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It is easier to find laborers to work than children to play. It is the words that the Lord spoke to a sister Maria the Trinity, a mystic of the early 20th century, speaking about the fact of his inviting her to a life of deeper prayer, a life of not being busy about so many things but wasting her time, so to speak, by just being with him in contemplation and admiration. As remark as it's easier to find laborers than it is to find children to play. The reality is that prayer does incorporate something of play for us. We don't often think about it but play as integral to our life in Christ. The great liturgist, Romano Guardini, who works the Spirit of Liturgy and the Lord, were the things that prompted Pope Benedict XVI to write his book, The Spirit of Liturgy and his three volumes set Jesus of Nazareth, who is Guardini who, in his book on Spirit of Liturgy, affected specifically dedicating a chapter to playfulness in the Liturgy. There is a sense of childlike wonder that we ought to have here. A sense in which we are not bound by doing things and having to meet goals, but rather just enjoying it. A lightheartedness. Yesterday I had the joy of going to the Ottoman Zoo with one of my god daughters and her four little siblings, together with their parents. And zoo trips are very different for adults versus children. The adults, you go to the zoo and you pay good money because you're going to see animals. I mean, if I wanted to do something other than the sea animals, I'd probably go somewhere else about what I'm choosing. So you go and you walk in, what animals are we going to see? And where are they? But the children just want to run around like wild maniacs, as if the monkeys had accidentally been laid out the cage right at the front gate. It was interesting because my two friends and I are going around and spending time looking at the animals and trying to hurt the little wild animals that were the five children. And going about place to place, looking at the different exhibits and things. But the highlight of the day for the children was Monkey Hill appropriately. Monkey Hill, right next to it, there's a big water feature where water just flows down the hill. And the kids played in it. For the better part of the time we were there. They just ran back and forth, screaming with all joy, splashing water at each other, having a great time. The second favorite place for them during the time of the zoo was anywhere there was some kind of bench. Initially the places where they have some show they put on like the sea lions, they've got the teared seats where you can sit. And the kids were just run back and forth on them. Never mind the animals. There are things to run on here. Let us run. The animals I think probably figured in perhaps third on the list, maybe fourth. If we count the fact that we walked through the gift shop, which was like Christmas happened again. The parents experience was very different. Parents constantly trying to look and make sure that the kids are tinnitus, that there are in fact five counting seemed constantly. One, two, three, four, five. Making sure, because a couple of them are young enough to run off and probably wouldn't even see them. This focus upon doing things, getting places, seeing stuff. We had our list. Spending time there. Spent a fair amount of time such that the security guard at one point was standing behind us letting us know you have to leave. We're closing up. So they kindly escorted us to continue to walk out the zoo to make sure we didn't linger too long here or there. And as we're walking out, the adults of course trying to be sensible about time and they're closing. We've got to be respectful with these people and this is the other thing. The kids go, "Oh look, a big statue of a bird. Let's go climb on it." And off they run. The simple thing. They weren't worried about all the other stuff. It was just water to play in. Abense to run along. A bird to climb up. All of these things were done for the sake of doing it. Leisure is doing things for the sake of doing it. Not because of some other reason. Not to be able to check off some box or to complete some task. It's doing it because we enjoy it. Because it recreates us. It restores us in mind, body, and heart. Prayer ought to be something of that. But prayer just as the zoo trip can be different things for different people depending on age. So also prayer could be different things. For some people prayer is that light-heartedness, that joy of being in the Lord's presence, a spending time there and having to set on alarm. Not because you want to make sure you spend enough time there, but rather you need to make sure you actually get the other stuff done during the day that needs to be done. Because left to yourself you could just spend all day long. There are also those others who tend to see prayers perhaps the thing that needs to be done. A task that needs to be checked off. A ritual or rhythm that needs to be stuck to. All these things are prayer in some sense. But they're very different experiences of it. Whatever we consider prayer, it is for us again to remember that prayer is not a thing to be done. But rather it's a person to encounter. It's a gift to receive from God of being alive and by Him in a particular way. And the same matter that it's easier to find laborers to work than it is to find children to play, as our Lord said. It is easier for us to say prayers rather than to pray. By myself know that well. Anyone who has regular rhythm of prayer, especially in the obligation, the burden of prayer, so to speak of the liturgy, the hours, self-disassistures, the perhaps others, know that when you pray the same thing over and over again, day after