In his autobiography, the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen proposes three reasons for the Daily Holy Hour, which he resolved to keep from the day of his ordination:

1. "The Holy Hour is not a devotion - it is a sharing in the work of redemption." The hour that the Lord asked the disciples to keep with him in the Garden was not one to show forth devotedness or praise to God, but rather to be in union with the one who was to be crucified, "an hour of reparation to combat the hour of evil" which was to come.

2. It is among the only things that one might call a "personal request" from Jesus to the Apostles. He was not asking for them to do anything in particular - rather, "not for an hour of activity did He plead, but for an hour of companionship". The call of the Apostles to keep watch with Him passes down to us, and so we make good on the request He made.

3. "The third reason I keep up the Holy Hour is to grow more and more into His likeness." In closeness with Jesus in the gift of the Eucharist, "we become like that which we gaze upon". This is one of the most basic mandates of the disciple and the most basic results of the Incarnation - God became man so that man could become more like God.

This conviction of the Venerable Archbishop became so popular that it became a staple of the spiritual life, especially in the American Church.