Fr. Ranjan D’Sa Commits to a Daily Rule of Prayer Rooted in Carmelite Spirituality

• Fr. Ranjan D’Sa, OCD, pastor at Saint Dominic church in Oakville, Ontario, is formalizing a daily rhythm of prayer and meditation drawn from his Carmelite formation, and inviting parishioners to build their own version of it.

A rule he has kept for years, now made public

Ontario, Canada, Sep 24, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Fr. Ranjan D’Sa has spent every day of his priesthood in prayer, morning and evening, with meditation folded in whenever the schedule allows. He has kept this rhythm quietly for years. Now, as part of his ongoing work at Saint Dominic church, he is naming it plainly and inviting others to build a version of their own.

“People assume prayer is something you do when you have time left over,” Fr. D’Sa says. “For me it has never worked that way. It is the frame the rest of the day sits inside.”

Formed by the Carmelite tradition

Fr. D’Sa belongs to the religious Order of Discalced Carmelite, a tradition built on contemplative prayer and interior silence. That formation shapes how he prays and how he counsels others to pray.

He points to Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila as the figures who taught him what prayer is for. He also names Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Saint Teresa of the Andes, and Saint Therese of Lisieux among the Carmelite saints he returns to most.

“These are not distant historical figures to me,” he says. “They wrote about the same struggle every person praying today has: distraction, dryness, wanting to quit. I go back to them because they never pretended prayer was easy.”

Alongside the Carmelite writers, Fr. D’Sa keeps a steady practice of reading Scripture and the early fathers of the church. He describes this as less a discipline he forces and more a habit he protects.

What the daily rhythm looks like

Fr. D’Sa’s own practice is simple in structure: prayer in the morning, prayer in the evening, and meditation folded in wherever the day allows room for it. He is direct that this is not a formula that produces a particular feeling.

“Some mornings the prayer is full and rich. Other mornings it is just showing up and sitting there,” he says. “I tell people both count. The showing up is the commitment. What happens inside it is not something you control.”

He also draws on a devotion to Marian theology and spirituality as part of that rhythm, something he says gives the daily practice a steadiness that does not depend on his own mood or energy that day.

Why he is naming it now

Fr. D’Sa has spent a decade as pastor at Saint Dominic church, and in that time he has watched parishioners ask the same question in different forms: how do you actually keep a prayer life going, not just start one. His answer is to describe his own rule out loud rather than leave it private.

“I did not build this rhythm to be admired. I built it because without it, everything else I do as a priest runs dry,” he says. “If naming it helps someone else start their own version, that is worth doing.”

He is careful to say the specific rhythm is his own, shaped by Carmelite formation and by decades of the same schedule, and not a template meant to be copied exactly. What he hopes people take from it is smaller: pick two fixed points in the day, morning and evening, and protect them the same way you would protect any other commitment.

What comes next

Fr. D’Sa plans to keep this rhythm as the base of his own spiritual life at Saint Dominic church, and to keep pointing parishioners toward the same Carmelite writers who shaped him: Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, and the line of Carmelite saints who followed them.

“None of this is new,” he says. “It is old. That is part of what I trust about it.”

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About Fr. Ranjan D’Sa

Fr. Ranjan D’Sa, OCD, is a Catholic priest and pastor at Saint Dominic church in Oakville, Ontario. He was ordained to the priesthood in Mangalore, India, and later continued his studies at Fordham University in New York. He belongs to the religious Order of Discalced Carmelite and is a member of the Knights of Columbus.