Often our job can be seen as an impediment to spending time with God.
Many of us naturally think that God's presence can be felt only in the four walls of a church.
If we want to pray, we have to be inside a physical church.
Yet, the saints testify time and time again that it is possible to remain in constant communion with God, even during the most mundane tasks.
Prayer at work
St. Francis de Sales provides several tips for praying at work in his book, Introduction to the Devout Life.
He first explains how it is possible by using an analogy:
Imitate a little child, whom one sees holding tight with one hand to its father, while with the other it gathers strawberries or blackberries from the wayside hedge. Even so, while you gather and use this world’s goods with one hand, always let the other be fast in your Heavenly Father’s Hand, and look round from time to time to make sure that He is satisfied with what you are doing, at home or abroad.
While we may be laser focused on our daily work, it is still possible to keep our soul tethered to God throughout the day.
St. Francis de Sales then gives a few more practical tips on how to pray during a normal work day:
When your ordinary work or business is not specially engrossing, let your heart be fixed more on God than on it; and if the work be such as to require your undivided attention, then pause from time to time and look to God, even as navigators who make for the haven they would attain, by looking up at the heavens rather than down upon the deeps on which they sail. So doing, God will work with you, in you, and for you, and your work will be blessed.
Our prayer does not have to be intense or involve long formula prayers.
All we need to do during our work day is stop and look at God with our heart and to let his presence invade our soul.
We can all practice this type of prayer, weaving in prayer and work as our time allows.
