The Problem
Most Catholics know they should pray more. Many have tried. They set the alarm earlier, bought a devotional book, resolved to pray the Rosary daily — and within two weeks, they had stopped. The alarm was too early. The book was dull. Life got in the way. And underneath it all, a nagging suspicion: am I even doing this right?
If this sounds familiar, you are in good company. The saints struggled with prayer too. St Teresa of Avila said she spent twenty years unable to pray without being distracted. St Thérèse of Lisieux fell asleep during prayer so often that she decided God must love her the way a parent loves a sleeping child. Even Jesus’s closest disciples fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane when He needed them most.
Prayer is hard. But it is also simpler than we make it.
Start Smaller Than You Think
The single most common mistake is starting too big. You decide to pray for thirty minutes a day, and by day four you have missed twice and given up entirely. This is not a failure of willpower. It is a failure of planning.
Start with five minutes. Not five minutes as a stepping stone to something bigger — five minutes as the thing itself. Five minutes of genuine prayer, done consistently, is infinitely more valuable than thirty minutes attempted once and abandoned.
Choose a time. Morning is ideal because the day has not yet had a chance to crowd it out, but any fixed time works — lunch, the school run, just before bed. The key word is fixed. Prayer attached to a specific moment in your routine survives. Prayer left to “whenever I get a chance” dies within a week.
Choose a place. A chair, a corner, a spot at the kitchen table. Sit in the same place each time. Your body will learn to associate that place with prayer, and settling in will become easier.
What to Do in Those Five Minutes
Here is a simple structure. It is not the only way to pray, but it is a good way to start.
Begin with the Sign of the Cross. This marks the transition from ordinary time to prayer time. You are stepping into God’s presence deliberately.
Be still for a moment. Do not rush to say words. Simply be aware that God is present. You do not need to feel His presence. You just need to know it. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
Talk to God. Tell Him what is on your mind. Thank Him for something specific — not a general “thank you for everything” but something real from today. Ask Him for what you need. Tell Him what is worrying you. You do not need special language. You do not need to sound holy. Speak as you would to someone who loves you and is listening.
Listen. This is the part most people skip, and it is the most important. Stop talking and simply be quiet for a minute. You will probably not hear a voice. You may not feel anything at all. That is normal. Listening in prayer is not about receiving messages. It is about making space — letting God work beneath the surface of your awareness, in ways you may not recognise until later.
End with a prayer you know. An Our Father, a Hail Mary, or simply “Jesus, I trust in You.” Close with the Sign of the Cross.
That is it. Five minutes. Done.
When Nothing Happens
You will have days — many days — when prayer feels empty. You sit down, you say the words, and nothing happens. No warmth. No consolation. No sense of God’s presence. Just you, sitting in a chair, talking to what feels like an empty room.
This is normal. It is so normal that the great spiritual writers have a name for it: dryness. And they are unanimous in saying that dry prayer is not failed prayer. It may, in fact, be the most valuable prayer of all.
Here is why. When prayer feels wonderful — when you are flooded with consolation and warmth — it is easy to pray. You are, in a sense, praying for the feeling. But when prayer is dry and you show up anyway, you are praying for God alone. You are saying, by your presence, that this is not about what you get out of it. It is about faithfulness. And faithfulness in dryness is worth more than enthusiasm in consolation.
St John of the Cross called this the “dark night” — and he said it was a sign of growth, not failure. God withdraws the feelings so that your love can deepen beyond feeling into something stronger and more real.
So when nothing happens: keep going. That is the whole secret.
Building Up Gradually
After a few weeks of consistent five-minute prayer, you may want to add something. Here are some options, roughly in order of simplicity.
The Morning Offering. A short prayer at the start of the day, offering everything you will do and suffer to God. It takes thirty seconds and transforms the entire day into a prayer.
A decade of the Rosary. Not the full five decades — just one. Ten Hail Marys, one Our Father, one mystery to rest your mind on. Three minutes.
A short Scripture reading. Open the Gospel of the day — your parish website or a Catholic app will have it — and read it slowly. One paragraph. Let a word or phrase catch your attention. Stay with it.
The Examen. A five-minute review of your day, developed by St Ignatius of Loyola. At the end of the day, ask: where did I encounter God today? Where did I resist Him? What am I grateful for? What do I regret? Bring it all to God and ask for grace for tomorrow.
A brief visit to a church. If you pass a Catholic church during the day, step inside for two minutes. Sit in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Say nothing if you like. Just be there.
Add one thing at a time. If it sticks, keep it. If it does not, let it go and try something else. There is no single method that works for everyone. The saints had wildly different prayer lives — what matters is not the method but the consistency.
The Enemies of Prayer
Three things will try to kill your prayer routine. Knowing them in advance helps.
Busyness. There will always be something more urgent than prayer. The emails, the children, the dishes, the deadline. Prayer will never feel urgent — and that is precisely why it must be given a fixed time that nothing else is allowed to take. If you wait until you have time to pray, you will never pray.
Discouragement. You will miss days. You will get distracted. You will feel that you are bad at this. The temptation is to conclude that prayer is not for you and quietly give up. Resist this. Missing a day is not a reason to stop. It is a reason to start again tomorrow. The saints missed days too.
The expectation of experience. If you come to prayer expecting to feel something — peace, warmth, closeness to God — you will eventually be disappointed, and you will interpret the disappointment as failure. Lower your expectations. Prayer is not about feeling. It is about faithfulness. The feelings come and go. The faithfulness is what matters.
The Promise
Here is what the saints all agree on: if you pray consistently, over time, your life will change. Not in dramatic, visible ways — though sometimes that happens too. In quieter ways. You will find yourself more patient. More aware of God in ordinary moments. More honest with yourself. More capable of love.
You will not become a different person. You will become more fully the person you were created to be. And that change begins not with thirty minutes of heroic prayer but with five minutes in a chair, every day, showing up.
Start tonight.