Praying through the noise

I was hurrying into church on a busy morning, running just a few minutes late, when I heard the sound. The panel for the security system next to the church door was beeping.

I went into the church and slipped into a pew. But the beeping carried into the church, so I could still hear it during Mass.

It was persistent, beating a steady rhythm. Just when I was starting to get used to it, I heard the whir of a lawnmower start outside.

As I listened to the readings, the background noises competed for my attention. I found myself thinking of how one of my favorite chapels for weekday Mass has construction just outside the church. The whirring of the engines and the beeping of the vehicles as they back up are a background to the liturgy, and we simply pray right through them.

On this particular morning, as the Mass unfolded through the beeping security alarm, I found myself thinking about how prayer still takes place in the midst of noise and busyness.

We can and should carve out time for peaceful reflection and meditation, giving space and time to sit with God and hear his voice. But even in silence, we can still be distracted by everything on our minds—the big question we need to answer, the difficult conversation we need to have with someone, the to-do list that grows longer and longer by the minute.

It would be easy to say that we could focus more fully on God in the silence, but life is not quiet. Life is overflowing with tasks and responsibilities. We can find God in the peaceful quiet of the world—and how beautiful it is to seek him there. But he also invites us to connect with him even in the midst of the chaotic busyness of our day. In fact, it might be that it is at those moments when need him most and look for signs of his love and mercy.

After all, we will always be distracted, so maybe the key is remembering what we’re about and why we’re here.

“When you have distractions, don’t distract yourself still more by stopping to consider the why and the wherefore,” said St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, whose feast day we mark this week.

And so we continue on our journey, praying through the noise, seeking God even in the midst of the beeping and the whirring and the noisy activity of our day.

 Print