Sitting at a table to share a meal is a reminder to say a prayer of thanksgiving and blessing, like a mnemonic device. So if we pray at mealtime why should we not also say grace when we get out of bed, brush our teeth, turn on our computer and so on?

Although saying grace at meals is praiseworthy, it seems to me that setting one specific time for prayer every day may cause people to run the risk of compartmentalizing their prayer life. They may relegate their faith to one part of the day rather than carry a spirit of prayer throughout their daily activities.

Blessed Mother Teresa strikes me was an amazing example of the latter. While travelling to different sites, the Missionaries of Charity would pray decades of the Rosary and would express the distance from one place to another in terms of Rosary decades. Blessed Mother Teresa, who always believed in doing “small things with great love,” would say little prayers with every action, such as donning her religious habit or putting on her sandals. She would even say small mental prayers every time she walked through a doorway, in light of the idea that “the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.” (Mt 7:14)

With any saint, there is a tendency for us to focus on miraculous accomplishments or spiritual gifts. But in doing so we may completely overlook the depth of their prayer lives or the holiness they exhibited in the smallest actions. Sainthood is not an overnight accomplishment, but comes from constantly exercising the will of God in all things, big or small, with love. As children of God, we are called to take continuous baby steps towards holiness, every moment of every day.

Neither holiness nor heroic virtue can be developed without God’s grace through prayer. As people like Mother Teresa and Chesterton have shown, by accompanying even mundane tasks with prayer, each action can become an occasion for great virtue, love and sanctity.

Our entire lives can then undergo a type of transfiguration. God constantly turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. A young virgin became the Mother of God; a newborn was truly the Son of God; five loaves and two fish fed 5,000 people; and an offering of bread and wine is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Although you may not have said grace before reading this column, I challenge you to say grace when you finish it, and to make saying grace a part of all your daily activities.

(Pereira, 18, is a Grade 12 student at Brebeuf College School in Toronto, Ont.)