Reduce The Noise

26 May

“You can’t get to know someone’s voice or have a good conversation with them when there’s too much noise in the background.”  ~ Mary Beth Weisenburger

One of the things that I find myself able to do is to remain focused with a lot of chatter going on.  I credit this to the years and years of experience praying the Mass.  Notice that I said “praying” the Mass and not “saying” the Mass.  To me, the Eucharist is the highest prayer in which a person, especially a priest, can be engaged.  It is the prayer in which God changes the bread and wine into His own Body and Blood.

When I focus on the prayers and actions of the Mass, I find myself entering a deeper relationship with God.  For a while, I find myself in a different place.  It is almost as if I am not at the altar in the church anymore but, rather, with all the people and all the souls who gather together to praise our God.

It takes a lot to break my concentration at Mass.  However, if it does, I find it really hard to get back into the prayer at that moment as I find myself focusing too much on what snapped my attention.  I find myself paying too much attention to the screaming child or the people milling around, or whatever else the disturbance might have been.

We have all experienced things like that.  We might find ourselves in the midst of a wonderful conversation with family or friend and something happens to disturb us.  Perhaps it is the insistent ringing of a phone or call of a child.  Perhaps it is the sound of sirens on the road outside.  It might even be the loud crack of thunder.  Whenever we are disturbed, we find it difficult to get back into the rhythm of our visit, do we not?

Our prayer life is something that requires silence in order to focus on God.  We need to do all that we can to remove, or, at least, reduce, the amount of “noise” that we allow into our prayer time.  Turning off the television or radio would be good starts.  Removing ourselves from noisy rooms and going to a place that is peaceful and quiet will also help.  Creating time in which we know we will not be disturbed is very important.

If we value our friendship with the Lord, we will do all of these and more in order to make sure that our conversation with Him goes along without interruption.

FAITH ACTION:  Make sure that you find some time to sit in silence while you pray today so that you can have the opportunity to hear God’s voice speaking to you.