Nationally Syndicated Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez Shares Her Holy Hacks

 

   Kathryn Jean Lopez, senior fellow at the National Review Institute, a nationally syndicated columnist, and the author of A Year with the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living. She contributed ways she lives her faith daily for Holy Hacks: Everyday Ways to Live Your Faith and Get to Heaven.

      I pray an Our Father and Hail Mary every time I hear a siren. (Did I mention my office is in midtown Manhattan? I remembered to write this because in the time it took to write this sentence, I heard one.)

I travel a lot and often wind up in a hotel bar/restaurant for dinner. There’s always someone nearby to pray for. I try to do something similar when commuting. Though at a certain point you have to do a general one to cover everyone in your train car, and so forth.

Always, always pray for an Uber/cab driver. I am often coming from or going to a church or something to do with faith, so I stay open to whatever conversation comes.

In urban settings, I engage in conversation with people asking for money, often learning more than anything else the day could teach me. I try to have packages to give them. On my best days there is a little note saying I wish I could do more; this is something small such as, I will pray for you, please pray for me. I often include a prayer card and something like a $10 fast-food gift card, some wet wipes, hand lotion, beef jerky, or fruit snacks. Other days I may have just picked up lunch or made an extra sandwich on purpose. I try to have some bottles of water, especially in the summer.

 

  I keep a few prayer cards in my Magnificat to pray for certain people and all priests and friends who have died. Occasionally I accidentally crash a funeral Mass in my travel­ing and know I’m there to pray for the family.

I often try to have an extra Magnificat or two in my purse to share as often as presents itself.

I use prayer cards of certain saints and a lot of Mary as bookmarks to remember to keep the saints with me as I work.

The Sisters of Life have a “Litany of Trust.” I carry copies in my purse and give out with some abandon.

I sometimes email the second reading of the office to myself and even print it out, so I look at it more than once or twice during the day. I try to share bits of it on social media, usually with some image to remind myself and others there is more to life than the current news frenzy.

I sometimes screenshot the daily meditation in Magnifi­cat from the app and tweet it.

I usually #homilytweet something from daily homilies to drive a point home for myself as much as anyone.

We’re called to be disciples in the world, wherever we find ourselves. I’ve been at restaurants during the bishops’ confer­ence in November in Baltimore where a table with or without bishops has the most remarkable conversations and the waiter walks away with a book, a prayer card, and definitely prayers. A family can do this too; anyone can.

Overlook no one, and you will be gifted sometimes with seeing the face of God in gratitude and wonder and grace.

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