Burn Again: A Training Manual for Men Who Forgot How to Pray

PHASE 3: COMMAND

Jun 26, 2025

A line of dome-shaped concrete prayer cells stretches across a barren Lebanese hillside under an open sky—each identical, austere, and open to the desert wind. The landscape is dry and silent, evoking monastic discipline and isolation. These structures form the world’s largest rosary installation in Deir El Ahmar, Lebanon—a brutalist litany cast in stone — *“Sit in your cell. It will teach you everything.”* **(Abba Moses)**

The spiritual collapse of the Catholic father runs on three rails:

Men struggle with connecting to the Mass.
We’re overwhelmed, spiritually starved, and ill-formed.
We’re not trained to pray or to approach the Mass as a training ground.

And I don’t mean standing there with your hands open doing the “Heavenly Father, we come before you today…” I mean, literally, we don’t even know how to truly apply the Our Father or any other prayer, really.

We show up wiped out and hollow. Sit. Kneel. Stand. Repeat. It’s choreography without interior combustion, and it’s hard to pray when your toddler is screaming, the music’s off-key, and you barely got there on time.

Interiorly? We spectate. We drift.

And it’s not some silent rebellion. It’s because no one ever taught us how to carry the Mass like a soldier bears his weapon or how to treat the Mass like training.

We get the liturgy, but we don’t get the grit. We get the words, but not the warfare. You know exactly what I mean too. Going to Mass is very much like going to the movies now.

Show up and watch the priest. Let him perform and pray for you.

That ends today. St. Moses the Black prayed until his feet bled, and so will you.

The Mass is the greatest prayer, and while you may feel disconnected from it, the interior reality has not changed.

You don’t need any more reflection, but you do need a prayer rule—daily non-negotiables forged for spiritual war, not wellness—to supplement it. You also need a weapon, and you need it because if you cannot commune with God, you will die a painful spiritual death.

Now we need to be abundantly clear here: You must submit to Mother Church

Regardless of the form, it’s Christ’s Church. The Spirit guides the fruit, and your taste is irrelevant.

I don’t care if you go to NO, TLM, Eastern Rite, or whatever; we are still required to be there and be obedient. This isn’t a Church critique or some radical call to rebellion. I rebuke all of that. This is training and a radical call to aggressively form your interior by solidifying your fidelity and exercising obedience. You have to scan the field before you make a plan, and Mass is Mass, period.

I encourage you to go to the liturgy that gives you absolutely nothing.

Why?

Because if you go to the Mass that breaks you and doesn’t impress you, you’re bleeding obedience, the kind of obedience that humiliates the ego and creates real room for deep prayer.

Carry a Rule of Desert Prayer

You cannot perform all of these. You can’t pray all day like you can’t read all day. You’re not a monk. You’re a man with a household. Pick a prayer training protocol and get into formation.

Enough—let’s train.

1. Go to the Nearest Mass—Not the Nicest

Attend the Mass closest to your home. Not for the parish or for the homily, but for the Eucharist and to exercise obedience

2. Leave the Mass in Silence

Pray the Anima Christi after receiving communion, sit in silence, offer your struggle, and then leave in silence.

3. Deploy Piercing Prayers Constantly

Use short, piercing prayers: simply “Kyrie Eleison” or “O God, come to my assistance.”

Make this a habit.

4. Weaponize the Psalms

Supplement daily with the Psalms. They are vital prayer tools. They’re the perfect prayer for a husband and father regularly operating at max capacity. Recite one over and over in times of need or to simply give praise to God.

5a. Anchor Your Day in Marian Discipline

Marian discipline (Rosary, Angelus, silence) is a powerful addition. The Rosary is daunting when you’re maxed out, but the Angelus takes 60 seconds. Start your morning with it.

5b. Enter the Heart with the Jesus Prayer

If you’re in a real “battle phase” as a husband and a father right now, pray Chotki. Perform 33, 50, 100, or 300 knots (on the Rosary is fine) of the Jesus Prayer. Why? Because when you’re exhausted by being a faithful father and husband, this prayer doesn’t load you cognitively; instead, it’s a descent into the heart. Still, unceasing mental focus and humility to combat sinful temptation that comes with exhaustion.

7. Combine Prayer with Manual Labor

Perform manual labor + prayer. Pray and work in silence. The Jesus Prayer works perfectly here. Abba Philemon said, “Always have the name of God in your mind more than the air you breathe.”

