x Close
World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Catholic Family Fun | Easter season | Living the Faith
Laura Vazquez Santos explores how the Church’s fifty-day Easter season invites mothers to move from celebration to formation. Every year, I enter the Triduum with holy ambition. I imagine dim lights, whispered prayers, and children gazing reverently at a crucifix. What I usually get is my 6-year-old asking for crackers every 5 minutes during the Gospel at Mass or my preschooler sword-fighting with last year’s blessed palm. I admit that getting through the Easter season can be both logistically challenging and spiritually testing. In years past, and especially after my reversion to the Faith, I placed unrealistic pressure on myself as a mother to get everything right each Easter, as I feared my children would be more enticed by the Easter Bunny than by the amazing reality of the Resurrection.
Share
Catholic Family Fun | Glorious Mysteries | The Family That Prays Together Stays Together
Maria Riley recaps her family’s experience of using the new book, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, to pray the Rosary. I have mixed emotions about praying the Rosary with my family. As children growing up in a Catholic home, we were “forced” to pray the Rosary, and I always dreaded it. The Rosary seemed to last forever, and there were a million other things I would have rather been doing. As a result, my prayer time was never fruitful. I recited words, but never actually prayed. Today, rarely does a day go by that I don’t pray at least one decade of the Rosary. If I happen to be having a particularly sleepless night, I can get through more than one Rosary easily. My love and devotion to Mary has grown into an integral part of my faith, and I love having her as my spiritual mother.
Share
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.
Catholic Family Fun | Father Patrick Peyton | pray the rosary
Maria V. Gallagher recaps her own experience of using the new book, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, to pray the Rosary. I’ll admit it — I had to be sold on the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. I had been praying the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries since I was a child, pleading desperately that my father, an accountant, would be able to make payroll so that we could eat. I relied on that trio of Mysteries for consolation during difficult times. It was difficult for me to imagine branching off into praying a new set of Mysteries. But I realized that Pope John Paul II must have had good reason to add something to what I considered to be the perfect form of prayer. I had to trust in the Holy Father’s judgment on this. In The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, Father Willy Raymond, C.S.C, offers an incredibly helpful guide for praying the Luminous Mysteries, along with the other Mysteries of the Rosary. It was as if he and his spiritual guide, the late Father Patrick Peyton, took me by the hand, one on each side, and led me closer to Jesus through the recitation of these Mysteries of Light.
Share
Catholic Family Fun | Father Peyton | pray the rosary
Michelle Nott recaps her family’s experience of using the new book, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, to pray the Rosary.
Share
Advent | Catholic Family Fun | Family Rosary
Lindsay Schlegel recaps her own experience of using the new book, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together, to pray the Rosary. Most weekdays, I pray a decade of the Rosary with my children as I drive them to school. In our routine, this practice comes after a shared morning offering, guardian angel prayer, spiritual communion if the kids don’t have Mass at school that day, and prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. Some days, it’s a quiet and peaceful experience. Other times, it comes after a rush to get out the door and a frustrating cajoling to get whoever hasn’t led a decade that week to either take his turn or speak up from the back of the car. Often my mind is somewhere else for at least part of the decade. For one thing, I’m driving, and for another, the prayer is so familiar to me that it can be tough to stay present, especially if I’m not really prepared for what’s coming next in my day. More often, I’m thinking of the person I’m offering the prayer for (if I can remember to do that!) than the mystery itself.
Share
Catholic Family Fun | Faith friendly media | forming children of faith
Family Theater Productions' new puppet series Guillermo & Will, now available on Minno, shows bilingual friends exploring God's world. While preschool kids may not be able to grasp the finer points of theology, two things that resonate with them (and their parents) are exploring God’s world and learning how to make their first friends. That's the goal of the puppet series Guillermo & Will, now available on Christian kids’ streaming service Minno. It's the creation of two accomplished Jim Henson Company puppeteers, and a co-production between Family Theater Productions and Minno. The kid-sized episodes were produced in FTP’s studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and follow the bilingual adventures of two colorful worms who are best pals.
Share
