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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Palm Crosses | Palm Sunday | family prayer
Roxane Salonen shares her memories of Palm Sundays past and explains how we can create lasting memories with our families this Palm Sunday. During a recent trip to Mexico, I was struck by the palm trees and branches. They are so different than anything I’ve ever seen in my ordinary life, whether growing up on the Plains in northeast Montana or living on the Prairie of North Dakota as I do now, not to mention visits to our lake-laden land next door, Minnesota. These trees and their branches are so exotic, and yet, as a Catholic, I find them still so familiar because of our yearly procession with Jesus on Palm Sunday. There’s much to ponder in those last words, but that’s not what came to mind as I sized up these beautiful adornments of the resort town where my husband and I stayed for five nights last month. Instead, they called to mind the years my father would place palm branches behind a Madonna and Child painting that hung above our television.
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Faith Reflection | Hope-2025 | Jubilee of Hope | power of prayer
I’m writing this less than a week after Pope Leo XIV emerged on the balcony at St. Peter’s Square in Rome, following the announcement: “Habemus Papam!” By the time this reaches you, our new Holy Father will have been with us a few months, but right now, he’s still brand new, and I’ve been filled with an incredible hope. My hope is our new pope! On May 8, when the exciting avalanche of news began unfolding, I was recording a remote podcast and had to ignore the 43 texts that had arrived. On our short break, my guest, glancing at his phone, suddenly announced, “We have some surprising news! We have a pope, and he’s American!” My resulting gasp is fixed in perpetuity through the recording. Still, even without it, I’ll long remember where I was when I heard Cardinal Robert Prevost had been elected our new shepherd.
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Brief and contemporary inspiration focused on hope and family prayer will be delivered to your inbox! Articles include live video, written word, and links to resources that will lead you and your family deeper into faith.
The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands | family prayer
I grew up on a Lakota reservation in northeast Montana, worshipping at a mission church in the 1970s and 80s when the Catholic Church was in flux. Our family didn’t recite the Rosary, and I’d never seen this practiced by any of my peers. The Rosary, with its many mysteries, was itself a mystery to me. But I did have a love for Mary, and as I pondered that she shared a name with my paternal grandmother, Mary Beauclair, who died before I was born, I felt a connection to Grandma through Our Blessed Mother. Being asked one May, as a child, to crown Mary on the grounds outside our parish further pulled me in. And when we watched The Song of Bernadette together one afternoon, I began to yearn to seek a life of holiness through Mary’s help. I only once recall my mother bringing out her Rosary beads, however. I’d experienced my first heartbreak as a teenager — and seeing my sadness, Mom led me through the Rosary on the living-room couch. I realized the Rosary can be a comfort when words fail.
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Parenting | family life | prayer
What subjects does your school of love do well, and where can your school of love improve? “The family is a school of love,” Saint John Paul II once said. I wish I had seen this phrase early enough to have taped it to my fridge when our five young adult children were little. It might have empowered me to see more clearly the sublime dignity in my role as a mother in the most intense hands-on years. As I meditate on this phrase now, and on the section of The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) where the virtues of the family are laid out, it’s clear my chances have not vanished entirely: not in my role as a mother nor as a daughter. Not yet, anyway.
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Parenting | family conflict | family life
Earlier this week, the arrows began flying. It was words that got me in trouble, and a failure to be precise enough. But I think it was more than that. In hindsight, I see it was a failure to undertake a translation I didn't know was necessary, and may possibly be impossible to carry out; a need to bridge the gap between the language of the believer and non-believer, and perhaps their hearts as well.
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Roxane Salonen considers how our tears can be both blessings and prayers.
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