i remember there was a joke where the coach grabbed his player and said "johnson what's the difference between ignorance and apathy?" and he says "i don't know coach and i don't care." father mike thank you so much for being here we're really excited to get to talk to you today same um we wanted to talk to you about prayer have you ever experienced prayer i'm i've thought about it i've i've really considered it i have considered praying yeah yeah someday i think i hope to hope to pray so what i wanted to ask you you know as a as you grow in your christian life and you know in your in your own private your prayer life you know you can imagine a monk an old monk god is going to kind of have maybe higher aspirations for his prayer life than maybe for a college student who is just discovering the faith you know personally so as you go about that journey how do you know that you have the prayer life that god wills for you yeah that's a great question you know actually i i don't know that i make the distinction that a monk would have a more a deeper prayer i mean in some ways objectively you'd think that they must have but i came across this quote from gosh who was it um sanchem and he talks about he said um about scripture reading and about prayer he said uh he said 'd don't bo don't don't waste my time by saying things like i'm too busy to pray or i don't have enough time to read the scriptures because i'm busy at work busy at whatever he said don't you realize you need prayer more than the monks because they're not assailed by the by the arrows and spears of daily life that you are and he went this whole list of things like because not only does your your boss annoy you but your spouse irritates you and your kids bother you and all these kind of things and you need prayer you need scripture more even than the monks and i was like wow that's that just resonated so deeply cuz i was like i think there's there's an an aspect there where it's i remember we had a uh seminarian who he was a seminarian and then he left he was discerned out and at one point he was apparently he told me later on he went to a priest and was like ah father i'm struggling to make a holy hour and the priest was like well you don't even need to you don't need to make a holy hour anymore you're not a seminarian anymore and and i just that always rubbed me the wrong way in that sense of wait no i father thomas dubet once said he said uh uh with the people who like i'm a dad i can't pray or i'm a mom i i can't pray and he's like "oh it's okay then don't pray no problem just if you if you are content being a mediocre dad then you're no problem just don't pray if you're content being a mediocre mom then you're right you don't have time to pray." i thought i couldn't get away with saying that father thomas dub if you ever met him before he passed away he was the most gentle man who could like "no no no no no problem no problem just just if you want to be mediocre absolutely go for it." that that's hilarious yeah so okay okay so that's a good a good followup here is is how do you go from like saying prayer right to praying you know because like that i think there's a difference there and when you want to start praying you know okay i'm going to say these prayers i'm going to say set you know say these set of prayers i'm ready to go and then you feel like you're kind of just checking the box right so how do you go from saying prayers to entering into that that relationship like mental prayer yeah mental prayer i think that um there's place for both and i think that needs to be affirmed for because anybody like that father oh it's not father mike gormley if you know mike yeah go he he i remember him saying this years ago and it just stuck with me he said as catholics we're not taught how to pray we're taught how to repeat and it always just kind of just resonated like yeah that is there's an aspect there but at the same time unless we're given those wrote words i i think there's sometimes in our lives where we need those memorized prayers um many times in our lives obviously that i remember one in particular uh for me it was just like oh my gosh lord thank you for this i was on a silent retreat i was already a priest i was on a silent retreat in the woods in northern minnesota and i went for a walk it was middle of january so super cold and just but you know that's so quiet it gets when when all there's is snow and ice and and i remember wanting to say something to god and i didn't have the words and at one point i just found myself reciting one of the psalms that we pray in the liturgy of the hours and i realized oh my gosh after these years i have this psalm that was imprinted on my heart like and now those were the words that i wanted to pray i just didn't have them on my own they they were you know from the words of scripture and there's something about the again the value of memorizing these prayers and having you know saying our prayers that's very val valuable because there's a point where our words fail uh i think that's why praying in the spirit can also be a very powerful thing because there's a point where our words fail but i think like you're getting at uh there's a point where every one of us needs to be taught mental prayer and even to call it that because i think when i'm saying my prayers i'm still praying if i'm talking to god if i'm aware of what i'm doing i'm still talking to god but but to be able to be introduced to things like ignation prayer or alexio deina is uh i i think we do this with our sixth graders we do a we have a camp we put on every every summer and we introduce them toxio deina we introduced them introduced them to le to ignation prayer into just that mental prayer and i think that to have a healthy balance of both is a really good thing what was your question again no that was i mean you answered no because what is actually like you know saying prayers verse actually prayer right you know i have so many times where i'll be praying or i'm supposed to be i'm really doing something else and then my time for prayer has you know it's like well now i need to get ready to go to work yeah it's like look look lord i hope you got something out of that i i had the intent of praying you know uh but yeah distraction is a common so common that it i mean the catechism has a whole section under the battle of prayer where it talks about distraction as it just that real thing that happens and the thing i have to fight against or fight be aware of is what are the distractions that just are naturally coming from prayer and what are the what are the distractions that i'm introducing to my prayer because i know that i like you mentioned you mentioned getting to the end of your prayer time and be like wow god i hope you got something out of that that's so good there are times where i get to the end and i think i just wasted that like that was that was on me like i intentionally went into prayer and i had my phone i was like "oh i'm going to i'm going to listen to something i'm going to pray with something." and then like "well i'm also going to check what's i haven't text my dad i'm going to text my dad quick." and i get to the end of that time and realize lord i sabotaged myself i did that to myself and even though i took that time i wasn't there for you i was i wasted it and so there's the intentional wasting which is what