Turning Daily Work into Hidden Prayers

Has your heart been heavy this past week as mine has with the images of grief and destruction, the news of devastation and death? In the helplessness I’ve felt being away from it, I see the overwhelming call to prayer.

I’m reminded of what my sister says, “God shouldn’t be a bottle of Tylenol you take off the shelf when you need Him and forget when things are easier.” We have opportunities to praise and to pray to God so many moments in the day. We don’t have to stop our work or succumb to despair that brings us to our knees to do so. And we have beautiful examples of just how to keep God and His will in the center of our daily life – no matter what your life looks like at the moment.

A young girl, quietly suffering in her hospital room at Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette, asked Fr. Brennan each day, “Who should I offer this up for?” With this question asked earnestly with great faith, Charlene Richard made her bed of suffering into an altar of intercession. The short life of our “Cajun Saint” reminds us how powerful hidden sacrifices can be when offered in love. In her innocence, she understood something many of us forget: that every moment, even the painful or ordinary, can become holy when united with Christ and offered in love. 

You don’t have to be in a hospital or monastery to live this way. You can do what Charlene did – right where you are. Try these simple practices:

• Write someone’s name in the corner of the paper or planner you’re working on, and let your labor become a quiet benediction for them.
• Fold the laundry with prayer for the one whose shirt you hold.
• Stir the pot on your stove with a whispered plea for peace in someone’s heart.

Turn your tasks into offerings. Your laundry room can be a chapel. Your kitchen, a cathedral.

In these small, unseen sacrifices, we imitate the heart of Jesus – offering not from obligation, but from love.

Today, as we go about our ordinary work, let us also remember to pray for those whose burdens are heavy – especially the flood victims in Texas. May our unseen prayers and small acts of love become a movement of grace that reaches them. And may we, like Charlene, live our days asking: “Lord, who should I offer this for today?”

Let your heart be His altar. Let your work be your prayer.