day, year after year, at some point the magnificot that you pray every single night, you can pray without remembering that you prayed it. And yet your word said it, came out of your mouth. And it's the thing that was said, but not necessarily something that was prayed. It was said, but not really from the heart. And that's a distinction is one is we can do the labor of prayer to do the thing. But it's a different thing for us to speak to our Lord from our heart, to allow our words, whether scripted or spontaneous, to be something that pours out from us rather than simply found upon our lips. And so prayer is this invitation for us to enter in and to play before our God our Father. And sometimes we may think that's a bit infantile, just treating prayer too casually. The prayer is a very serious thing. We ought to be serious about it and a very intent upon it. And we have to have that structure and order all these things. And there's certainly a place for structure and order. It's not every time we go to pray, which is just kind of be while all over the place. The structure and order is good and necessary for us in the Christian life. It is for us to acknowledge that prayer should be something that is in some manner enjoyable, a friendship, again that relationship and not merely a task that has to be completed. The goal of prayer is to spend time with God. One of the things that happens during that time of prayer is that we ought to be aware of our affections. It's the classical term for things that we would simply describe as our thoughts, our feelings and our desires. It's not just kind of emotional woo-woo again, treating our prayers if it was just all about the feelings. Looking at our prayer and saying, "I felt good, therefore it was good prayer, or I felt bad today, I felt sad today, I frustrated or mad today, therefore it wasn't good prayer. That's a poor description and poor understanding of determining our prayer and the place of feelings with its regard." Rather, it is for us to know that there must be the things of the mind and of the heart for us to engage in God. Dom Leho de, a writer of the classic work on mental prayer, he said, "If all of our time in prayer is spent considering things, the meditation where we just kind of get caught in the minution, think and think and think and think and think, if all of our time is spent thinking, we have no time then made to simply love God or praise Him. Or adore Him or thank Him. We must have meditation, we must think about things, but our thinking ought to lead to those thoughts, feelings and desires that arise within us. And there is the ember that helps to light the fire of our soul to keep things running. Sometimes when we think again that whenever we have thoughts, whenever we have feelings, when we have desires, that those things can be perhaps hindrances to our prayer. This thing is happening within me, therefore I need to ignore it, I need to push it down, put it off the side, just get it away so I can focus on the thing again because I'm getting distracted, I'm not able to think about the prayer. Keep having these other things. When in fact the Lord's going, that's me, speak, listen. Our Lord's ministry always he went about, the vast majority of the things that we have recorded in the gospels happened when Jesus was going from one place to another and somebody interrupted him. Somebody had a need. And I think he does a similar thing back to us in our prayer. And our time of prayer is we're kind of going about in our time of prayer, there are times where he just kind of interjects himself into things. And it says, I would like to take a pause here and take some of your time. We're like to stop here and let's think about that thing that we just heard. Not those words that were just said, in that thought, feel or desire that perhaps it's a risen in one's own heart. The Lord wants to speak to those things and as such he interrupts us. It is for us to spend time with those things. St. Francis to sales spoke of tending to our affections and lingering there as describing a bee going from flower to flower. He's going looking for the pollen and whatever he finds when he stays and flex all that can be gathered and then whatever he's done, buzzes off to find another one. And when full up goes back home and unloads and goes back again for another round. My spiritual director spoke about it as our experience of like going through a museum. Nothing is forced upon us whenever we go to a museum that we have to stop and look at every single piece along the way and give it time and attention. It is perfectly reasonable to walk into a room, look around and go cool and walk out of it to the next room. And then going into that room to look around to find one piece you like and it's been an hour sitting there in front of it. And after an hour, whatever time, when you feel that's enough for you that day, that it is satisfied the goal of going to the museum. Whenever you've spent that time kind of wrestling in your heart in some way, you get up and leave. And no one can shame you for not having spent the whole rest of the time looking at every single other painting in the place. It was fruitful. And so much the same as our imitation for prayer. Whenever something happens that may interrupt our thought and to interrupt our consideration of meditation, very often is the Lord simply saying, "Let's stop here and pay attention to this for a while and to stay with it, the linger and the sweetness of it." And selecting them through particular ways of praying the house so to speak of our prayer is to briefly kind of allude to those here. Again, all of this is presuming that we understand prayer and are striving to live prayer as a relationship. And as such, we can