i'm guilty of at times and then there's the the normal distractions which happen which are like no actually that's i think that's god's uh one of the god's one of god's tools to purify our prayer and make it make it uh more fruitful and then there's also the beauty of wasting time together right like you you see the old couple at at at dinner together and they're not actually talking they're just sitting in each other's presence you know and that's kind of more the mental prayer the contemplative prayer right i'm just wasting time with you i'm just being with you yeah and there there and there see i'm glad you made that distinction because there is that good like you said that good sense of quote unquote wasting time with the lord where i'm just i'm present to you but don't have to say anything or do anything what i was describing was i'm not present to you i'm in your presence it's like the couple you see across from each other and they're both doing this right here yeah that that's a that's a distinction right so here's a old couple that's you know driving together and just enjoying each other's presence or sitting at a table enjoying each other's presence versus the couple who's i could they don't even have to be here right because i'm on my phone i'm somewhere i'm lit i'm here but i'm somewhere else and that's where i think like oh gosh lord i'll get to the end it doesn't happen a ton so you know but it does happen and when i let it happen i realized ah that was not wasting time with you god that was wasting the time that i had with you m i like that i like that so hey have you broken a rosary in the last 6 months cuz i haven't i've been using the same one for the last 8 years so have i and i've even let my little boys pray with this rosary without worrying about it breaking that's cuz we use rosaries from the catholic woodworker heirloom quality built to last so go pick up one today go to the catholic woodworker.com and make sure to search for the official rosary of the catholic man show you know a life living a life of prayer um is a big commitment and sometimes when i get up in the morning it's like all right i have to you know make i try to do a daily holy hour and you know when i wake up sometimes i don't feel like doing it right i do it anyway um but it is a big commitment and so i just i want to know why should someone do it it's hard i want you to convince me that it's worth or you know convince the listeners that it's worth doing you know i think that there's so every time we pray it's an act of faith yeah i'm sure you've heard of intermittent fasting yeah oh yeah so there was a time where everyone was like "yeah this is this what this does it changes like the cellular structure of your body like if you go 16 hours you go 18 hours all of a sudden you have autophagy and all these kind of things." that's like it's going to do incredible things your cells are going to slough off the dead cells and you rejuvenate your brain battle cancer all these things um and if you're convinced that that's what it does then yeah i'm going to i'm going to intermittent fast and then what recently in the last year two years people are like well the benefits are actually just that you're narrowing your window of when you're going to eat so you're still just it's still just merely restricting calories and so the whole point of that me going down that rabbit hole is when someone is convinced like this is going to make a difference yeah i'll do it it's going to make a difference i'm going to do it mhm i i believe that um if i diet if i exercise if i do whatever the thing is it is going to make a difference i'll do it if i if i'm not convinced it's going to make a difference maybe i'll do it because it's a good thing to do but maybe it won't because i don't know if it's going to move the needle at all and i think that's why prayer is such a powerful act of faith because what we're saying is i believe that in showing up and being present to the lord listening to his word or reading his word talking to him spending time in his presence i believe that this actually makes a difference in my life that the and it makes the difference that i want in my life like i'm not the man that i know he's called me to be he's redeemed me to be to be but if i spend time with him i will become that man if i know that that holy hour will make a difference then i'll do it but if a part of me is like ah i mean maybe it does maybe it doesn't i'll do it when it works out well and i i'll easily let it slip when it doesn't work out really well does that make sense yeah so how do you convey that to someone at work or you know a friend who you know where you're trying to convince them yeah no this is going to change your life and they say well what's going to change yeah that's a good question what i was going to ask you about this what changes well i think because i think part of it is this uh you might say hey if you get up early and you exercise for this amount of time then you're going to be stronger and someone says i don't need to be stronger i'm strong enough um yeah but if you uh add some more vegetables to your you know have more whatever i don't need that so and so i think a a big piece of this of this is not just knowledge if you do this this will happen it's it's caring it's it's meaning uh you know the old what's i remember there was a joke where the coach grabbed his player and said johnson what's the difference between ignorance and apathy and he says i don't know coach and i don't care and i think sometimes you tell me hey if you show up and you spend 30 minutes a day in front of jesus in the eucharist or you just even spend 30 minutes a day um listening deep in his word um you spend pray rosary one rosary a day just where you are attentive to the mysteries you're going to become more like jesus okay but i don't know if i want to become more like jesus and and so that would be the the the the key i can't convince someone that they want that because they might not um you got to have the charisma right yeah right there and you have to have that encounter with the lord because you're like "oh that and that's what he wants for me." i think sometimes i know for myself even the way i would say it like i just did is more compelling to me if someone likes i want to get holy yeah let's be holy if you spend time in prayer you'll be holy versus if you spend time doing this you'll look more and more like jesus you'll be able to live more and more like jesus you'll able to love more and more like jesus because i cannot currently do that i can't currently love the people in my life that i actually do love i can't love them the way jesus does but if i spend time with him my heart will begin looking like his and so if that is compelling i think that's a a one place to start or place to move through father mike thank you so much for being here uh we have a gift from you for you for from our friends at the catholic woodworker it's a no way this is a heirloom quality quality uh rosary rosary you'll love it oh that's awesome so thank you so much thank you for being here this is sorry i'm going to take a look yeah take a look oh this is awesome holy smokes yeah wood beads like that they they make themselves like it's really really good really thanks you guys thanks for for thanks for the time that was all of our time i know it goes by fast