How Fulton Sheen mastered “influencing” before social media

On a visit to the church of Saint-Roch in Paris, Fulton Sheen settled in for his daily hour of prayer and promptly fell asleep. He woke exactly sixty minutes later and wondered whether he had kept his promise. He pictured his guardian angel noting that the Apostles had also slept through their first Holy Hour, then adding that Sheen should not make a habit of it. Sheen had formed the habit on the day of his ordination in 1919. He resolved then to spend one uninterrupted hour each day in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and he kept the practice through the rest of his life. He later called that hour the one that made his day, because he believed it supplied the source for his preaching and writing. Before he appeared on television, Sheen had already spent more than twenty years on the radio program The Catholic Hour. When Life Is Worth Living began in 1952, television itself was still new in many American homes. Sheen stepped into the studio in full clerical dress, carrying only a blackboard and a direct way of speaking to the viewer at home. The program reached an estimated thirty million people each week and aired in prime time against major entertainers. Sheen addressed ordinary topics such as marriage, loneliness, anxiety, and suffering, using stories and timing that held attention without losing sight of the Gospel message. In 1953 he received an Emmy Award. In his acceptance speech he thanked his four writers by name: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The line showed the same humor that marked his on-air style and the same focus on Scripture that guided his work. Sheen never treated the hour of prayer and the hours on camera as separate tasks. He saw the time before the Blessed Sacrament as the foundation that allowed him to speak with clarity and reach so many people. Even when the hour brought distraction or sleep rather than perfect attention, he continued to show up for more than sixty years. On September 24 he is scheduled to be beatified. The numbers of viewers and the awards belong to the record of his media work, yet the single daily hour remains the practice he credited for everything that followed.