Without Ceasing

I Thessalonians 5:17 — "Pray without ceasing" in most translations — is a tiny little Bible verse that has had an enormous impact on the history of Christian practice. Some of the modern paraphrase translations render it as "Pray all the time," "Pray continually," "Keep on praying," and "Never stop praying." The meaning is always the same: no need for theological  hairsplitting here. One of the marks of Christian spirituality is the call to perpetual prayer.

Of course, over the ages this has been interpreted and applied in many different ways. The orthodox Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner") has been used as a breath-prayer for those who wish to take I Thes. 5:17 at its most literal. The Benedictine approach to the question of continual prayer has been to create a culture of ora et labora ("prayer and work"), where the day’s tasks are alternated with seven liturgical "hours" or prayers for specific times of the day. For the agricultural Celts, various poem-prayers were (are?) recited at every significant task of the day, from lighting the fire to milking the cow to churning the butter. Then there is the ultimate goal of contemplative prayer: to use the time spent in focussed silence as a "practice time" for cultivating a prayerful mind and heart, enabling even the most mundane of daily tasks to be bathed in the light of continual awareness of the presence of God.

Pray without ceasing. However you choose to take up the challenge, I think it’s a worthy goal.