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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Something rather extraordinary has been happening around the world during these first days of October. On October 1, about 700 children gathered around Pope Leo XIV at the Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican Gardens and prayed the Rosary for peace. Five decades were prayed in five languages. The Pope asked them to imagine fifty million Hail Marys rising from children around the world asking God for peace. Then last Saturday, October 3, I had the privilege of being at the University of Portland Oregon, where students, families, faculty and friends gathered with Holy Cross Family Ministries for another Rosary Rally for Peace. The theme was Christ's words: “My peace I give you.” Then here, that same evening at the Father Peyton Center in Massachusetts, families gathered with candles and rosaries, and Arthur Boyle gave his testimony on “The Healing Power of the Rosary.” And on October 22, Holy Cross Family Ministries will bring people together across the world for the Global Rosary Rally for Peace, as of now well over 200 thousand people have signed up for it. And in fact Pope Leo has acknowledged this effort of Holy Cross Family Ministries and has given his apostolic blessings for its success. That is a lot of rosaries in one month. October is apparently the month when Catholics decide that if fifty-three Hail Marys are good, several million might be even better.
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There is something wonderfully strange about today’s feast. We call it the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and yet the Cross was never meant to exalt anyone. Rome designed it to humiliate, expose, and crush. And yet we Christians take that very instrument and raise it above the altar. If a first century Roman executioner walked into a church today and saw a crucifix hanging over the sanctuary, he might think we had developed a very unusual sense of interior decoration. But we raise the Cross because God has completely changed its meaning. What was meant to reduce humanity has become the place where humanity is lifted up.
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In June 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile released its first spectacular images of the universe. What fascinated me was not only the images themselves, but how long they had taken to arrive. The project had been dreamed about for decades. Scientists designed enormous mirrors, built a camera weighing several tons, hauled equipment high into the Andes, calibrated instruments, corrected tiny errors, and waited. For years, there was tremendous work and almost nothing for the public to see. Then one day, the images started appearing, filled with millions of stars and galaxies, and a look into the vastness of the universe. What looked like a sudden achievement was actually the visible result of years of invisible preparation. That is perhaps a beautiful way to understand the day of Mary's birth. When Mary was born, apparently nothing happened. No angelic choir was reported over her house. No star appeared. No emperor lost sleep. Somewhere in an ordinary Jewish family, a baby girl was born, cried, needed feeding, and probably kept somebody awake at two in the morning. Even the grandmother may have looked at her and said what grandmothers have been saying ever since: “She is beautiful. Of course, she looks like our side of the family.” Watch Video Here
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