Hallow Is The New Catholic App Helping Us Pray More!

by Apostolate, Catholic Media, Outstanding Initiatives, Prayer

Hallow is a Catholic app for prayer and meditation that helps users deepen their relationship with God through audio-guided contemplative prayer.  Some people refer to it as the “Headspace/Calm, for Catholics.”

Hallow was started by a group of friends struggling to maintain their prayer lives amidst hectic personal and professional lives. The app offers 5-30 minute guided audio sessions using a variety of prayer types, including Christian Meditation, the Examen, Lectio Divina, the Rosary, and Spiritual Writing.

From prayer challenges that dig deeper into familiar prayers like the Our Father and Stations of the Cross, to “praylists” on topics like joy and humility, to the mysteries of the Rosary, to meditations on the daily Gospel, to Bible sleep stories, Hallow offers a rich library of sessions to help users build a relationship with God.

Win TWO Year-Long Subscriptions!

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Hallow‘s Core Mission

  • Our team’s mission to let God hallow our lives (to make them holy) and to help others do the same.
  • The world is filled with more distractions than ever before and people are struggling to deal with increasing levels of stress and anxiety in their lives. They often turn to things like secular meditation, which focuses on the physiological management of stress, because they simply don’t know that there are meditative traditions within the Church.
  • Despite increasing disaffiliation from the Church, however, there has not been a rise in atheism. Instead, there has been massive growth in the self-described “Spiritual But Not Religious”.
  • We believe that, despite all the challenges that the Church is facing, this is an incredibly hopeful sign (i.e., that they are still searching for the divine in their lives) and reflective of that fact that the desire to know God is written on the human heart.
  • Hallow’s goal as a mobile app is to meet people where they are, both physically on their mobile devices and metaphysically wherever they are on their faith journey, to give them the space and language to develop a personal relationship with God through contemplative prayer.
  • We believe that grounding all evangelization and catechesis in a rich prayer life (including through the Sacraments) is the key to revitalizing the Church and the world.

Hallow’s Team

  • Co-founders Alex Jones (CEO), Erich Kerekes (CTO), Alessandro DiSanto (Head of Growth) answered the call to create a tool to help others open themselves up to the same experiences of grace that we were blessed with. They gathered a founding team that was a group of friends who went to Notre Dame together and later reconnected over a search for purpose in their lives. Each came from different professional backgrounds (consulting, finance, marketing, government service), but what we have in common is that we all had our lives transformed through prayer. We quit our jobs to create the Catholic app, Hallow.

Hallow’s Content

  • Dailies: Organized by technique with audio that rotates based on the Gospel of the day or day of the week.
    • Includes Lectio Divina on the daily Gospel, the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, spiritual writing, family prayers (morning, dinner, evening) the Examen, Christian Meditation, Unguided sessions, and a prayer for Spiritual Communion
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  • Praylists: Chapters of content organized by topic or theme. Each praylist has between 7-20 individual meditations using a variety of contemplative prayer techniques
    • Includes Humility, Calm, Gratitude, Love, Joy, Making Decisions, Forgiveness, Patience, Hope, Letting Go
    • Special 19-session “stuck at home” praylist released for the global health pandemic is part of Hallow Lite
    • An entire Litanies praylist
    • An entire Music praylist
  • Sleep: Meditations focused on unwinding with God and preparing users for bed in the evening
    • Includes Night Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as Examens, Lectio Divinas, and Christian Meditations focused on the end of the day
    • Bible sleep stories led by Catholics you might be familiar with, including  Fr. Mike Schmitz, Jonathan Roumie (actor who plays Jesus in The Chosen), Annie Deddens, and Lisa Hendey 
  • Challenges: Areas of the faith that we may be familiar with, but want to dive deeper into
    • Includes the Our Father (9 sessions, each focused on one line of the prayer), the Stations of the Cross (14 individual stations), the Saints (meditations on the prayers of 9 different saints), and the Psalms (3 meditations on specific psalms)
    • Also includes a 9-day intro to contemplative prayer challenge that is part of Hallow Lite
  • Community Challenges: These are challenges that members of the Hallow community can specifically sign up for
    1. a.    Examples: Advent #pray25 challenge, Lent #pray40 challenge, COVID #pray19 challenge, month of May Rosary challenge, August, Litanies, Surrender Novena
  • Prayer “families”: Prayer families allow groups of users to share intentions, reflections, and prayers with one another while they are physically separated. Great for families, Bible study groups, parish communities, and any group in-between.
  • Guest Sessions: TED Talk or podcast-style talks by religious and lay leaders on specific areas of prayer or the interior life
    • Examples range from Bishops talking about the different types of prayer, to composers breaking down sacred music, to Fr. Mike Schmitz’s homilies, to authors talking about their research
  • Spanish: Or first expansion into Spanish language content includes the Rosary, our 9-day Intro to contemplative prayer challenge, the Calm praylist, and a prayer to our Lady of Guadalupe

