Emma Hudson
14 min read ⭑
“There’s something beautiful about everybody listening to the same thing around the world — exactly as it is. There is a community aspect that can’t be replicated with individualized experiences.”
If you’ve ever used the Pray As You Go app, you know how powerful it is to engage in guided prayer, accompanied by beautiful music, and build a rhythm of connecting with God. The meditation sessions, inspired by Ignatian spirituality, invite users to imaginatively engage Scripture and notice God in all things. Behind this thoughtful experience is Emma Hudson, the director of Pray As You Go. Her musical background and deep faith made her the perfect fit to work on the app — but it wasn’t until after she took the job that she experienced the life-changing effects of Ignatian prayer. She tells the full story in the interview below. She also shares why she goes against the grain of the tech world by waiting on God for big decisions and how she presses into prayer even in seasons of dryness.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
I moved around a lot growing up, so the word “hometown” is somewhat unfamiliar. Both of my parents were in service — they trained in hospitality and catering. They worked at some really beautiful hotels in London. Cooking and hospitality were their thing.
My dad made a particular dish called Tournedos Rossini. It’s seared beef — a steak on a layer of foie gras and toasted crouton. It’s a French dish with Madeira wine sauce. It’s beautiful, and he makes it so perfectly. I think he’s only made it for me four times in my life, so it’s a real symbol of a special occasion. I had it for my 18th birthday, my 30th birthday, and when I graduated. I think my mom assists him in the kitchen with it.
That’s my biggest go-to food. My favorite thing to do is be with them and invite my friends into that space as well. They just love my dad’s cooking now. It feels like home, but a special home. It’s followed us wherever I’ve gone. It’s my hometown thing.
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QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
For me, it’s driving. I learned to drive like most people when I was a teenager, and it was in a city called Bath, where there are only two roads that are two-way. That’s not super helpful to drive there, and then I moved to London, where you don’t need to drive. I haven’t driven for 15 years. But I just got married and moved to a new town where you have to drive, so I’ve picked it up again.
There’s something about having that empty space next to you when you’re driving by yourself. You’re heading in a direction, but it feels like a gently forced way of making space and that God could be next to you. I drive a manual, stick shift car. I think the repetitive rhythm of driving and shifting gears frees your mind while you’re journeying with that empty space next to you. I’m always very aware of the empty space, and so I like to invite God into that space. It’s something I’ve only recognized recently as I’ve started driving again and, suddenly, I have all this beautiful time.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
I love connection and connecting with people, but I think my kryptonite is when I get overwhelmed. I cave in and get really isolated. I isolate myself and won’t respond very easily, or I won’t reach out to people. I think my friends know when something’s up because they’re not hearing from me. I think you get into these tiny narratives in your head constantly, like, People don’t actually want to hear from me, and you start believing them. It doesn’t last very long, but you can still get stuck in it.
If something has triggered me, or if I think I’ve failed at something, I will cave in. I’ll think, Well, no one wants to hear from me now. I blow it out of proportion. I think, Oh, I can’t impact the world at all. I’ve completely failed. No one will want to hear from me ever again, even if they’ve messaged me. It’s perceived failure — or even success sometimes. I’ll think there will be a lot of attention if this goes well, and I don’t want that, so I’m going to shut down. It’s failure and success for me. I think it’s about push-pull. It’s so interesting because it’s the dark side of something that I love so much, which is connecting with people.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I don’t even know if I can call it toil because I love my professional endeavors. I’m the director of a prayer app called Pray As You Go, and it’s based on the tradition of Ignatian spirituality. I’m obsessed with it all the time. I’ve been with them for 10 years, so I’ve been working on this for a decade in different capacities. I love the creativity. Ignatian spirituality lends itself to imagination, so everything we do comes from imagination and discernment, and those are the gifts I love using.
I came from a musical background. Even though I studied theology and participated in academia, I had never heard of the Jesuits or Ignatian spirituality. I didn’t know much about Catholicism either. I’m not a Catholic, but there were certain ways I knew God prompted my heart — even through making decisions, which, as it turns out, is a big practice of Ignatian spirituality. I was singing for a composer, and it got picked up by Pray As You Go. It was a Psalms project. People started contacting me, saying, “We heard you on Pray As You Go.” I thought, What is this thing?
My mom is a spiritual director. She used the app and tried to get me to use it when I was a teenager, but I wasn’t interested. Then I ended up going to a Jesuit university, even though I didn’t know anything about them. When I graduated from my master’s degree, I saw the job, and it filled me with a lot of joy and confidence, which weren’t qualities I had at the time. I felt this job was really for me. I felt so called to it. It was originally for an audio engineer — more of a content producer role with marketing and artwork. I was doing all the audio for Pray As You Go.
