Help Aleteia continue its mission by making a tax-deductible donation. In this way, Aleteia's future will be yours as well.
*Your donation is tax deductible!
While many of us are early birds and wake-up easily, preferring to pray in the morning; the rest of us are night owls and thrive when the sun goes down.
In either case, its important to break-up your day by pausing in the evening hours to give thanks to God.
Praying before dinner
Night owls may prefer to pray at night, but at the same time, it is very easy to forget to pray entirely, or to lose the energy needed to have a meaningful time of prayer.
This is why it can be a beneficial practice to take a break and pray before eating dinner.
St. Francis de Sales recommends this practice in his Introduction to the Devout Life:
As I have counseled you before your material dinner to make a spiritual repast in meditation, so before your evening meal you should make at least a devout spiritual collation. Make sure of some brief leisure before suppertime, and then prostrating yourself before God, and recollecting yourself in the Presence of Christ Crucified, setting Him before your mind with a stedfast inward glance, renew the warmth of your morning’s meditation by some hearty aspirations and humble upliftings of your soul to your Blessed Savior, either repeating those points of your meditation which helped you most, or kindling your heart with anything else you will.
Life can be busy and if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t always make the time needed to spend with God.
If the morning is a terrible time to pray, then the next best option is to pray in the evening hours.
This will take a deliberate effort to stop what you are doing and pray, but if you are able to schedule it into your daily life, it won’t be a problem.
Whatever you do, try to frequently place yourself in the presence of God and allow the warmth of his love to invade your heart.
And today we celebrate...