admit that we are too busy to have a relationship with God. If that is the case, we need to make a serious inventory of our life, the way we spend it, and whether they match our desired priorities.
We might find through this inventory that we are giving ourselves to less worthy causes. Humans are an idol making factory, and it comes natural to us to construct golden calfs, even if they are worthy, needed and beautiful pursuits, that steal us from the most important pursuit of our life.
On average, we are wasting much of our time! The average American spends 4.5 hours on their phone. We also spend an average of 2.5 hours watching TV. As a society, we like to think we are busy, and yet we are still making substantial time for our phones and TVs.
This may not be the case for you, and you may find yourself genuinely too busy for that amount of prayer. If that is truly your case, then I suggest a moment of discernment where you can decide what to leave behind to make the time for God.
The hidden treasure found in prayer is worthy of us selling all that we have to buy the field! (C.f. Matthew 13:44-46). Once you are convinced of this reality, the giving up of less worthy and even good pursuits should be a no-brainer. You will also find that prayer aids and empowers you to better pursue your other obligations and responsibilities!
I invite to come and walk with me this wonderful path of a deep inner life with our Lord. I invite you to make the jump of faith, and sumerge yourself in the deep waters of intimacy with our God.