As I stepped into that role and the audio creativity of it — where I was mixing music, prayer and all these elements together — I found God in small, creative decisions. There would be times when I thought I knew how something should sound, but then I’d realize something wasn’t quite right or I’d feel prompted to make a change in the audio or music. Later, I’d get an email from a user who references that moment and says, “This changed my whole day” or “It changed my whole prayer time!” Then I’d realize God had moved in that very specific decision.
I’m now the director, and we have a much larger team, so we’re looking ahead to the future. We’re going the accessibility route and have been working a lot with ASL and BSL sign language. We’re looking for ways to grow and create more content for children, which is great because it’s such an effective yet simple spirituality for children with imagination. Next year is our 20th anniversary, so we’re going to do a lot of events. We’re going to host some live prayer events in the U.S. and the U.K., where people can experience the music and prayer in person together.
When was the first time you truly engaged in Ignatian prayer and Ignatian spirituality. How did it make a difference in your life and heart?
My answer is a bit embarrassing because it was after I started working at Pray As You Go. We had a retreat day specifically about how to do Ignatian spirituality for children, and we were being guided in a kids’ exercise. For some reason, it completely changed everything. It was one of the spiritual exercises called “the Call of the King.” We had to imagine a wonderful person, whether real or pretend, and all the beautiful qualities about them — their kindness, their compassion and so on. Then we imagined how Christ is all that but amplified. It was such a beautiful reflection, and it shifted something within me. I think that’s the first time using imagination in prayer clicked for me.
Then there’s the Examen. The first time I ever prayed the Examen for myself properly was so powerful. It’s a real looking back at the movement of God without forcing memory — not straining to remember but letting whatever God wants to reveal to you come up so you can notice him. Looking back, I think it played an important role in helping me understand Ignatian spirituality.
Pray As You Go has been tremendously popular and has made a huge impact on folks. What do you think distinguishes it from other apps and how people approach prayer with technology?
It’s been wonderful watching other apps come and go over 20 years. There have been some beautiful apps, but I think the music aspect of Pray As You Go truly sets it apart, as the music actually informs the prayer. Our audio engineer, Matt, now writes it specifically for people’s prayer time. He calls it “soundtracking people’s prayer,” which is beautiful. The music has always been an important part of what we do.
I think we’ve also — not in protest — made a real statement about not wanting to be too bespoke. In a world where you can curate and choose so many things in life, it can sometimes be overwhelming when you’re given so many choices of which voice you want, which music you want and how you want your prayer time to be. There’s something beautiful about everybody listening to the same thing around the world — exactly as it is. There is a community aspect that can’t be replicated with individualized experiences.
We’re very solidly built on Ignatian spirituality, so it’s a great home for people who are making decisions. A lot of people who use our resources are discerning and making decisions. They benefit from the Ignatian aspects of using their imagination, noticing their deepest desires and remaining contemplative in action. In Ignatian spirituality, you have contemplative time during the day, but you also go out and live it so it becomes a part of you. Your prayer becomes embodied, and it’s in you. You become a walking prayer. Your life becomes a prayer. That’s a beautiful part of what we try to do.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I do a lot of waiting, which is not common in the world of tech. There are a lot of knee-jerk reactions in any kind of business, but I’ve found the Holy Spirit becomes present with me when something happens after I’ve waited.
For example, we needed to change the design of our app, and we weren’t sure where the funds were going to come from. And we weren’t quite sure which direction to go in. The immediate thing was to panic, try to raise lots of money and find the best designer out there. But my sense was, I’m going to wait. I’m just going to wait and see on this one. One day, we got an email from a guy who loves Pray As You Go and is a UI/UX designer. He said, “I hope you don’t mind. I had a free evening, and I’ve redesigned your app.” It was literally the week before we needed to make a final decision. I remember staring at the screen for a really long time and thinking, I did nothing here, but you still notice.
So that’s why you might have noticed that our app went through a recent redesign. The guy who reached out to us and redesigned it is named Cameron, and he’s brilliant. It was an act of love for him, and he simply wanted to do it. It was the joy of that, and I think you recognize his outpouring of joy and love. Completely represented God and the Holy Spirit. It was the Trinity being like, “We want to be here, and we want to help. We want to build this, and we want to work through Cameron.”
That’s just one story of many that highlights the power of waiting and noticing God move. Allowing that space can be a dangerous thing to do because sometimes we need to act and move. But there’s no doubt that how the redesign happened was God. There have been so many moments like that, whether it’s musicians appearing out of nowhere or other needs being provided for. Those are the ways I notice the Holy Spirit working.
The other part of it is simply feedback from people or messages that we get. Someone might change their whole life based on one prayer we put together. We’ve had emails about people changing careers because of something they heard. It’s really beautiful and always very clear.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
I find it challenging to use technology to pray because of my job, so I try not to do any of that. But I’m in an interesting season right now. I went on an Ignatian retreat a month ago, and I really struggled with it. I’ve done the full 30-day exercises, but this time, there was a dryness. My retreat guide was talking about aridity in prayer and how playing and praying in the dry places is a monumental spiritual practice.
