My name is David: I cry out to God in the night.

It’s 1:30a.m. I just submitted an article to my editor. I should probably go to bed. Instead, I turn on a light. I light a couple dollar store prayer candles. I light a stick of unclean incense given to me as a gift. I begin to intone.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lord, let my prayer come before you as incense.

The lifting up of my hand for the evening sacrifice.”

The room stills. I walk around my house, censing in the direction of my children’s rooms and the bedroom my wife and I share. She’s been asleep since 8:00 p.m. I continue through my prayers in the orans.

I did not ask for this job. Nor am I clean enough for it. However, I am the priest of this home. This job is harder than fatherhood. It’s scarier than cutting meat. When the standing prayer concludes, I grab my father’s Bible and sit down. I open up to the Book of Micah. I’m almost finished with my first readthrough of the Old Testament using the New American Bible. This is the NAB, not the NABRE. A donkey is referred to as an ass. Get the picture?

Anyway, I finish the first labeled section of the chapter. I pray a rosary decade. I finish the second one and pray another. Most of these chapters hold between one and four labeled sections. It’s far easier to pray this than the Gospels. Those come when the chapter is complete.

I grab my copy of the Orthodox Study Bible and open up to my current chapter in Luke. Each of these chapters comes with 4-8 labeled sections. After each section, I pray the Jesus Prayer ten times and then pray the Trisagion. I did not ask for this. It does not belong to me. It did not come from my father nor his father. It comes through a long line of our father’s fathers.

There are rare occasions when I skip this ritual. I do not feel sinful when I do. When I skip it, I feel selfish. As if I’m neglecting something I’ve been trusted with. This is not my ritual. These are not my prayers. I am the custodian.

How did I get here?

In late 2024, I downloaded the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) on Kindle with the goal of finishing it within a year. I was not a prayerful man. I was prideful, selfish, lustful and for a long period of time ping ponged between treating my wife as both my queen and personal sex doll. At times, I would get short tempered with my children. Pretty much your standard American guy trying to make it in today’s world.

When the kids went to bed, we’d watch adult swim and fall asleep as the TV ran on through the night. Back to the NABRE. I began reading it when the Family Guy reruns could no longer hold my attention. I committed to reading it within a year. A commission that was later corrected by a priest. I plowed through Genesis and Exodus. I gritted my teeth through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Joshua left me in existential crisis. By spring of 2025, I was reading through Samuel. Then Palm Sunday happened. I returned to the Roman Catholic Church that day.

By Good Friday, I could no longer read the Old Testament. I needed to read the Passion. I finally read enough of the Torah to understand Passover. On Good Friday, I read the Passion. I watched The Passion of the Christ. I was destroyed. Not sad. Not mournful. Destroyed.

Around midnight, Holy Saturday came on. I could not stop. I needed to read the Resurrection. Shortly, I found myself reading Acts.

The prayer book

Most of my life, I’d never used a prayer book. I had a two minute basic rule. I had never really tried to deepen prayer. Around this time, I found my way into a digital copy of Byzantine Catholic Prayer for the Home. I am not Byzantine. I am Roman —born, raised and lapsed. However, this prayer book touched me in a place where I normally write off devotionals. I want God. I don’t want a Joyce Meyer self help book with a “Jesus Approves” sticker. The Byzantines structure their prayer quite differently from the Roman laity. Not better. Different. Different strokes for different folks.

Anyway, I borrowed one of my wife’s incense sticks without asking. I lit it. I can give it back when I’m done — wink wink. I followed the book and prayed the introductory prayers. A stillness entered the room that I could not explain. I was overcome with something else I could not explain. This wasn’t a quick devotional to make me feel better. This wasn’t self help marketed as prayer. This was something I couldn’t run from or turn off. Quickly, it morphed into a fixture of Byzantine structure interlaced with some Roman prayers as well. This is not mine. It possesses me.

The morning

I never used to brush my teeth at night. Now, when the ritual concludes, it’s 3am. I brush my teeth, climb into bed and wrap my arm around my queen as she sleeps for one more hour. My offering concludes as hers gets set to begin. I wake several times as I hear the shower turn on between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00a.m… I hear the coffee brewing. I drift back to sleep as the aroma inhabits my brain. A sweet smelling oblation. Its fruits help to fuel the family life that I’ve been so graciously blessed with.

She does not cry out to God against the silence of the night nor does she stand pleading before a home altar. Her prayer is far different. Her prayer shows as she gently wakes the children. She doesn’t recite anything. You just feel the love and softness emanating outward. Where I would cry out in the darkness, she radiates a light that shines brighter than the world around it. It illuminates in the form of bagged lunches, personalized waffles, breakfast sandwiches and whatever else the children could possibly want.

My eldest son wakes me between 7 and 7:30. Then he leaves for school. I drink coffee and hang out with my younger son and youngest daughter until they leave. I hug them so hard their eyeballs want to pop out. This micromoment is one of the absolute peaks of my day.

I drink another cup of coffee and perform the ritual again. In the morning, I usually do so without incense and sometimes I skip the Scripture because I need to plow through articles for clients. The nightly ritual, however, remains frozen. I brush my teeth and take a shower. Then I begin on another article.