I have been reading "The Intimate Life of Sister Lucia" by Father Robert J. Fox. Sr. Lucia was the eldest of the three children who saw our Blessed Mother at Fatima. Sr. Lucia lived to be very elderly, passing away in 2005 at the age of 97. In the book, there was a quote from a letter Sr. Lucia wrote to her nephew, Fr. Jose dos Santos Valinho, in 1971 that I wanted to share with you:
Never think as lost the time that you spend in prayer. You will see that in prayer God will communicate to you the light, the strength, and the grace that you need to do all that He requires of you.
The only important thing for us is to do the will of God, to be where He wants us to be and to do what He expects of us, always with a spirit of humility, conscious of the fact that we ourselves are nothing and that it is God who works through us and makes use of us to accomplish His work. Therefore we all need to intensify our life of union with God, and this can be achieved only by means of prayer. Let time be lacking to us for everything else but never for prayer and you will experience the fact that after prayer you will accomplish a lot in a short period of time.
I can vouch for that last statement in my own life. If my prayers haven't been said I am much less productive, as well as much less patient and understanding. Prayer helps my whole day go much better. As the old adage says, "I had so much to do, I had to take time to pray!"
