[00:00] After dismissing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain by himself to pray, and when it was evening He was there alone. In the Gospel we see our Lord praying and teaching us by His example how to pray, and we know that our consecration to our Blessed Mother, to the Immaculate, has as one of its

[00:32] most precious fruits the grace of prayer. Our Lady leads us to deeper prayer, and it makes sense because if we look at consecration to her as entering into her Immaculate Heart, inside of that Immaculate Heart what do we find? We find Our Lady's thoughts about Christ, Our Lady's knowledge of Christ, Our Lady's own conversation with Christ, Our Lady's own prayer life. So inside of that Immaculate Heart of Our Lady we find Christ and gain access to Him like we've

[01:06] never had before, and that's what the mystics of the 20th century in particular teach us. It might seem that this apparently more direct contact with Christ outside of Our Lady is preferable. Why have a mediatrix? And yet, because God wants us to know Christ through her, when we enter into her heart we know Christ and we enter into a relationship with Him that is unprecedented, unparalleled.

[01:37] So that's one of the graces Our Lady wants to give us, but prayer, even for those who are consecrated to her, will always be a battle. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls prayer a battle, and nothing will exonerate us from the battle of prayer. Why is it a battle? For many reasons. One of these reasons is that we will always in prayer have distractions, and that's what I wanted to focus on today, how to deal with distractions in prayer, because the Catechism says the habitual difficulty we face in prayer is exactly that,

[02:12] distractions. We want to be with God alone, like our Lord. He separates Himself. He goes up the mountain to pray alone. We want to be with Christ alone, and yet we bring our distractions with us, and we have to battle against them. So two points I'd like to make today that I think will be useful for our life of prayer, nothing really new, but reviews are always good. These two points are the first that we can and we should avoid the avoidable. Some distractions are

[02:46] avoidable. We should avoid them. And then the second point is some are unavoidable. We should endure them. Avoid the avoidable, if that makes sense, and then endure the unavoidable. So the first point, we can actually reduce the number of distractions we bring to prayer, and we can do it in two ways, by eliminating the proximate source and the remote source. So the proximate source is picking

[03:16] simply a good environment in which to pray. Our Lord goes up on a mountain to pray. He goes up to pray all alone. He prays at night, where there are fewer distractions. And we too, when we try to pray, should find a time and a place where we have fewer distractions. To a great extent, that depends on us, when we choose to pray and where we choose to pray. If we really value our life of

[03:48] prayer, this isn't dogmatic, but the advice of the saints is that if you really value your prayer life, we will pick the best time of day to pray, and usually that means getting up early, so as to pray before the distractions of the day begin. Getting up early might be painful, but our life of prayer is worth it. So go to a place where you're alone, where you can be quiet, and when you go there, limit the distractions that you bring with you. Perhaps don't bring

[04:21] your phone at all, or put it in airplane mode, silence it. Don't bring your tablet, turn off the TV, don't have it playing in the background, don't sit on your front porch and watch the life of the neighborhood go by, right? We have to limit the distractions, avoid the avoidable. Our senses, again, can be a source of great distractions, and like parents, parents have to keep out of the reach of their children, whatever they don't want their kids

[04:53] to put their hands on, right? So if you don't want your child to be playing with this toy, or that thing, or this thing, you have to put it up, I don't know, put it somewhere where it's out of sight, where it's out of reach, and so we have to do with our senses. If we don't want our senses to be distracted, we have to put out of reach of our senses what's going to distract them, and usually, again, that's screens, sounds, noises, etc. Okay, so that's the proximate source of

[05:25] distraction for us, so picking a good time, picking a good place to pray. The remote source of distraction means, outside of moments of prayer, be careful what we put in our mind, because if we fill our mind with useless things, these things will stay in our mind as a constant source of distractions, even when we want to be alone, even when we want to have our mind free for prayer. All that junk is actually still going to be there, right? So just throughout our

[05:59] day, throughout our entire life, the stuff, the images, the sounds, the music, the lyrics, the gossip, the conversations, everything that we put in our mind that is useless is going to follow us wherever we go to pray. You go up a mountain to pray, it's gonna be there. You go do a 30-day retreat in the middle of nowhere, that stuff is gonna be there. Those cat videos are gonna be playing in your mind still. That's why we have to be careful about the useless stuff that we put in our minds, right? And here, the fault for our distractions can

[06:35] frequently be ours. One spiritual writer, Father Tanqueray, classic says, we must reduce the number of distractions by a vigorous fight against our causes, habitual dissipation of the mind, the habit of daydreaming, the preoccupations and attachments that absorb the mind and the heart. So a general discipline of the mind, right? A general vigilance about what we allow to enter through the senses. Why? Because it's gonna follow us everywhere, forever.

[07:09] And if we don't exercise caution and allow the things of the world to enter and to fill our minds and imaginations, then that's what our minds and imaginations will be filled with. Again, useless videos, useless music, useless conversations, useless worries, useless imaginings, useless fill-in-the-blank. St. Dominic Savio, he was an amazing saint, probably all heard about him without

[07:39] going into his life. St. Dominic Savio died at the age of 15 and used to say to himself, "I wish to keep my eyes pure so that they can see Our Lady in heaven one day." Because those who are pure of heart will see God, will see Our Lady, will see heaven. And this is true about heaven, seeing God and Our Lady in heaven, but it's also true about our relationship with Jesus and Mary on earth. If we keep our eyes pure, we will more easily see them, converse with them, already on earth.

