Jesus, Make Me Fully Alive: 30 Holy Hour Reflections

No matter what stage of the game you’re in, today’s schedules are b-u-s-y. Classes or work, coffee meetups, pickup pickleball games, time with family―you name it. The calendar tends to keep the social commitments and professional pressures high.

Winner of a 2025 Excellence in Publishing Award from the Association of Catholic Publishers: General Prayer (First Place).

In somewhat quieter moments of adulting, you may be combing apps for common ground, seeking community, and somehow still feeling as though you’re just going through the motions.

Associate chaplain of the St. John Paul II Newman Center at the University of Illinois–Chicago, Fr. Tim Anastos says that when we take our prayer life seriously, approaching God with confidence and making a regular Holy Hour, Jesus begins to replace anxiety, insecurity, and doubt with love, freedom, and eternity.

“Living in this world can easily drain us of life and joy, making us half alive, like zombies,” Anastos writes. “Jesus, Make Me Fully Alive can help recharge our relationship with Christ. Holy Hours are not just meant for the pope or the saints or ‘holy people.’ They are meant for you.”

Beginning where you are (a few minutes for intentional prayer or an entire hour spent in Adoration), Anastos’s thirty Holy Hour exercises will help you easily engage with Jesus in prayer, building your personal relationship with God. You’ll also encounter

• personal examples of how Adoration made a difference in Fr. Anastos’s own prayer life,
• suggestions about how to incorporate lectio divina in your prayer, and
• imaginative prayer and spiritual journaling you can tap into before the Blessed Sacrament.

Fr. Tim Anastos is a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and the assistant chaplain at the St. John Paul II Newman Center at the University of Illinois–Chicago. He serves as a eucharistic preacher for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Fr. Tim earned a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Illinois and a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He previously served as parochial vicar of Mary, Seat of Wisdom Parish in Park Ridge, Illinois. Fr. Tim releases Reel Homilies, one-minute reflections on the Sunday Mass readings through the lens of Church tradition, pop culture, and self-improvement with Spirit Juice Studios.

The Most Rev. Andrew Cozzens, formerly archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, is bishop of the Diocese of Crookston and chairman of the board of the 2024 Eucharistic Revival Congress, as well as chairman of the USCCB Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.