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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
During my freshman year of college, I was thinking about joining a particular household. At the Franciscan University of Steubenville, “households” are like Catholic fraternities and sororities. One of the regular commitments of this household was a Sunday evening Rosary. Let me paint the picture for you. Twenty college-age guys sitting comfortably on couches and chairs in a nice warm room praying a very repetitive devotion late at night. Someone was bound to fall asleep. On this occasion, someone did. Somewhere around the third Glorious Mystery, a good friend of mine started to nod and snap back. Nod and snap back. And then, after a valiant struggle, just nod. Everyone else in the room seemed to silently acknowledge that our friend was, shall we say, no longer with us.
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The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
Growing up in a small village in Ireland, it was from my Grandmother Hannah, whom we called Nanny, that I observed and learned the power that prayer holds to ground and shape our lives through joy and struggle. She was the first person I saw praying the Rosary. Never far from her gnarled, arthritic hands, the beads moved between her fingers in a fluid rhythm as her lips murmured the familiar words.
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The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
When I first started dating my wife, Anna, I quickly learned about her devotion to our Blessed Mother and her commitment to praying a daily Rosary. For some reason, praying the Rosary did not interest me. It seemed boring, and I felt that other forms of prayer were more fruitful. Don’t get me wrong, I loved our Blessed Mother and understood her role in the life of the Church. I often talked about her with others, and some would say I was Mary’s biggest fan. But a whole Rosary, five decades, was reserved for when I couldn’t fall asleep. In fact, during different seasons of my life, I kept a Rosary on my nightstand. As soon as I lay in bed, I would grab it, usually not making it to the end of the Creed, before waking up the next morning with the Rosary on my face.
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The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
I’m so thrilled to be writing to you on this feast of Saint John Paul II. From the time I was born and up through college, Pope John Paul II was the only pope I knew. Looking back, he was the reason I started to have a love for the Rosary. Pope John Paul II’s last World Youth Day was in Toronto in 2002. As a thank-you to our parish for all the fundraising to go, I was inspired one day to write the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary into short scripts. I created a production where the young adults and youth at my parish performed each Mystery, and the audience would pray the decade’s prayers in between each one. It was a “Living Rosary,” and it was beautiful. All this came about because of attending World Youth Day. After World Youth Day, in October of the same year, Pope John Paul II released the Luminous Mysteries with the start of the Year of the Rosary. I fell in love with these new mysteries and inspiration struck! This time, my brother wrote music to go along with the scripts I wrote for the Luminous Mysteries. I cast a small group of young adults and high school students from across the diocese to take part in what I called a “prayformance.” It was an incredible experience as my cast, the audience, and I became completely immersed in the Rosary. I was the director and producer, and also played the woman who washes the feet of Jesus in the Third Luminous Mystery, “The Conversion of Sinners and the Proclamation of the Kingdom.”
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The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
Recognizing the place of the Blessed Mother in my life and the importance of the Rosary was a gradual process for me. I was blessed to be raised in a Catholic home, the youngest of seven siblings, and was fortified by the love of my mom and dad (60+ years) as well as an aunt who lived with us while growing up. The Catholic faith and the Mass were always important to my family. I was in rich soil. Mary Had a Special Role in Hearing Our Requests While I do not remember praying the Rosary on a regular basis during those early years, I do recall that we would go to Mary and pray the Rosary together when people in the family needed significant intercession. We trusted that Mary had a special role in hearing our requests and praying for us, presenting our petitions to her Son. One memory of praying together as a family was in early college. My sister-in-law was hemorrhaging after giving birth to my nephew, and we prayed the Rosary as a family, receiving a call shortly afterward that she would be okay (a doctor who was pioneering a way to help women in these situations just happened to be in town for a presentation and was called to help).
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The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
Today is the 107th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, when many were gathered 5 months after Mary originally appeared to Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia at Fatima. She had promised to appear to them every month on the 13th, and on September 13th when the largest group had gathered to join them, she said there would be a miracle on the following month. On October 13, 1917, the rain cleared, the sun emerged, and spun around for 10 minutes as if it were dancing while 70,000 witnessed the miracle. Though I didn’t grow up in a practicing Catholic home, the Rosary truly feels like the backdrop to my faith life. As a kid, I would see images of our Blessed Mother and Rosaries strewn all over when I visited my Portuguese grandmother, whose name literally translated to Mary of Heaven. She had a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and her own parents were married in Portugal 20 years to the day of the original apparition. I know she was praying for me my whole life and I attribute my conversion in part to her prayers.
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