Catholic Husband

Love / Lead / Serve

Primary Devotion

The Church is a wide and open road. While there are essential components of the spiritual life, such as the Sacraments, the Church provides limitless expressions of faith. One type of prayer is devotions.

A devotion is a type of prayer to a particular saint. It’s an ongoing form of prayer. Devotion isn’t worship, it’s another name for relationship. As you pray to a particular saint for intercession, you come to know them and their story. As a result, you both grow in friendship.

It can be tremendously helpful to have a primary devotion in your life. It's all too easy to take on too many devotions. By having a primary devotion, you create a home base. When you get off track or wander off the path, you always know where to go to get started again.

Since you know where to start when you’re ready to start praying again, you’ll be comforted by the familiarity of the devotion.

Your primary devotion should be one that you love. It may be one that was important to your family or one that held significance at some point during your life.

There’s a principle in business that holds that companies should focus on doing one thing perfectly before adding additional services. For example, a car wash company should perfect their skills at car washing before adding detailing services. By honing your prayer skills in one particular way, you can perfect your prayer before exploring a different avenue of Catholicism.

A primary devotion can be just the tool you need to get back on the horse when you’ve fallen off.