Being a 3 hour Catholic

I was reading a blog this morning (Telling the Truth by Time and Money) about how little time and money we, as Catholics, actually give to the Lord. There were a number of comments concerning the issue, most of which focused on money. This prompted the author to post a comment, noting that “everyone so far has spoken about money and almost nothing has been said about time.”

That got me wondering if there were any passages in Scripture which indicate how much time we should spend each day focused upon our faith and God. Since Scripture asks us to tithe 10% of our financial income, then I don’t think it is unreasonable for us to also tithe 10% of our temporal income. So, at 24 hours per day, that means that we owe the Lord 2.4 hours per day, which for ease of reference I’ll round up to 2 1/2 hours per day.

That leaves me to spend the remaining 21.5 hours as I see fit. Assuming I sleep 8 hours, eat 3 hours, and bathe/hygiene 1 hour, I still have 9.5 hours to spend. I usually work an 8 hour day, which means I still have 1.5 hours to spend doing other things, such as exercise (1 hour) and spend time with my children (30 min). Hmm, I’m all out of time and still haven’t even watched any TV or cleaned the house, let alone mowed the lawn, fixed the car or attended one of my kids’ sports activities….

Clearly there has to be a way of spending time with the Lord that will allow me to multitask, so I can spend that 2.5 hours of faith-oriented time and still get my laundry done. That got me thinking as to whether or not I could figure out ways to “sneak in” God-time while doing other things. That’s how I came up with the 3-hour Catholic plan. Here’s what I’ve come up with thus far:

1. Upon waking, say my morning prayers and read that day’s readings, contemplating them whilst taking a shower and getting dressed for work. Time spent: 45 minutes.
2. While commuting to and from work, listening to the local Catholic radio station (love Catholic Answers Live!). Time spent: 40 minutes (20 min. each way).
3. While running on the treadmill, listening to a Catholic podcast or CD. Time spent: 1 hour.
4. Over the noon hour, saying a rosary before or after eating lunch. Time spent: 15 minutes.
5. Putting kids to bed: read and discuss a Bible story and say prayers. Time spent: 15 minutes.
6. Before bed: say a Novena prayer with my wife. Time spent: 5 minutes.

I was surprised to find that without much effort at all (other than remembering to do it!), I quickly figured out how to spend 3 hours of my day working towards improving my prayer life and increasing my knowledge of my faith without taking any more time out of my daily life nor interrupting things that I already do. That also opened up the extra 2.5 hours for me to do other things!

Once I got to thinking about it, I realized that you could quite easily add another half hour attending daily Mass over lunch (perhaps even keeping the noon-rosary and skipping lunch altogether for a bit of simple fasting), not too mention add some additional time on reading a good book on theology or Catholic issues or watching a bit of EWTN to unwind. One could relatively quickly get 4 or even 5 hours of faith-based living accomplished each day just by what we choose to do each hour and figuring out a way to bring God into the picture….