How morning prayer can refresh your soul

Starting the day off with prayer can do wonders for your spiritual life.

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Are you a morning person? For some of us, mornings are always the best part of our day. It is the time to begin fresh and look forward to what the day has in store.

For others, mornings are dreadful. We simply do not want to get out of bed!

Nevertheless, regardless of whether you are a morning person or not, the mornings remain an important part of anyone’s routine, especially when it comes to prayer. Typically the way we begin our day will dictate how the rest of our day unfolds. If we begin it with prayer, prayer will more likely be part of our daily activities.

Fr. Francis Xavier Lasance reflected upon this reality in his My Prayer Book.

There is a freshness about the early morning which belongs to no other period of the day. The sun has a more kindly brightness and the air a fresh crispness which are lost largely as the day grows older. Upon awakening we throw open the window wide and let in the buoyant atmosphere of the new-born day. It fills our lungs and brightens our eye and makes us feel how good it is to live.

Lasance continues his reflection by explaining the benefits of morning prayer.

What the new-born day is to our physical nature the morning prayer is to the life of the soul. It is opening the windows of the heart that the clear air of heaven may flow in. It reinvigorates the life within us and turns our thoughts toward the One we love the most. It is a source of renewed strength, and gives a buoyancy to the spiritual step and a clearness to the inner vision. It floods the heart with the breath of life and bathes it in the sunshine of God’s smile.

Our morning prayer time needn’t be long. We can even pray while we are putting on our clothes.

To begin the day without imploring God’s grace and thanking Him for benefits received, is certainly wrong and exposes us to great danger. St. Francis Xavier says: “When you wake in the morning, raise your thoughts at once to heaven, and while you are putting on your clothes and washing your hands and face, call to mind the faults into which you fell the day before, and ask your Lord grace to avoid them this day.”

Consider incorporating some type of morning prayer into your day.