For about the past year, I have gone a bit retro. I have ditched my Braun electric razor, have have gone back to using a safety razor (well, now I am actually using a single-edge, injection blade). No can of shaving cream for me, each morning I fill the sink with hot water, allow my marble shaving bowl to soak in it for several minutes (it then holds the heat) with the badge hair shaving brush. Taking the bowl out of the sink, I put a finger scoop of shaving soap in the bowl, ring out the brush, and whip up a good lather. After lathering up my face, I take the razor, and going with the grain, use short strokes to basically just brush the lather off my face. Once I’m finished, if I want a particularly close shave, I lather up again and shave across the grain of my whiskers.

The key to using a real razor (as opposed to a disposable) is not to put any pressure on the razor, don’t press it down on your face. Rather just place it on your face, and let the weight of the razor do the work. I learned the hard way, if you press you will nick yourself. No one wants a nick; you then have to find your septic pencil, and then put a little piece of tissue on your face to stop the bleeding.

Now you are probably wondering why I am regaling you with part of my morning routine; what does that have to do with the spiritual life? Well, the other morning as I was shaving it occurred to me that the key to using a real razor is similar to the key of the spiritual life: don’t press. Sometimes we think that praying is all about us; we do most of the talking, we tell God what we want, how we think He should tweak this or that, etc. Then when things don’t go the way we want, we think we didn’t pray right or enough; “If only I prayed more Rosaries, made more Holy Hours, prayed this or that novena.”

However the truth of the spiritual life is let God do the work. Just like in shaving, when I just place the razor on my face and let its weight do the work, in the spiritual life we just need to place ourselves in God’s presence and open our hearts to His Word, His will, His love.

It can be challenging at times. Sometimes I hit the snooze once too often so then I am rushing to get over to celebrate the daily Mass. Feeling that pressure to hurry up, I am prone to shave too fast, with too much pressure, and 9 times out of 10, I nick myself.

We can do the same with our spiritual life. The challenges in life cause us to hurry it. Instead of putting ourselves into God’s presence, we rattle off some well familiar prayers. But without God’s grace, which He gives us in prayer and through the sacraments, we start to get nicks in our spiritual life. We call them sins. Oh, maybe they are not big sins at first – maybe a bad habit that we had done so good on stopping rears up again. One sin leads to another, and before you know it you have a vice, a spiritual bad habit. If we allow it to continue to long, we can start to believe the big lie – that holiness is not possible.

But that is a lie. We can be holy. Not on our own. We can only be holy if we allow God to do His will in our lives, but He will not force Himself on us. We have to open our hearts, place ourselves into His presence. He will do all the hard work.