simply talk to God as a friend, as a close companion. We can say to a friend, to a spouse, to a sibling, to a neighbor, we say things like, "Please, thank you. I'm sorry. I love you." That's amazing. How is your day? Here's how mine was. And we can do similar things with our Lord. If you want to put it in theological terms to be able to make it sound a little less casual, please is offering acts of petition to our Lord, being our needs to Him. Thank you as offering God thanksgiving for gifts given and received. I'm sorry is making our act of contrition to repent of our sin. I love you, as act of adoration. To say, "You are amazing," is to offer praise. To speak about one's day is simply to acknowledge the other, that express desire of one's heart into relationship. One can go with wherever one is in the spiritual life, just by that method. If you're regularly accustomed to spending time and prayer with our Lord, good. Then I would invite you perhaps to look like a crazy person by not having a thing attached to your ear, and yet still walking around talking to someone. The Lord. To speak to God going throughout the day about the things that are happening around you within you that happen before or after. Simply to speak to God from your heart is a great grace. If perhaps you haven't prayed in a while, if you've done really prayed perhaps. Perhaps it might be as meeting a new friend with all the awkward joy that's part of that. Sorry, I haven't talked to you in a while. Kind of a bad friend, just kind of forget to contact you at all. No text message or nothing. Or maybe just kind of never now and then a little check in on a superficial level. But I haven't really sat down with you for a while. I've missed that. I've missed the times that we had in the past perhaps. Maybe if you've never had a relationship with God, I've never experienced that with you. I would like to. Let me know something about this friendship with God. What does it mean? What does it look like? Just to speak in our own words to Him is prayer and profound prayer. It's not a small thing. When we look at the lives of the saints, we look at the great writers, the mystics of the church. They think themselves often have these mystical experiences or Christ speaks to them in words. They're able to hear it or to see Him face to face and write these things down. Their response, their prayer, is essentially the same as what ours ought to be. He has normal to speak about what's happening in the mind and the heart. And to give it to God. To tell Him about it. To tell Him how we're doing. A way that's probably more comfortable for many Catholics is to take our root prayer and to make it more relational. We like our root prayer, our prayer cards, our prayer books. Who among us doesn't have probably at least a small stack of things. And perhaps depending on your age, you might have a nice well-worn book of prayers. It's a good thing, an essential part of the spiritual life, to have these prayers, to be able to lean upon. To have the mind of the church there to shape us, to shape our prayer. But here too, an invitation perhaps to allow those root prayers to be interrupted by the Lord, wanting to do something, and perhaps to dive a little deeper. Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, give several book length interviews during this time as a cardinal. And one of them is a book called God in the world. And they're talking about praying the rosary. And the interviewer, the journalist, he asked, "How do you pray the rosary?" He said, "I pray the rosary." "I like everybody prays the rosary." "Do the mysteries, just like we learned." And he said, "No, really? How do you pray the rosary? Do you pray one mystery? Do you pray all the mysteries? Do you do one set of mysteries? What happens? What do you do?" And he said, "Well, typically I pray two or three mysteries." And one might think, the Pope can't even get all five of the mysteries in on a set? Goodness gracious. But his reason was an interesting one. It was that, usually as I'm praying the mysteries, by the time I get to the second or at most the third, typically, I've been brought to a place of prayer that the mysteries are meant to foster. And so it would be wrong of me to simply skip by the deeper part of prayer, merely to finish off superficially, perhaps, the praying of the rosary, to miss the deeper meaning of it all, to bypass the purpose of the rosary. He was willing to allow it to be interrupted because the interruption was God saying, "Let's stay here. Let's spend time on this." And so as we're praying, our wrote prayers, be there are fathers, Hail Mary's, Gloribis, prayers to our favorite saints, to our Lady, Litany's, rosary's, chaplets, whatever. It's for us to pray them, but also to pray them in such a posture that we're open to responding to things that may happen within us. Perhaps we start to offer a little prayer, but we start on a favorite litany of ours, and we get to the third or fourth different title of our Lord, our Lady, and something strikes us about it. We go, "Hmm, that's really beautiful. That might just be the invitation to stay there a while, and to continue to reflect upon it. What does that mean? What is the value in it? What is it doing? Why is it speaking out to you at that point? Is the Lord trying to say something to you? Is there something you would need to say to him? Again, the thoughts, the feelings, the desires, all of these things can start to arise within us. There's something that appeals to us. There's a need we have, a desire, we have a longing we have. And all of this we're meant to be bringing to our Lord, again, to linger with it, as in the museum. The third way is for us simply to have some kind of structure to our prayer. The first