Life does not stay on schedule, and neither does prayer. Alongside the daily rule, the Church keeps prayers for the particular moments of a life: for the sick, for those who travel, for the anxious and the grieving, for a birth, for the dead, for a home to be blessed, for thanksgiving when the heart overflows.
These prayers are a quiet mercy. In the hour when one does not know what to say, the Church has already said it, the words worn smooth by generations who stood where you now stand. To pray them is to discover that you are not the first to carry this, and not alone in carrying it.
The occasional prayers reach especially toward those we love: the living remembered by name, and the departed commended to God's mercy. They teach that no part of life is outside prayer, that the ordinary, the frightening, and the joyful are all brought, as they come, to the same God.