A Family Rosary…

Tonight we began to pray a rosary daily as a family.  It was something my husband had mentioned wanting to do to the children. They mentioned it to me, not knowing that I had  also been wanting to begin doing this, and so it began. 

We used Scriptural Rosary books, the same ones we used in our old parish to pray the communal rosary every Wednesday.  At the end, my husband told me that wasn’t a traditional rosary.  Ha. I told him that if by ‘traditional’ he meant not ‘just a mantra of Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s without even mentioning the mysteries’ (and he admitted that is what he meant) then no, it wasn’t. It was better. He did like it though, so it’s ok. 

 One of the girls wanted to pray another set of mysteries, and I’m glad that she enjoyed it that much, but we told her it would wait until tomorrow.  I want them to keep enjoying it and overdoing it the first night won’t help.  Still, it was a good start. 

There is something special about praying together in community.  There is also something special about praying together as a family.  The chorus of our daughters young voices raised with the deep tones of their father in prayer is a precious thing.  These are precious days together.

Mourning the Loss/Embracing the New

You know it’s bad when you have been attending  your new parish for three months and as you arrive at the stop sign at the end of the road leaving the Church, your youngest says ‘Every week at this stop sign, we say how much we miss our old Parish.’ Yeah. That’s bad.  It isn’t so much that the new parish isn’t a good one, as that the old one was so wonderful.  We can’t help but compare the two and while we are doing our best to embrace the current parish, we do mourn for what we’ve lost… and it is substantial.

Tonight we attended our first Adoration in the new parish.  They have a Holy Hour once per month on Wednesday nights, during which they also have what they call a ‘penance service’.  What that really translates to is that Father is available in the Reconciliation Room during the Holy Hour for confessions.  I am very grateful for any Adoration time at ALL.  I can’t imagine NOT having it. There were about 20 adults there, made up of several couples and one other family with younger children than ours.  Not bad for such a small parish.  However, the conversation at the stop sign tonight still turned to the old parish where we had 24 hours of Adoration once per month. Dh and I regularly had one of the wee hours all to ourselves.  A very different experience I must say.  All regret aside, it was wonderful to spend time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament once again.