How I pray

Sister Katty Huanuco, CCVI’s way of praying begins with a candle. Sometimes it is lit, and sometimes it simply rests nearby. A candle steadies the room. It marks a threshold. (Image: 123RF)

MY WAY OF PRAYING begins with a candle. Sometimes it is lit, and sometimes it simply rests nearby. Having a candle has always felt sacred to me. The gesture is almost ordinary, yet it gathers memory and longing. A candle steadies the room. It marks a threshold. It tells me that something within and around me deserves attention.

That reverence for small gestures began in my earliest memories of my mother with her candles. She kept a small corner of the house dedicated to prayer. There, in the quiet mornings, she would light a candle and sit beside a photograph of her own mother and an image of Jesus. That space was intentional; it was her place of reflection, grief, and gratitude. As a child, I did not yet have the language to describe what I was witnessing. Now I see that I was learning how prayer can live in an ordinary space and how trust can be woven into daily life.

As I grew older, I came to see that this simple gesture, having a candle, is shared across cultures and faith experiences. In Peru, devotion to the Señor de los Milagros fills the streets with candles each October. The image of Christ, painted by an enslaved Angolan man in the 17th century, draws thousands who walk for hours. Many carry candles as they offer their struggles and hopes. The act of walking becomes prayer. Some sing, some remain silent. Faith moves through public spaces, carried by bodies that refuse to separate hope from struggles.

That pilgrimage of faith follows me to Mexico, where I have watched people move on their knees toward Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, carrying candles as offerings. The veladora, the tall devotional candle in glass, burns steadily as a sign of confidence in intercession. These gestures are costly; they require time, vulnerability, and perseverance. They remind me that prayer unfolds as much in what we do as in what we say.

Living now in the United States, I notice that even here, candles continue to shape prayer, though in different forms. Some people light them. Others keep candle warmer lamps that release scent without flame. The form changes, yet the intention remains. Having a candle, whether bright with fire or gentle with warmth, expresses a desire to attend to what deserves to be noticed.

The push of prayer outward and in

I pray with a candle, and sometimes the light simply takes another shape. When I pray in silence, sitting in my own corner as my mother did when I was growing up, I am reminded that prayer is never only about me. It reaches outward toward the people I love and even toward those I struggle to love. My corner usually has an open window, and through it, the world enters: the sound of wind, birdsong, or neighbors passing by. The same breeze that touches my face moves through countless other lives. My prayer belongs in that larger world.

When I step beyond that quiet space, prayer takes on movement. Sometimes I pray like those who walk for the Señor de los Milagros, moving through the streets with others, sustained by shared presence. More often I pray with “Pray As You Go,” an app that follows a lectio divina style for 10 to 15 minutes. It helps me lean on scripture and let the sacred text meet me where I am. No matter where I am, at home, in the car, or out among others, all are places where I can pray. Prayer moves me.

At other times, prayer is shaped by intercession. I think of the devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose confidence in intercession does not depend on clarity but on relationship. Their faith is moved more by trust than by certainty. It stirs something in me, draws me back to the essential, and helps me trust again and again. I, too, have felt the quiet strength of others’ prayers, the sense of being held when I could not hold myself. Sometimes prayers are communal acts of justice and solidarity that honor human dignity and our common home.

There are also moments when prayer asks me simply to be present. I sit quietly, noticing what stirs within me: the weight of fear, the rise of hope, the presence of gratitude. Like a candle that sometimes burns with fire and sometimes glows through gentle warmth, prayer adapts to the season. Living in Missouri has taught me how the seasons accompany prayer. Winter teaches me stillness, spring embodies return, summer speaks of joy, and autumn invites release. Nature steadies my heart, even in difficult times, and reminds me that change has its own pace. Showing up becomes a way of trusting that God is already at work in the very flux of life.

Where discernment unfolds

Making intentional room to listen to inner movements, to notice change, to receive others’ intercession, and to let prayer shape daily life creates conditions where discernment can unfold. It is the space where I can listen more honestly to desires and fears, my own and those shared in community, and to the invitations of God that arise among and between us.

For those of us discerning vocation or the shape of our commitments, prayer becomes a daily way of asking how we are being called to love and to belong. Prayer, in all its forms, does not just fit into the demands of daily life; it changes how I hold them, so they become spaces where I can meet the God who is already present. It is a relationship with God practiced with hands, heart, breath, mind, and persistence. In that small flame and its warmth, I experience again and again that trust can be nurtured toward God and toward one another. Using a candle then becomes, for me, an ordinary gesture that carries an extraordinary symbol of prayer. 

Related: VocationNetwork.org, “My portable prayer life.”