What Are Hallow Users Saying?

  • Bishop Kevin Rhoades (Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine) – “Hallow is an excellent resource for people searching for deeper spiritual lives, especially the younger generation of Catholics today. It helps make clear that a relationship with God is and can be extremely personal and can be a great source of peace, joy, and strength.”

So, How Much Does Hallow Cost?

There are 2 “versions” or “sections” to Hallow: one that includes permanently free content (not associated with the limited-term “free trial”) and one that is a paid subscription

Hallow Lite: This is the free section and includes meditations on the Daily Gospel (updated every day), plus the Rosary (the daily mystery), Divine Mercy Chaplet, Examen, Spiritual Writing, and Christian Meditation sessions for free. Each of these comes with a choice of two guides, three length options, two background music options, the journal feature, prayer reminder options, goal setting and tracking. Users also have access to all of our Guest Sessions, and Minute Meditation sessions for free. 

Hallow Plus: This is the paid version and includes additional sections in the app (Challenges, Praylists, and Sleep) and is how we afford to continue to develop new content. We don’t sell any ads and we don’t sell any of our user data so the subscription price goes directly to support our awesome team members that have quit their jobs to help build a world-class prayer resource. $8.99 per month if billed monthly 59.99 per year (i.e., effectively $5 per month) if billed annually

You test out the paid version during a completely free trial period, during which you can cancel at any time and never be charged. The free trial period varies in length depending on the time of year but is currently 14 days. We did spend quite a bit of time in prayer discerning whether we should have a paid version of the app. Here are some of the reasons that we ended up where we did.

WIN!

Hallow has generously offered to give a Catholic-Link reader a one-year subscription to Hallow Plus that will give them access to over 300 prayer sessions, daily meditations on the Gospel readings, a built-in journal, and so much more. It gets even better, the winner will also get another one-year subscription to Hallow Plus that they can giveaway to anyone they choose! How wonderful is that?!

So Many Ways To Enter…

    1. Comment on or share any article we publish about Hallow over the next few weeks! This can be done on Catholic-Link’s website, Catholic-Link’s social media, or Hallow’s social media.
    2. Tag the person you’ll share your prize with on any social media post about the Catholic-Link Hallow Giveaway or Catholic-Link article with information about Hallow.
    3. Use Rafflecoppter below for two more entries.

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You can do ALL these things to earn entries AND you can enter more than once! Good luck!

Rosary Novena Hallow

The Hallow 54 Day Rosary Novena Starts Thursday! 

“Whoever desires to obtain favours from me should make three novenas of the prayers of the Rosary, and three novenas in thanksgiving.” – The Blessed Mother

The Hallow 54 Day Rosary Novena will start Thursday and run through the week of Thanksgiving Day. To join the 54 Day Rosary Novena community challenge, simply click here, download (or open) the Hallow app, and navigate to the Community tab at the bottom of the screen. Once you are there, you can tap the 54 Day Novena to join.

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