If you want to imitate Fulton Sheen's extraordinary life of holiness, then you should consider adopting this important daily habit.
Often whenever we look-up to someone and admire their particular way of life, we want to try and find out what they did differently.
For example, when a kid wants to be like a particular football star, he will likely try to figure out what type of preparation the player did to unlock his success on the football field.
In a similar way, when we examine the lives of the saints, we can discover various practices that helped them achieve the heights of sanctity during their life on earth.
One hero whom many have admired over the years is Archbishop Fulton Sheen, an extraordinary evangelist who lived constantly united to Jesus Christ and his Mother.
When researching his life to discover what fueled his ministry, its obvious which daily habit gave him a spiritual boost each day.
Daily Eucharistic holy hour
Archbishop Fulton Sheen was a busy man, who not only ran a popular media apostolate but was also an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New York before he was appointed the bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, New York. He received requests for speaking engagements all over the United States, and was often traveling to give spiritual guidance to a variety of people.
Suffice it to say he could very easily have abstained from maintaining a daily prayer life, viewing it as something he didn't have time for.
Yet, Fulton Sheen knew that if he was to be a faithful priest and bishop, shepherding his flock, he needed to spend time in silence and solitude with Jesus.
In fact, he made a resolution the day of his ordination to make a Eucharistic holy hour a priority. He wrote in Treasure in Clay,
I resolved also to spend a continuous Holy Hour every day in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
For such a busy bishop and popular speaker as Fulton Sheen, this was not an easy task. He admits that it was difficult, but he remained faithful to it, no matter what came up on his schedule:
The Holy Hour. Is it difficult? Sometimes it seemed to be hard; it might mean having to forgo a social engagement, or rise an hour earlier, but on the whole it has never been a burden, only a joy.
He then spoke of having to rise as early as 3:00 in the morning to make a holy hour:
One difficult Holy Hour I remember occurred when I took a train from Jerusalem to Cairo. The train left at four o’clock in the morning; that meant very early rising. On another occasion in Chicago, I asked permission from a pastor to go into his church to make a Holy Hour about seven o’clock one evening, for the church was locked. He then forgot that he had let me in, and I was there for about two hours trying to find a way of escape. Finally I jumped out of a small window and landed in the coal bin. This frightened the housekeeper, who finally came to my aid...
At the beginning of my priesthood I would make the Holy Hour during the day or the evening. As the years mounted and I became busier, I made the Hour early in the morning, generally before Holy Mass.
If you admire Fulton Sheen and want to imitate his example of holiness in some way, consider making a daily holy hour, spending quality time with God. Sheen knew that if he was to spend himself for others, he needed to be filled with God each morning.
