The cold days of winter are behind us as the days grow warmer and spring fills all of us with a sense of newness. As we near the end of the school year, in the midst of this newness, my thoughts are turning back to my family’s daily rhythm.

At the beginning of the school year, we were very dedicated to our routine. Although it was familiar each day, we checked things off our list in the same order each morning. Among those routines were clear opening and closings for our school day. As the year dragged on, and the workload increased, those routines faded away.

I’ve built a new routine, to carry us through the upcoming months, and I’ve designed it towards a rhythm of prayer. Not a burdensome schedule, but a monastic one adapted for our domestic life. I want to have checkpoints sprinkled throughout our day, with short opportunities for prayer. In a way, it’s like water stations along a race route. I never want us to be too far from prayer.

Real life is very normal, routine, and frankly boring. The same is true for the lives of the saints, including St. Joseph. He was an anonymous tradesman in a village of 200 people. But out of that ordinariness, something beautiful bloomed. I hope that our rhythm of prayer does the same for us.

Tags: Prayer