Our Daily Family Rosary has become an evening ritual — an integral part of our family life that is like a walking stick that we carry with us on our journey along the path of holiness. Having said that, I also have to admit that our Family Rosary has been a work in progress over the last two years, and I am sure will continue to evolve in the future . Our desire to pray the Rosary together as a family started sporadically, as we modeled what we saw being practiced by other faithful Catholic families in our homeschooling group and among wonderful families in our parish. One Advent, we decided to dedicate ourselves to daily recitation of the Rosary and then again over the subsequent Lent. We then lapsed in our daily practice following that Easter, but at some point, we restarted again — I don’t remember there being a significant event that drew us back into the daily practice but it wasn’t a special liturgical season; it was more like the Holy Spirit just reminding us what we had planted during those seasons when we prayed the Rosary daily — those seeds of faithfulness — seeds that had such potential to grow and become seedlings and eventually beautiful blooms, if only we would continue to nourish and water them by our faithfulness! So the Rosary slowly transformed into a daily family activity that now we just know that we do together. I love this time, because it brings us together at the day’s end, first of all to discuss and offer petitions, for our own family’s needs, but also for the needs of those who one of us knows about, but maybe the rest of us haven’t heard — friends or family members who are sick or struggling, petitions for those we don’t know personally but who is in dire need of prayer, even current issues in our local, national and international community, such as the raging wildfires in California. Often we talk about these petitions before we pray, and that discussion brings us closer in relationship.
When We Pray Our Family Rosary
We pray our Family Rosary most often in the evenings at home, before bed-time for our youngest. We also set a specific time for our Rosary (usually 8pm — but that can fluctuate quite a bit!). Most of the time, praying our Family Rosary is a wonderfully soothing meditation for us, but we have all boys, and boys mean energy and romping and lots of wrestling (even when you would think they would be [...]