Daily Family Prayer | pray the rosary | catholic family life
Praying the Rosary as a family has reshaped how we understand holiness in our domestic church. For us, daily family prayer was hard-won, and something I never believed we would be able to keep up. We deeply wanted to pray regularly, but desire alone did not seem enough to overcome our busy schedules, distractions, and the quiet discouragement that had settled in after years of trying to pray together.
The turning point came through a simple parish invitation. Our church sends a traveling statue of Our Lady of Fatima home with a different family for one week each year. One Sunday, I noticed a sign-up sheet. My husband and I both felt the unexpected urgency that we needed the statue of Mary to come home with us.
At that point, we did not have a statue of Our Lady displayed in our home. Years of moving had left some of our devotional items carefully packed away, and I will admit that our faith life, like our house, sometimes felt more “in progress” than settled. When I saw the waiting list, my heart sank—it felt impossibly long. I set a calendar reminder and nearly forgot about it until the message finally came that it was our turn.
Our Lady's Arrival
When the statue arrived, our whole family was genuinely excited. I was finishing work on a book I was writing about St. Bartolo Longo and his Marian devotions, a man the Church recognizes as one of the great modern apostles of the Rosary. What had first drawn me to Bartolo Longo was not the holiness that he was able to achieve at the end of his life, but his brokenness at the beginning.
As a young man, Bartolo fell away from the Catholic faith and became involved in spiritism during his university studies. This period left him deeply troubled and spiritually tormented. Through the guidance of a Dominican priest, he was reintroduced to the Rosary. After his conversion, Bartolo shared that he experienced a powerful interior conviction that would shape his life: “Whoever spreads the Rosary will be saved.”
That sentence stopped me in my tracks.
The Family Rosary Prayer
On the very day we brought the statue of Our Lady of Fatima into our home, my husband and I knew we needed to begin praying the Rosary together as a family. I shared with him and our children something I had learned while studying Bartolo Longo’s life: the 54-Day Rosary Novena. This devotion involves praying the Rosary daily for 54 consecutive days—27 in petition and 27 in thanksgiving—as an act of perseverance and trust in Mary’s intercession.
We began praying the Rosary right away. Our children, surprisingly enthusiastic, turned it into a family challenge. The goal was to achieve a 54-day “streak.” Once we started, something real shifted. We began praying together every night before the kids went to bed.
At first, the parents were the only ones praying out loud, but before long, the children were participating as well. The kids who once made excuses about praying were now each leading a decade of the Rosary. I couldn’t believe it. When day fifty-four arrived, none of us wanted to stop. That, of course, is precisely the wisdom of the devotion. Once a family has gone that far, why not keep the streak?
By God’s grace, we have.
Transformation of Our Family
I cannot fully describe how this daily Rosary has transformed our family life. The positive changes and graces are too numerous to count. What I can say is this: when we brought the traveling statue of Mary into our home, we also made more room for her spiritually. Though the statue itself returned to the parish and was shared with another family, through the Rosary, Mary continues to gather us and lead us closer to her Son.
The Catholic Church teaches that the family is a domestic church, and in praying the Rosary together, we have experienced that truth firsthand. Most of the time, we practice our faith imperfectly, but we do so faithfully, and with great love for Jesus and for each other. The Rosary did not make our family holy overnight, but it has made us persistent in our pursuit of holiness.
Charlotte Foudy is a Catholic author exploring family life, the domestic church, and the transforming power of prayer and the sacraments. She is the author of 33 Days to Nazareth Joy and Prayers of Pompeii. A devoted wife and homeschooling mother of three, her work is inspired by the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.