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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Christmas Season | family prayer | how to pray the rosary
During the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, prayer often loses the place of priority we place on it in the rest of the year. Our to-do lists bloom and we feel ever more the pinch of the shortness of time in the Advent and Christmas seasons. Families rush the Advent season to hasten in Christmas long before our calendars reach the 24th of December. Advent and Christmas, like the season of Lent, are profound moments in our Liturgical year where the first movement of our hearts should be toward our Lord, especially how we encounter Him through prayer.
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Being a Christian doesn’t mean life is easy and nothing bad ever happens. In these difficult moments, we often question Jesus. Our faith can become rattled. We can feel abandoned. Jesus shows up and we are too busy being scared, angry, or sad to notice. If we take a second to look around, we can see His hand in everything. We can see that He was always there. Sometimes, in the kindness of others.
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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.
Advent | family prayer | family tradition
It took most of my adult life, but I finally bought four sets of Advent candles at once. This decision saves me the inevitable post-Thanksgiving scramble to find candles. The previous last-minute candle frenzy mirrored too much of the secular holiday season … go go go. Here is my proposition for this upcoming Advent season: let’s reclaim this time for our families, our sanity, and mostly for our deepening relationship with Jesus. Here are some of my suggestions for doing so this year.
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family prayer | how to pray the rosary
One October, the month of the Holy Rosary, I felt particularly ambitious about getting my kiddos, ages five and fifteen, to pray the Rosary more. At first, I haven’t had much success. The “rap rosary” was a total fail, my teen informed me. The Rosary podcasts had “too much opera” or “the people talk like they need a nap,” reported the little guy. I enjoy saying my Rosary in the morning on my back patio, beads in one hand and coffee in the other, but that wasn’t appealing to my family.
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Celebrating family life | family prayer | trust
Catholic Mom contributor, Carmen Lappe, maintains that children, without even using words, preach the greatest homilies about approaching Christ in trust. We are often reminded and encouraged to approach Christ with the faith of a child. If you’re anything like me, you often wonder just how to do this or just what this should look like. I have found, over the years, that my children, especially my 2-year-old son, preach the greatest homily when it comes to approaching Christ: trust. Usually, it can be found in the most ordinary, mundane moments of everyday life.
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family prayer | how to pray the rosary | praying the Rosary
Catherine Mendenhall-Baugh discusses the Catholic tradition and history of praying the Rosary. If someone were to say to you, “Let’s just take a few moments to stop and say 165 prayers while contemplating a special need going on in our lives, or even all the needs going on in the world.” I’m not sure that you or anyone would agree to participate in this kind of exercise. Yet, thousands around the world do exactly that when praying the Holy Rosary. Just what exactly are they hoping to achieve by this and why is it important?
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