The Story of a Family Rosary

We are a family of seven, Bill and I with our five children ranging in ages from seven to fourteen.  As our children grew older and bedtimes farther apart, we noticed that our only family prayer time was around the dinner table and at Mass.  I was yearning for more prayer time with my older children and together as a family.  I had heard of families doing a Family Rosary and decided to embark on a new tradition. 

I was not raised Catholic and came to my faith at the age of 19 when RCIA was a six week Cole’s notes version of everything I needed to know about the Catholic Church.  As I had not yet been baptized there was no talk of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as all my past sins would be washed away upon Baptism.  We also didn’t delve into the depths of prayer outside of Mass. Hence, my knowledge of the Rosary was limited to recognizing what a Rosary looked like.  Little did I know of the promises held for those who prayed the Rosary.

My love for the Rosary started one desperate morning while driving to school in a blizzard, with a van full of children who didn’t want to go to school, and traffic that meant we would be late.  As all the complaints made their way to the front of the van and rattled around in my head, a thought entered my mind - something I have learned to recognize as Holy Inspiration.

“Mary, help me be the mother I need to be right now.”

It caught me off guard and my first reaction was, “Yeah, but you had Jesus as a child.  How hard could that have been?”

As we waited for traffic to clear, I walked through Mary’s life with Jesus.

• Saying yes to God when what she wanted was to be consecrated to religious life.
  
• Raising Jesus as a normal Jewish boy even though she knew He was the Son of God.
  
• Losing Him in the temple for days – we panic if we lose our children for minutes.
  
• Watching the people in her own hometown reject Him – probably even her own friends and family.
  
• Watching Him walk to Calvary knowing that there was nothing she could do but pray.
  
• Standing at the foot of the cross, feeling the intense pain of watching her child die, yet knowing there was no other place she could possibly be.
  
• Holding His body in her arms, knowing the promise that He will rise but questions flooding her head and heart.

Yes, I believed at that moment that Mary would understand how desperately I wanted to be a good Mom, but how hard it was day in and day out.  I turned to a prayer that I thought was just about Mary and found a prayer that, with every word uttered and every bead fingered, pointed me closer and closer to Christ.

In her book, Praying the Rosary – A Complete Guide to the World’s Most Popular Prayer, Megan McKennna uses these words to describe Mary:

“She is a woman of few words and one song and a lifetime of pondering “all these things in her heart.”  “All these things” are the mysteries of her child, in words, actions, presence and demands in the world.  And this child, this man Jesus, is first son of the Father, Son of God, Word of God made flesh, and only then her child who belongs to all people of God from the beginning of the covenant.”

As I researched, I found that the Rosary was originally devised to help connect people who could not read the bible to the understanding of the events in Christ’s life.  Pope Paul VI, during one of his talks at the Vatican lifted a Rosary into the air and pronounced, “This is the Bible for those who can neither read nor write.”

Megan McKenna writes, “The emphasis has always been on the Scriptures, drawing attention back to the word of God, serving as an interim, or bridge, to the Gospel for those who cannot read or study the wisdom of the word of God.”

My research was showing me that praying the Rosary was about Mary always pointing me in the direction of her Son and His walk through life.  It was not a prayer that raised Mary above Jesus or glorified her above our Savior, or any of the other misconceptions about the Rosary I had heard.  With this concern behind me, it was the benefits of the Rosary that caught my attention.

1. It gradually gives us a perfect knowledge of Jesus Christ.
2. It purifies our souls, washing away sin.
3. It gives us victory over all our enemies.
4. It makes it easy for us to practice virtue.
5. It sets us on fire with love of Our Lord.
6. It enriches us with graces and merits.
7. It supplies us with what is needed to pay all our debts to God and to our fellow men; and finally, it obtains all kinds of graces for us from Almighty God.

It seemed too good to be true, but definitely worth a try!

As I became more comfortable with the Rosary as a form of personal prayer, my eyes became set on a new horizon - Incorporating a Family Rosary into our home.  I had visions of our family gathered together in our living room, a glowing fire, lights dimmed, joined together in a prayer that would unite our family and help create peace and tranquility in our home.  The vision was one of serenity.  The serenity that touches a mother’s heart when she sees her family praying together.

The reality that took place as we started our Family Rosary was chaos and conflict.  Arguments over who got to sit in the two comfy chairs, who would lead which decade, swinging rosaries, bathroom breaks, and the list went on, destroying my heartwarming vision of our family in prayer. 

Maybe the Family Rosary wasn’t for us, or maybe I just needed to adjust to the reality of what a Family Rosary would mean to our family.  Here is what we learned.

• Perseverance is the name of the game.  Stick it out.  It takes time to work out the quirks and have everyone figure out the boundaries.
  
• Relax.  It’s prayer time.   Create an environment where everyone is comfortable.  We added an extra chair in our living room to give everyone enough space.  I learned to relax.  Did it really matter if our teens were “lounging” in their chairs, or if our six year old was hanging upside down in her chair?  We were praying as a family and everyone was involved.
  
• Do what works for your family and the ages of your children.   Our Family Rosary is Sunday night after dinner.  Everyone is home, homework is done and everyone is ready to relax before we start the next week.
  
• Create an environment for success.  Remove distracting objects from the room, turn the phone off, announce a “bathroom stop” before the Rosary starts.  For the first few weeks you will learn what the distractions are for your family and can eliminate them.
  
• Make sure everyone participates.  At the beginning we had some rebels depending on the mood of the evening.  They quickly learned that non-participation meant we started over. 
  
• Create a family tradition.  Make it the same every time.  We do decades in order from youngest to oldest. Of course it works for us because we have five children.  Bill always starts us when everyone is settled and leads us in the Creed, Our Father and the first three Hail Mary’s.  I introduce each mystery along with the scripture reading.  We have settled into a tradition that defines the Tomiak Family Rosary.  The great part about setting the tradition is that it works if we are doing it at home, in the car or on vacation.

