Archbishop Sheen on the battle of prayer

Priests have a sacred duty to pray the liturgy of the hours every day, as promised during their ordination. Yet some priests can find it difficult to engage with this practice of prayer, especially amid the demands of ministry and parish life.

In one of his classic works, The Priest Is Not His Own, the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen offered insight into this struggle to pray the divine office.

The breviary is not a personal prayer; it is an official prayer and therefore it is weighted down ‘with the burden of the Churches.’

Recasting the battle of the breviary, so to speak, in these terms may help:

Maybe the breviary was meant to be difficult for the average priest. Could it not be a wrestling with God, like that of Jacob (Gen. 33:24)? If we learn to see it in this light, it may still be a constant struggle, but it will fall into the category of incessant and prolonged intercession. We pray it then as Our Lord prayed in the garden…

May not the breviary also be difficult because in it we gather up not only all the intentions of the Church, but also the unpraying…

When we pick up the breviary, we pick up [billions] of unbelievers, fallen-away Catholics, the burden of the Churches throughout the world.

If the breviary be approached as a work, as a wrestling with God, as an intercession on the cross, as something intended to bring us not consolation but struggle, we shall eventually learn to enjoy the battle and turn it to the glory of God.

Quotations from pages 143-45, Ignatius Press edition

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