After 3 hours of laying sod in 40 degree weather, I was more than ready for a hot shower. As I was walking back to my cabin, I realized I still needed to pray my daily rosary. I knew I wouldn’t have any time later that evening, so I decided to pray while I cleaned up from work projects and prepared for dinner. It was a profound time of prayer.
I prayed the first decade of the Luminous Mysteries, the Baptism of Jesus, while showering. As the hot water thawed out my freezing fingers and toes and soothed my body after a long work day, I imagined that the Holy Spirit coming upon the Lord at baptism gave a similar feeling to Christ’s soul. As water rained down on my tired head, I imagined Jesus, my God and my friend, being submerged in the water of the Jordan. I was able to relate with His humanness in that moment.
The second Luminous mystery is the Wedding Feast at Cana. While I shaved the scruff from my cheeks with a razor that was well past its lifespan, I imagined Christ preparing to be a guest at this wedding. Christ wouldn’t shave his scruff or dress up simply to impress, but rather to present himself in a way that showed honor to the couple being married and the people around him. Simply realizing the fact that Christ, too, went through the daily routine of getting ready for the day and taking care of His bodily hygiene continued to make these mysteries more relatable to my life.
During the Proclamation of the Kingdom, I made my bed. During the Transfiguration, I cleaned my room. During the Institution of the Eucharist, I sat in my clean room and reflected on the transforming power of the Eucharist that I receive every Sunday and most other days during mass. If I could turn my room from dirty to clean in under 10 minutes, how much more could Christ turn my soul from disaster to beautiful an instant?
There is something special about being able to pray the Rosary in the still and silence of a chapel while allowing Christ to reveal the mysteries of His life, but I think this specific prayer experience says something special about our call to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). I could have showered, shaved, made my bed, cleaned my room, and gone and played a video game for a bit before dinner and would’ve thought nothing of it. The simple decision to include prayer in my work allowed Christ to be with me during a seemingly insignificant part of my day.
As a missionary, I may be in a special place where prayer is scheduled and almost seems easy, but if I would have known in high school that I could have a powerful prayer experience while getting ready for my day or doing other menial household tasks, prayer would have been much easier and my relationship with Christ much more consistent. This experience has motivated me to not only pray during my scheduled holy hour and community prayer time, but to also invite Christ into the little, seemingly insignificant parts of my day.