8. Build a Brutalist Home Altar

Create a home altar. Where do you kneel? Where do you burn the incense? Where does your wife find you at 5AM? It doesn’t need to be elaborate. A vial of holy water, your rosary, and your favorite icon or a crucifix. Place it somewhere you and your family can always see it so you never forget what you are.

9. Fast Like a Trained Man

Fasting. This is an important training practice. It’s your first practice in spiritual combat training, and it demands reverence. It’s not a health fad.

One day a week, either Wednesday or Friday, perform a fast. Meaning one large meal or several small ones throughout the day. Some hunger is acceptable. If you work a physical job, then do not physically fast.

It doesn’t have to be physical either; it can be spiritual and emotional too, like refusing to complain and offering it up instead. Don’t be foolish. If you have a physical condition, then physical fasting is not appropriate. If your capacity as a husband and a father is diminished from fasting, stop. It’s disordered. Speak to your priest to get back on track. You’re called to be an apostle, not to collapse.

10. Impose Daily Silence on the Home

One hour. Use it to be radically present with your children or your wife. No digital distractions. Play with your kids. Be intentional in a conversation with your wife.

11. Pilgrimage—Even If It’s Just to the Kitchen

Prioritize pilgrimages to monasteries or holy sites. Do a quick search of what’s in your area. You don’t need to do gymnastics to go see the monasteries in Egypt when there might be one within an hour drive. And if nothing is close by, go to Holy Hour at your local parish. Go for the silence, not experience. Remember the most valuable pilgrimage you can do is the one in your own home; sit in your cell.

The Sacrifice Is a Broken Spirit

You’re commanded to pray, but without discipline and death to self, your prayer will become sentiment instead of formation.

You’ll find yourself left unarmed and undone by your sins, the pressures of your home life, your work, and your personal desire to grow as an apostle.

Drag yourself to your home altar. Your corner of the home must become a cloistered war room with no softness, journaling, or “guided meditations.” Use this space to train your mind like a soldier trains his body and take silence with Christ.

Then pray Psalm 51:

1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your great mercy;
And according to the abundance of Your compassion, blot out my transgression.

2. Wash me thoroughly from my lawlessness and cleanse me from my sin.

3. For I know my lawlessness, and my sin is always before me.

4. Against You only have I sinned and done evil in Your sight,
That You may be justified in Your words,
And overcome when You are judged.

5. For behold, I was conceived in transgressions,
And in sins my mother bore me.

6. Behold, You love truth;
You showed me the unknown and secret things of Your wisdom.

7. You shall sprinkle me with hyssop, and I will be cleansed;
You shall wash me, and I will be made whiter than snow.

8. You shall make me hear joy and gladness;
My bones that were humbled shall greatly rejoice.

9. Turn Your face from my sins,
And blot out all my transgressions.

10. Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a right spirit within me.

11. Do not cast me away from Your presence,
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

12. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
And uphold me with Your guiding Spirit.

13. I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And the ungodly shall turn back to You.

14. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation,
And my tongue shall greatly rejoice in Your righteousness.

15. O Lord, You shall open my lips,
And my mouth will declare Your praise.

16. For if You desired sacrifice, I would give it;
You will not be pleased with whole burnt offerings.

17. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit,
A broken and humbled heart God will not despise.

Abba Joseph said, “If you will, you can become all flame” (after lifting his fingers and showing they were fire through prayer). You’ve been waiting for guidance, but you should’ve been burning.

Teach your family by what you pray and “teach your mouth to say what is in your heart.” Let your family catch you sweating the Psalms.

Form your household with obedience and ash.

The Desert is Waiting

You didn’t have the training, but now you’re responsible.

The liturgy won’t adapt to you, and you’re not owed consolation. You are required to pray, sacrifice, and train until your household is formed in fire. Stop looking for a parish that fits your taste and start becoming a man worthy of fire. Remember, the greatest prayer is the Mass.

The second is bleeding into your vocation without applause.

Until then? Receive, obey, build, and carry this like a man without a backup plan. Mary’s mantle is a reminder of your crucible, not your comfort. You are either the priest of your home or the reason it falls. There is no middle. Pray up.

⸻

Built in the Desert. Covered by Mary. Forged in Fire.

☩ Sans Peur

– Emmanuel