The Story About St. Bernard and Distractions in Prayer

We all battle distractions in our prayer life, at Mass, and in our spiritual reading. The great Fulton Sheen recounted this story about St. Bernard and distractions in prayer.

A friend boasted to St. Bernard that he had no distractions. St. Bernard admitted that he had trouble with distractions. One day the two of them were out riding on horseback and St. Bernard said he would give his friend his horse if he got off his horse and could pray the Our Father without any distractions. His friend got as far as, “Give us this day our daily bread” when he looked at St. Bernard and asked, “Can I have the saddle too?”

If the saintly Bernard admitted to having trouble staying focused then surely we find ourselves in the same boat. Have you found yourself distracted during prayers or during Mass? Of course you have, we all have experienced it. The Catechism states that, “The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction”. We can easily find our thoughts drifting away from our prayers. How can we become more focused, more disciplined, in our prayer life, our scripture reading, and at Mass?

We can improve our prayer life by guarding our senses. God gave us senses– sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Our senses can easily distract us. Remember Jesus said, “Whenever you pray, go to your room, close your door, and pray to your Father in private” (Matthew 6:6). We need to find a quiet place where we can pray by ourselves. Remember that it is in the quiet that the Lord speaks to us: “Elijah did not find the Lord in the strong wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but rather in a quiet whispering sound” (I Kings 19:9).

We need to focus on our prayers. Although memorizing prayers or having a regime of favorite prayers is a good discipline, we must guard against becoming lax in reciting them. We could easily recite the words but not concentrate on the meaning. Most of us have probably said a decade of the Rosary, or Our Father and finished the prayer and wondered, “What did I just say?” These formal, memorized prayers are essential to a good prayer life. However, we need to slow down as we say them and concentrate on the meaning of the words we are saying. We need to open ourselves to God’s grace through the sacraments. We must return to the sacrament of Penance to cleanse our soul so that the union between the Lord and ourselves is in the best possible spiritual condition. The Blessed Sacrament intimately unites us with the Lord through the reception of Holy Communion and wraps us in His presence when we pray before the tabernacle. St. Thomas More (d. 1535) stated, “If I am distracted, Holy Communion helps me to become recollected”.

The great figures of prayer of the Old Testament, as well as the Mother of God, the saints, and Christ himself, all teach us that prayer is a battle against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer. Yes, we all face distractions but we must be vigilant and grow stronger in the discipline of our prayer life.