Does the housewife pray about chicken?
Praying without words in daily life
Once long ago, a man rather contentiously asked me if I pray in the grocery store before choosing a package of chicken. While basically friendly, he was skeptical about the worth of both prayer and housewifery.
For about forty years since then, I can hardly go by the meat case without thinking about that question! And noticing that I am not exactly praying directly about what to get!
The prudent housewife doesn’t wish merely to buy chicken. She seeks to order her household, and all she does for it, to God’s service. Virtue is goodness, goodness is connection with The Good — God Himself — and so yes, virtue in our souls is a form of prayer.
So when we’ve prayed for wisdom (and all the other virtues, which we will discuss — well, the other Cardinal Virtues for sure) and exercised it (the way we exercise our muscles, by doing), we become responsible, distributing, so to speak, that inner connection across everything we do; including when we buy chicken and all the other activities that occupy our minds.
If we err (pay too much, get the wrong kind, forget to think about when we’ll serve it), it’s on us, but He honors our effort and desire to do better; in this we can trust.
So yes, we do pray when we grab that package of chicken or anything else — even if we aren’t standing there in the store saying a prayer out loud or even really thinking about it!
Jean-François Millet, Woman Feeding Chickens
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With meat prices these days, I am praying about chicken more than ever!
Thank you for this! One thing I struggle with is the lack of focused prayer time that I am able to find during the day, and trying to keep the presence of mind to just go ahead and pray while I am doing things during the day. But I do think a lot about how to order our household and my own activities therein toward the Good, and toward virtue and flourishing for our whole family, and it is helpful to remember that this is a form of prayer--trying to direct the life of the home toward God and for it to be a place where he is loved and served even in the little things! Thank you for the encouragement that he sees all those little efforts that often feel invisible.