[08:14] If instead, if I keep my glasses clean, right now actually the glare of the lights is reminding me I should have wiped these glasses before Mass, now it's too late. But if we keep our lenses clear, we'll be able to see through our glasses better. And the same thing with our minds and our relationship with our Lord. If we keep our senses, our eyes pure, we'll better be able to see, hear, and interact with Jesus and Mary. If instead, we let all sorts of dirt accumulate on

[08:45] our lenses, well then we'll see poorly, already here on this earth. Even if we go up on a mountain alone to pray, these are the glasses I'm taking with me, they're dirty, oh my goodness, there's smudges on them, that's my fault. St. Padre Pio says one more thing. So, so far we've been talking about avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, and that's true, because we have to avoid a lot. But then, I think a useful thing, and I know you people are very good and holy and take your prayer life very

[09:15] seriously, so we also have to make an effort to put good things in our mind. So avoid the stuff that's avoidable, avoid the stuff that's not beneficial, that's useless, and do what instead? Pursue the stuff that is useful, that is beneficial. Put content in your mind that is going to help you rise up to God. Think of God, think of Our Lady. St. Padre Pio, in one of his letters of spiritual direction that I recently read, emphasizes the importance of spiritual reading. He says

[09:46] to one of his spiritual daughters, "I pointed out to you the great spiritual benefit to be gained by reading holy books, and I also showed you the need for such reading in the case of those who are seeking Christian perfection, who want to be saints, like all of you. Up to the present, you have, however, disregarded all of this that I've told you," Padre Pio says. "I've written you beautiful letters about how you should be doing spiritual reading, and you're not doing any of it, and yet it's so important. What was she doing? This very pious and devout

[10:17] spiritual daughter was doing what we would in today's language call, she was reading devout blogs and watching Catholic YouTube videos, but Padre Pio says that's not enough, it's not substantial enough. As regards your reading, he says, there's very little to be admitted and hardly, there's very little to be admitted and hardly anything by which to be edified. Again, she was just taking in very superficial Catholic content. It is absolutely

[10:47] necessary for you to add to such reading that of the holy books, so highly recommended by all the holy fathers of the Church, and I cannot tolerate that your soul remain deprived of such healthful food. It's time for you to come out of that state of indifference, for if you continue as before, it could be fatal for you, since the lack of that reading is depriving you of a great many spiritual benefits." Right, so the effort to avoid what's useless and the effort to

[11:20] intake, ingest what is really useful. And again, just to use this analogy, for Padre Pio, this woman was reading Catholic magazines and all sorts of easily digestible content. Padre Pio says that's not enough, that's not substantial enough. Don't just read Catholic blogs, don't just look at Catholic social media, don't just watch exciting Catholic videos, read actual books, substantial

[11:50] stuff that formed saints that will continue to form saints. Okay, last quick point. Even if you do your best to avoid the avoidable, there's still the unavoidable, and you simply have to endure it. This is where prayer is really a battle, because you've done what you... this is already hard work to avoid the useless and pursue the useful, and yet after that, the worst of the battle still is to come. You will have those distractions that come anyway,

[12:21] involuntary distractions that nevertheless scream out for your attention and don't want to leave you alone and don't want to let you pray and make you feel discouraged and make you think that your prayer is useless, because all your mind is doing is just refocusing, straying and then refocusing, straying and then refocusing. The saints tell us that involuntary distractions do not make our prayer ineffective or unmeritorious. They simply make it unpleasant. That's all they can do. They can't take away the effectiveness of

[12:55] your prayer. They cannot take away the merit of your prayer. They can simply take away the pleasure, the spiritual consolation of your prayer. That's all they can do. And how do we battle them? If our mind involuntarily strays to think of something outside of prayer, just as soon as you notice, refocus on God. And then it's gonna do it again. And then do what? Refocus on God. And your mind is

[13:25] gonna do it again, and then you refocus on God. As if, imagine you were in real life trying to have a conversation with Jesus and a fly lands on your nose. You swat it away. And if it comes back, you swat it away again. And if it comes back, you don't give up the conversation. You just keep swatting away the flies. All right. Prayer, the Catechism says, and we conclude, is really a battle. And for the saints, it was a battle. Not just for you. It was difficult for the saints. They

[13:57] have to do all of this. And it wasn't fun for them either. Prayer is a battle to avoid proximate and remote sources of distraction. And to repel those that come into our minds anyway. Now we started with the Immaculate Heart, and we end with the Immaculate Heart. The best place to pray, so to speak, is not necessarily a mountain at night, because we might not have that possibility. But we can always enter into the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady. That is to say, we can pray

[14:31] before praying. Ask Our Lady, "Allow me to enter into the refuge of your heart, and please, Mother Mary, keep out whatever is not going to help me to pray." Whether that be remote preparation. Mother Mary, during this day, please keep out of my mind whatever is not going to help me to pray tomorrow, or a week from today, or a year from today. Please don't allow me to fill my mind with junk. Please allow me to scroll past those really exciting cat videos that are not going to help me ten

[15:03] years from now to be a saint. Please help me to do that. Let me enter into your Immaculate Heart and keep all that junk out. And let me find there whatever is going to help me instead. Help me to read a book today that's going to help me. Help me to, yeah, maybe some videos will be helpful. They're not all bad. You know, we friars, we make a lot of good Catholic videos. Help me to watch the videos that are going to help me. That much we should value our life of prayer. Keep out of our

[15:36] minds whatever is not going to help us to pray, and put into our minds whatever will. That's the grace our Blessed Mother wants to give to each and every one of us. That's the grace of consecration to her. This deep life of prayer. Praised be Jesus and Mary.