one is the most unstructured and can be done anywhere in any place in any circumstance. The second is our more formalized prayer, and the fact of things that are scripted for us. Whereas the third is more personal, but more from what one's own heart. As I mentioned last week, the municipal plan, the structure for it, is to know and to have set out ahead of time, the place, the time, duration as well, and the content of what we're going to pray. This afternoon, I'm going to go walk and pray the rosary at the park. Check all the boxes. I'm going to wait for the daily readings for Mass today for 15 minutes before breakfast. Check all the boxes. I'm going to take my lunch break and eat a sack, and spend a few minutes doing an exam and a midday exam and to see how am I doing with the shortness of patience that I've perhaps had recently. Check all the boxes. Whatever it is to be able to have a place, a time, the content, set up of the thing of what we're going to do. And then it's good for us as we enter into it again to take a moment and place ourselves in the presence of God. Remember that the Lord is with us. He's not just somewhere up there. He's not just somewhere out there. He's with us. In Manuel, God who come to make his dwelling in a very soul. Our Lord is there and He is with you. He comes to provide these graces and to be aware of Him. To be aware of Him. It's a tremendous thing to be aware of Him. It changes everything. And it doesn't necessarily take a long time. There could be a profound difference for me and doing my daytime prayers if I take five seconds just to remember that God is present that I'm praying to. Rather than just immediately dive into God come to my assistance and start firing through it. Just a few seconds even spent. Just to be aware of God's closeness. That He's attentive to us. He's paying attention. Just like the kids who are running back and forth in the water. Parents able to just watch and delight in them as they played. To see the beauty it is. And our Lord does the same with us. He watches us. Not in some kind of stern judge from on high type of bone. But as a loving father who wants to bestow good gifts on his children. And so it's to be mindful of Him who's looking upon us. And then to take our time and prayer. Pay attention to whatever it is, the content of our prayer. And then whatever something catches us again. Linger with it. Stay there. Talk to God about the thoughts, feelings, desires that may arise in your heart. Be honest, be vulnerable. Make space for Him to respond if indeed He desires to. And then keep on going. If your prayer times up. For your glory be here, whatever you conclude to say goodbye to our Lord and call it a day. If you've got a few more minutes. Keep diving into something else. And it's in all of these things to recognize that our prayer is a primary place for us to have those things of our heart brought to God to bring about the conversion. For us not to again simply think that they are hindrances to our holiness, hindrances to life of prayer. Whenever we give place to thoughts, feelings, and desires, it opens our heart to God and allows us to receive. And so this is the grace that we can ask for. Whatever it is, it's been time before Him. If we simply are aware of those things and bring them to Him, it will be good prayer. Perhaps we go to prayer and we're sitting there in our meditation. And we read the passage we have, the message of the road, the passage from the rosary mystery that we're trying to meditate upon. We have whatever the content is. We're going through and absolutely nothing happens. I think every one of us has probably been there if you've prayed more than once or twice in your life. It seems like there's no response. You read through the passage you go, "Cool. Don't know what to do with that." Well, do we just kind of make up things? Do I make up thoughts to have? Do I make up feelings? Absolutely not. Because if we remain in that place, something will very likely happen. I don't know about you. I tend to get impatient. Well, Lord, do something anytime now. I mean, we're 10 minutes into this hour. We've got 50 more. So whatever you want to show up and something, right? And then I can start to have that happening in me. And then perhaps I'll realize, maybe I didn't come here with the right intention to pray today. Maybe I didn't come here really to be with God. Maybe I've been kind of busy and just need a fix. Need something to be done. Need a homily to come out of this meditation. Need an answer to this prayer that I have. Well, sorry, Lord, I shouldn't treat you just as the vending machine. And then we can start to have that deeper prayer. A real conversation is happening at that point. So even when nothing happens, something can still happen. Because always within us there is something. Unless we are utterly dead inside. There is always something within our hearts. And so to offer this holy mass, to come and encounter our Lord once more, is to be filled with the gift of the Eucharist, the gift of the grace that pours forth from the altar. And to ask the Lord that it may be an strengthening in the grace and the gift of prayer. For us to have the willingness to make time for God every day. For us to have the willingness to speak to Him, to listen to Him. Just have that willingness to play before Him. Not to be busy about so many things that prayer doesn't have a space in our life anymore. Indeed, because we can be busy about many things, but miss the most important thing sitting at the feet of Jesus. And so we ask the Lord to strengthen us, to continue the conversion of our hearts. That indeed, though there were many laborers to work, we would be numbered among those children who delight to play in His presence.