“Daddy, what bead are we on?” is a question I am asked frequently by my two oldest sons during our nighttime rosary. It is a question that at first perturbed me, but the more they asked the question, the more I fell in love with them asking the question. Their little souls are so precious. They seek to love God in their own way, and in their time. Although they lose their place on the rosary and the question will be asked again, it’s become something I long for every night when we pray together.
When my wife and I discussed having children, we knew we wanted to teach them the Holy Rosary early in their lives. It was a prayer that my wife prayed each morning with her family growing up. To this day, it is still a prominent prayer for my wife’s family. As for me, it played a role in my newfound relationship with Mary during and after my time at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
While in graduate school, I took the class Mary in the Modern World. It was from this class that everything changed for me with our Lady, especially my knowledge of the Holy Rosary and the desire to pray it more. St. Josemaria Escriva once stated, “Do you want to love Our Lady? Well, then, get to know her. How? By praying her rosary.”
In August 2017, I met my wife at a Catholic Beer Club event in Phoenix. We both knew that the relationship was different than anything either of us had experienced with other people. Realizing that we wanted to start the relationship off in the right direction, we started to pray the Holy Rosary together as part of the 54-day novena to Our Lady of Fatima that was taking place in the diocese of Phoenix for the 100th anniversary of Mary’s appearance.
The idea came to us after attending different Masses at different parishes but hearing the same message from the priests. Since those early days of our relationship, the rosary has been a predominant prayer for our spiritual life as a married couple. We prayed it leading up to our wedding day, as we waited for our first son to be born, and have prayed it in times of distress and surrender. Pope St. Pius X once said, “If there were one million families praying the Rosary every day, the entire world would be saved.”
Although our family nighttime prayer has evolved over the last five years, we have prayed the Holy Rosary consistently every night since last summer. To add to our prayer time, we rearranged our living room and set up a small altar for our children to focus more during our prayer time. I will write about this in another Epic Pew article soon.
If you haven’t prayed the Rosary in a long time, I would encourage you to do so. There are plenty of websites, including this one, where you can learn to pray the Rosary. If you need to “pray along” with others, you can find podcasts online, or even better, check out Hallow. Like my sons, never fear asking the Lord—Abba, what bead are we on?
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