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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