Praying the Rosary As a Family, by Jamie Quinlan
From Jamie Quinlan . . .
Honestly praying the rosary is new to me, I have only been praying it within the last two years. Not growing up Catholic it was very foreign and scary and I was really unsure about Mary and her role in my life and faith. Over the past two years I have grown to LOVE the rosary to the LOVE our Blessed Mother! God the Father was such a genius to give us a gentle and loving Mother – He knew we needed her! And Mary knew that we needed the Rosary!
I am a visual person, so meditating on the life and Mysteries of Christ is a very powerful way to pray for me. I also appreciate how tangible the rosary is – it has a beginning and an end and it gives my heart and my hands something to do in situations that are so often “out of my hands!” I also find the repetition comforting, because it allows me to get lost in my prayer – exactly Mary’s goal – to lead us to the heart of her Son.
When I began praying the rosary, I used the Interactive Rosary on the Laudate app on my phone. It is a super easy way to learn the rosary, all the prayers are right there! I also didn’t pray with the mysteries when I first began, I simply prayed the basic “Our Father”, “Hail Mary”, “Glory Be” and “Oh My Jesus”. After I became comfortable with this, then I added the mysteries.
The mysteries are really the heart and soul of the Rosary and deepen prayer and lead you to meditation when you add them. Here is a great website that helps explain how to pray the Rosary: http://www.beginningcatholic.com/how-to-pray-the-rosary. Here is a website that give you all of the mysteries, but the Laudate app also includes them.
As a mother, my number one goal is to lead my children to Jesus. Therefore, I am always very eager to share my faith journey with my children in hopes that they will come to love the Lord deeply. As I’ve grown more comfortable with the Rosary, we have integrated it into our family prayer. At first I was intimated by praying the Rosary with my kids because it takes a bit over 20 minutes and I thought that was too long for my kids to sit and focus, but using a few simple tools, it’s actually become one our family’s favorite prayers.
The first thing we did was create a “Rosary Basket” for our family. This basket sits on a kid accessible shelf in our living room. The basket has rosaries, free catholic coloring pages that I have printed off the internet (simply search “free Catholic coloring pages”), colored pens and pencils and a few books related to the rosary. I also decided to hang our rosaries in our dining room at kid reachable level. This way they are always accessible and we see them often and they remind us to pray! The kids also have them hanging in their bedrooms, so they can pray at night if they want to.
Two of the most helpful resources in our basket have been our St. Joseph's Children’s Missal and our Holy Heroes' A Little Catholic’s first Rosary Book . The St. Joseph’s Children’s Missal contains pictures of each of the mysteries, so even kids who can’t read can understand what’s going on. Our 5 year old son loves this book because using the pictures he gets to be the mystery announcer!
The First Rosary Book is a bead by bead picture book of the Rosary (there is one book for each of the 4 Mysteries) with added scripture and all of the prayers. It’s geared towards little kids, but all of our kids love it and have figured out how to use it!
I want our kids to have super positive experiences with prayer, so I always try to make our prayer times super positive and I like to add a little fun, so some silly thing our family does is that we always have popcorn when we pray the Rosary?! I know traditionally you don’t eat when you pray, but our family is a snacking family, and the popcorn makes it fun, keeps them quiet and entertained and engaged!
I also love to create and give our kids ownership over these experiences because then it’s not me making them do it, they are leading it and we are doing it together because we want to be in prayer together. So something that we have done to help foster this is create a Rosary Club. This keeps us more accountable to praying the Rosary (we don’t do it every day. . . I wish we did, but someday we will get there) and it gives them each a job and ownership over the experience.
Another great way our family loves to pray the rosary is with the Holy Heros Rosary Audio CD’s. You can get them here. Our kids love these! They are dramatized and have music, background sounds and scripture that really engage the kids. We often listen to them in the car, but sometimes we bring
them in and listen, pray and color together.
