When my family was young, our parents would lead us in praying the Rosary around the dinner table during the months of May and October.  Each mystery, with an Our Father, ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be, matched our family perfectly, with Dad and Mom, six girls and four boys.  For the initial prayers, especially the Apostles’ Creed, one of our grandmothers was often there to help.

Prayer as a family was not an occasional event, but a regularity.  Both Dad and Mom taught us our night prayers beside our beds, on our knees.  Evening dinner together was always preceded by Grace Before Meals:  "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen." 

We like to think that it was easier and simpler to do those things in bygone days.  Sometimes, though, I wonder if people made those practices more of a priority, and were simply more committed to them.   I know that there are families that still do these things, and families that try to, and I am grateful to them.  Their children will remember that God joined them daily in their lives and at their table, and appointed his angel to guard their souls each night.

After this Saturday evening’s 5:30 Mass, our Rosary Society has joined with our school families to host a Candlelight Family Rosary.  Families will be bringing their carved pumpkins displaying religious themes.  Their efforts make a special and beautiful event out of things that can be consoling and habitual parts of our lives.  These include the following:

1. Prayer as a family:  the family that prays together is loving one another in a concrete way.
2. Honoring Mary:  she is, by God’s will, the sole contributor to Jesus’ humanity, to his flesh, to his bodily existence, and therefore intimately united to him.  She is worthy of our love and praise.
3. The Rosary:  this tried and true practice is simple and repetitive, but can lead us into the deeper forms of prayer—meditation on the mysteries of Christ’s life and our redemption, and contemplation in God’s presence.
4. Hallowing our mundane lives:  in a secular world we can remember and practice our faith, and make it a leaven in our society; we do that when we keep our faith in mind, when we carve it into our routines and our extraordinary events, when we let our lights shine.

On this occasion, I recommend making all of these things ordinary.  Of all the wonderful support and gifts, tangible and intangible, that parents give to their children, and that this adult generation gives to the next, the most precious is the awareness of and practice of a spiritual life and training in prayer.  The encouragement of an active relationship with God is a skill for life, and the only gift we give that lasts beyond this life, into the life to come.

Sincerely,

Fr. Paul