He said, “I think you have to stay there and enjoy it.” I told him I wasn’t sure if I could, and he replied, “Aridity in prayer is one of the most powerful places you can find yourself because your devotion and your longing for God will grow in that place, and it’s in fidelity and in aridity that we grow.”
So I’ve been praying with a lot of dryness, and he recommended doing imaginative contemplation, which is very Ignatian. Imaginative contemplation helps with that because it takes you within yourself yet out of yourself as well. Imaginative contemplation can help you as you enter dry seasons, especially if you continue to find tools to continue engaging with prayer. I find imaginative contemplation in the morning kicks things off. And no matter what, I’ll always do the Examen — that’s a given. I’ve heard it said that you can let all other prayer practices drop away, but never to let the Examen fade away. When I pray, I use 20-minute candles so I don’t have to rely on a timer or my phone.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
I’ll share my favorite resources in chronological order. The first one is “The Meaning of Marriage” by Tim Keller. My brother sent it to me in my early 20s when I was deciding whether or not to marry. I think it’s the first Tim Keller book I ever read, and I think I read it through twice. The way he spoke about Christ and the upside-down kingdom elevated Christ for me in a completely new way. I’m not sure what I was at the time — whether evangelical or more conservative evangelical — but it shifted me out of that and completely flipped my world. I was also impacted by a short sermon he gave called “The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.” Both of those together shifted something for me.
The second one is a choral piece. My style is more that of a charismatic worship leader, so I’ve done a lot of the normal worship-leading stuff. Yet there’s a piece by Hubert Parry called “I was glad” that is absolutely stunning. The harmonies in it are life-changing. It was my first awakening to choral music and the sacredness of it. The beauty of the harmonies and how they elevate us to heaven in a different way. There’s a particular point in the hymn that stands out to me, but overall, I find that quite life-changing as a piece of music.
The third one is a book called “The Quiet Companion: The Life of Peter Faber” by Mary Purcell. St. Peter Faber, who was a Jesuit, was one of the first companions of St. Ignatius, along with Francis Xavier. Peter Faber was the quiet one. St. Ignatius referred to him as the best spiritual director he’d ever encountered. Peter Faber came alongside people in such a deep and bespoke way. He was everyone’s favorite person to guide them in spiritual exercises. “The Quiet Companion” is about Peter Faber’s life. He started off as a shepherd in France, in the Savoy region. He came from a very humble background, studied in Paris with Ignatius and loved him — and the rest is history. Pope Francis made him a saint in 2013. The book is funny because normally Ignatius is the key character, but he comes in and out as an extra.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
There’s an obvious answer. I can still listen to Pray As You Go without it being a problem. Pray As You Go has shaped my life, but it’s part of who I am and my vocation as well. The other answer is Sacred Space. Sacred Space was what Pray As You Go was born out of. Our founder, Peter Scally, also created something called Sacred Space a few years before us. I think they’re about to celebrate 25 years. It’s basically Pray As You Go but without the audio. It’s written text, and it’s step-by-step. They have a Sacred Space app now where you can do the steps, and it’s a similar vibe, but it’s far enough away from what I do to engage with it. It’s beautiful. It’s Scripture reflection, and it’s so quick. The depth is really there, and you can get so much out of it.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
We’ve done a new project with the Jesuits in Britain. It’s an Ignatian Creativity Collective, and it’s been pretty life-changing. It’s beautiful and fosters creativity using Ignatian spirituality. We had a retreat in the summer that unlocked so many things in many people and ignited a beautiful creativity in everybody. It got me back in touch with things like songwriting and writing in general.
On a personal note, I’m taking a sabbatical next year, so I’m hoping to possibly write my own devotional. With Pray As You Go, there are a lot of exciting events coming up for the 20th anniversary. We’re also working on an album with the Porter’s Gate, which will feature Ignatian songs. That’s a quick peek at what’s going on.
For hundreds of years, Ignatius’ imaginative approach to faith, prayer and Scripture reading has inspired countless people in their own relationships with God.
Born in 1491, Ignatius did not always have a heart that was sensitive to the things of God. In his youth, he ran after riches, fame, fighting, women, fancy clothes — whatever his heart desired. But that all changed after a battle wound shattered his leg, and in the quiet loneliness of recovery, he encountered God.
As Emma mentioned above, he eventually met Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, and the three formed the beginnings of the Jesuits, a religious order that continues to make the world their monastery.
The Holy Spirit took a broken, self-focused man and turned him into a son of God, transforming his heart day by day through reflective, creative prayer. May his story remind us that God can make any heart new.
Emma Hudson is the director of the Jesuits’ Pray As You Go audio resource and offers support for other digital spirituality projects. She is based in London.