family prayer | The-Rosary-In-Our-Hands
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.
Though we didn’t go to Mass, we were registered parishioners because I was baptized and had received my first Communion at the local parish. Around the time that I began high school, a letter came in the mail that a youth group was starting in our parish and that in order to be confirmed we were required to go to the Youth Mass (maybe not the best technique but God worked through this to reach me).
I didn’t want to be dropped off at church and had a bad attitude about it, but it was only a matter of months before God started working on my heart and I converted into a completely different person. During these months, I acquired a Rosary pamphlet at youth group that I would pull out and read in my room. In these beginning days of still learning what a prayer life looked like, I found peace and comfort as I sat in my room reciting the prayers of the Rosary that I found in that pamphlet.
A Growing Devotion to the Rosary
My devotion to the Rosary continued to grow, and it became my go-to prayer over the years, especially during my most difficult days, at times when I didn’t have it in me to pray much else. Mary was there with me taking my prayers to her Son.
From sleepless newborn nights when my postpartum anxiety wouldn’t let me sleep, the words of the Hail Mary would lull me back to sleep as I woke up over and over picking up where I left off … to the long days of intense deliverance ministry while we lived as missionaries in Haiti, when Mary’s own words were our weapon as we prayed with possessed teens.
I don’t know where I would be without our Blessed Mother and the Rosary as my companions for the last 25 years of my faith journey. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
Venerable Patrick Peyton, known as "The Rosary Priest," devoted his priestly life to encouraging family prayer, especially the Rosary. This October, for the Month of the Holy Rosary, Family Rosary (an apostolate founded by Father Peyton) and Catholic Mom have teamed up for this daily series dedicated to the Rosary.
Anna Albert is a homeschooling mom of 5 who resides with her family in Savannah, GA, and is the co-founder of Missionary Impulse, a non-profit that exists to evangelize with a special focus on helping the poorest of Haiti through education.