The Family Rosary is now a smooth, predictable, prayerful event in our home.  It is so smooth that we are ready to add an extra day.  As I reflect on past Rosaries I am glad we persevered through the “growing pains”.  I can see that even though some of those Rosaries didn’t look good to Bill, the kids, or me they looked glorious to our Lord who encourages us to “pray always”.

Author’s Note:  After completing the interview below with Kathy, our family took on the challenge of praying a daily Family Rosary.  It has been a beautiful experience and Kathy is right, it is easier to start every day and make it part of your daily routine.

Read the interview below to see the Family Rosary through the eyes of another family.

The Roe Family Rosary

Kathy and Richard Roe have been married for 28 years and have 6 children; Aaron( 24 ), Tom ( 20 ), Bernadette(16 ), Mary(13), Joseph( 9 ) and Anthony(5 ).

Q:  Kathy, When did you and your family start doing a Family Rosary?

We started doing a family rosary in 1986 under the direction of Father Violini.  When I met him I was a feminist university student, the mother of 2 young boys and ready for a nervous breakdown.  He took me under his wing and asked me to go to daily Mass, say the Rosary daily with my family and go to weekly confession.  He was so loveable, such a fatherly figure and such a wise person that I did the things he told me.

Q:  How did you get started?

It took me a while to try and figure out how to fit the rosary into our day.  When we first  starte, my husband Richard was not Catholic.  I thought it best at that time that we say our Family Rosary in the morning so that Richard wasn’t off in another room while we prayed.

We woke up in the morning, got our clothes on and before breakfast we would say the Rosary.  We would kneel for the first decade and the fifth decade.  We did the Rosary this way for many years.  I was really motivated by the promises Our Lady for those who say the Rosary.  Throughout those years we always said a decade of the Rosary for Richard’s conversion.

We also pray one decade for vocations and so far two of our children have a vocation to religious life.

Q: What graces have you and your family experienced from praying the Rosary?

We have seen the fruits within our family in a very real way.  The things we have prayed for have come to pass.  Once I got to be 42 it looked like there would be no more babies in our home.  Our daughter Mary took it on as a personal prayer intention during the rosary for a whole year that I would be able to have another baby.  On July 29th, I gave birth to little Anthony at the age of 43.

It has been very profound for us to notice that the things we have asked for during the Rsary have certainly come to fruition.  It is also a beautiful opportunity in a family to say things that would be embarrassing to say to the person directly but you can bring up prayer intentions in a general kind of way for things that individuals are really struggling with.  We can offer a decade for a special friend, for financial help, moments of  need, moments of gratitude, for those that have hurt us, for our friends and family in need.  We always offer a decade of thanksgiving for all of our answered prayers.

The rosary has given us such a wonderful opportunity to lift up our worries.  It is a beautiful time to pray aloud and share your concerns and the things you are worried about.  Our children have learned to be very frank in their prayer requests so it has been very beneficial for the family to know what one another is struggling with and to be sensitive to one another’s periods of difficulty.  One of our children has gone through a period where he completely doubted his faith, but through the Rosary he was able to offer his decade for other young people who were also doubting their faith. 

For Richard and I, it gives us the opportunity to pray for our marriage.  If we are disagreeing or annoyed with each other the children can hear me offer a decade that Mom and Dad will always love one another, will always forgive one another and that we will understand one another.  We ask Jesus for the grace to persevere in our marriage and that our family will be an imitation of the Holy Family. 

Praying aloud together as a family and offering those intentions and meditating on the mysteries has been so fruitful for us as a family.  It has been one of the primary sources of grace in our home. 

Q:Has the way you prayed the Rosary changed over the years?

Most definitely!  Richard became a Catholic six years ago.  We had been praying for his conversion for 12 years.  This is an enormous example for all of us of perseverance and accepting God’s timing and not our own.  Once Richard was Catholic saying the Rosary in the morning time didn’t seem appropriate anymore so we started a new tradition of saying the rosary at night, at the end of the day in the younger children’s bedrooms.  It was a big change.  We moved two rocking chairs into the bedroom for Richard and I.  The older kids would sit on the bed and the younger ones would be tucked into bed.  What usually happened was that Richard and I would do the Rosary very well, the oldest pretty good and the youngest would fall asleep!  I wasn’t that happy with the setup, but when you have a large family there are compromises to be made.  It’s not always going to be able to stay the same.  We love things structured and routine but sometimes as the family grows changes need to be made. 

Q: What advice do you have for families that are considering praying a Family Rosary?

Just do it!  It is so valuable that you find a way to make it work.  Create a routine and use it everyday.  When you pray sporadically you will run into more resistance than if it is just something that happens each day.  Print out the fifteen promises of the Rosary and discuss them as a family. Everyone then knows what you are trying to achieve as a family.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

A commitment to a Family Rosary is something that is so healthy and beneficial to a family that I would say it is something worth fighting for and that you have to carve out some time in the day when it is actually going to happen.  If we want to protect and defend our families in a special way there’s nothing more powerful than the Rosary.

We need to be reminded that when Our Lady appeared in Fatima she asked Catholics to say the Rosary daily.  She didn’t say monthly, or weekly, she said daily.  And if our heavenly mother is asking us to pray the Rosary like that then we need to listen.  We live in difficult times and the rosary is a weapon that heaven has given us to protect our families. 

If you have never prayed the Rosary or are a bit rusty on the prayers, click here for a guide to praying the Rosary. 

Send us your experiences with praying the Rosary and we will include them in our Reader’s Wisdom Column beginning October, 2004.