I know several families do Rosary walks. I love to do this independently, it’s peaceful and I love to pray over our neighborhood. I have yet to do this with our kids, as we are still working on not getting hit by cars. 😀
I know that not all of these things are traditional, but my hope is that I will share my love of the Lord, prayer and the Blessed Mother with our children. I have found the Rosary so comforting and a really powerful tool. I desire to share this with them and foster of a love and desire for more within their hearts. Mother Mary pray for us and draw us closer to your son Jesus!
Honestly praying the rosary is new to me, I have only been praying it within the last two years. Not growing up Catholic it was very foreign and scary and I was really unsure about Mary and her role in my life and faith. Over the past two years I have grown to LOVE the rosary to the LOVE our Blessed Mother! God the Father was such a genius to give us a gentle and loving Mother – He knew we needed her! And Mary knew that we needed the Rosary!
I am a visual person, so meditating on the life and Mysteries of Christ is a very powerful way to pray for me. I also appreciate how tangible the rosary is – it has a beginning and an end and it gives my heart and my hands something to do in situations that are so often “out of my hands!” I also find the repetition comforting, because it allows me to get lost in my prayer – exactly Mary’s goal – to lead us to the heart of her Son.
When I began praying the rosary, I used the Interactive Rosary on the Laudate app on my phone. It is a super easy way to learn the rosary, all the prayers are right there! I also didn’t pray with the mysteries when I first began, I simply prayed the basic “Our Father”, “Hail Mary”, “Glory Be” and “Oh My Jesus”. After I became comfortable with this, then I added the mysteries.
The mysteries are really the heart and soul of the Rosary and deepen prayer and lead you to meditation when you add them. Here is a great website that helps explain how to pray the Rosary: http://www.beginningcatholic.com/how-to-pray-the-rosary. Here is a website that give you all of the mysteries, but the Laudate app also includes them.
As a mother, my number one goal is to lead my children to Jesus. Therefore, I am always very eager to share my faith journey with my children in hopes that they will come to love the Lord deeply. As I’ve grown more comfortable with the Rosary, we have integrated it into our family prayer. At first I was intimated by praying the Rosary with my kids because it takes a bit over 20 minutes and I thought that was too long for my kids to sit and focus, but using a few simple tools, it’s actually become one our family’s favorite prayers.
Two of the most helpful resources in our basket have been our St. Joseph's Children’s Missal and our Holy Heroes' A Little Catholic’s first Rosary Book . The St. Joseph’s Children’s Missal contains pictures of each of the mysteries, so even kids who can’t read can understand what’s going on. Our 5 year old son loves this book because using the pictures he gets to be the mystery announcer!The First Rosary Book is a bead by bead picture book of the Rosary (there is one book for each of the 4 Mysteries) with added scripture and all of the prayers. It’s geared towards little kids, but all of our kids love it and have figured out how to use it!
I want our kids to have super positive experiences with prayer, so I always try to make our prayer times super positive and I like to add a little fun, so some silly thing our family does is that we always have popcorn when we pray the Rosary?! I know traditionally you don’t eat when you pray, but our family is a snacking family, and the popcorn makes it fun, keeps them quiet and entertained and engaged!
Another great way our family loves to pray the rosary is with the Holy Heros Rosary Audio CD’s. You can get them here. Our kids love these! They are dramatized and have music, background sounds and scripture that really engage the kids. We often listen to them in the car, but sometimes we bring them in and listen, pray and color together.
I know several families do Rosary walks. I love to do this independently, it’s peaceful and I love to pray over our neighborhood. I have yet to do this with our kids, as we are still working on not getting hit by cars. 😀
I know that not all of these things are traditional, but my hope is that I will share my love of the Lord, prayer and the Blessed Mother with our children. I have found the Rosary so comforting and a really powerful tool. I desire to share this with them and foster of a love and desire for more within their hearts. Mother Mary pray for us and draw us closer to your son Jesus!
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