Prayer: From a Chore to a Choice

"How does prayer ground you during Lent?"

My Lenten journey usually starts the night before Ash Wednesday, when I draft a lengthy list of the ways I will incorporate prayer into my daily routine throughout Lent (daily Mass, adoration, rosary… anything I think I need to be doing to make me a good Catholic). Most end in Reconciliation with “I have not fulfilled my Lenten promises.” I start the season resolved to do everything I think I need to do to please God, unaware of what He is truly asking of me.

I think this ambition comes from the two things that have transformed my prayer life from a chore to a choice: structure and example, both of which grew from the summers I spent at Camp Tuck, a girl’s Catholic summer camp. My faith, and my prayer life especially, would not be where they are today if I hadn’t spent that first middle school summer at Camp Tuck. I wanted to go because it was cool and all my friends were going. God, however, had much bigger plans.

A typical day at camp starts on the deck with the counselors dancing around singing “Rise and shine, and give God your glory, glory!” After breakfast comes Mass, nature, and sports. After lunch we have a virtue talk, all-camp craft, and swimming. Dinner is followed by a rosary and confessions before the evening program (counselor hide & seek being everyone’s favorite). As a camper, the prayer-time throughout the day felt like an obligation, things we had to do to move on to the exciting stuff. As stubborn as I was in allowing God to enter my fun week at camp, He found His way. The more I got to know the counselors, all high school or college age girls, the more I was amazed by their character and example. Growing up with three older brothers, these girls became the older sisters I never had, but who God always knew I needed. I dreamed about being a counselor, never thinking I would ever be fit for the role. It seemed like these girls had their entire lives figured out, and I never imagined I could be as good or as holy as them. 

Cue my eager seventh grade self. I was determined to become that mentor figure for other girls in the same way that my counselors were for me. To be accepted, however, I knew I had to attend the formation programs that the center, which ran Camp Tuck, held throughout the year. Back then, these talks and meditations were still motions I was going through to get to the fun part.

Fast forward to freshman year of high school. I will never forget the counselors chanting “Welcome, Biscuit!” after receiving my counselor name. I felt accomplished, as if all the work I did to be a counselor finally paid off. It did, of course, but in ways that went far beyond what I expected. When I became a counselor, I realized those times for prayer were not just to teach campers about the Church. To my surprise, counselors looked forward to having time throughout the day for prayer. Up until that point, prayer had always been something I would do when my parents or my teachers told me to, but rarely something I would do of my own volition. I wanted to be like the other counselors, to make my own decision to seek time for God and to build a relationship with Him. 

Comparing my prayer life to those of my camp friends or to the prayer routine I was immersed in during camp led me to believe I needed to be doing all those same things every day to please God. Thus, the start of a Lenten season became my cue to start doing whatever I wasn’t doing. I failed to realize that my life as a student is not the same as my life at camp. When I thought my prayer life was falling short, it wasn’t because I loved God any less, but because I allowed the many distractions and stresses of college to take over. I needed to recenter and refocus on God, and He was ready to meet me with whatever time I promised to give to Him. This Lent, my prayer promise has been daily Mass, offering 30 minutes of my day to celebrate the Eucharist. As much as I wish I could add a rosary, holy hour, spiritual reading, and Mass to my daily schedule, I recognize the limits of what I can sustainably promise to give God throughout these 40 days (and speaking from my past Lenten experiences, I would likely find myself frustrated by failure after about two days). Now, it no longer feels like I must race through a checklist of prayer items each day to fulfill my Lenten promise. Following the example that captured my spirit at Camp Tuck, I am choosing to dedicate time during my day to give to God, which is all He asks of us in prayer during Lent, no matter how big or small. 

My name is Isabel Puchner and I am a third year from Milwaukee, Wisconsin! Something I can’t live without is the rosary ring I got in Rome during Holy Week, which was blessed by the tomb of St. Josemaría Escrivá!