I
n the middle of the nineteenth
century, a group of tourists were
viewing the treasures of the
Vatican Museum. As the group
moved from one beautiful object to
another, they admired the lifelike
sculptures, the ornate vases, the gold
and jeweled chalices, the beautiful
paintings with their delicate hand-
carved frames.
In the midst of the tour, the group’s
attention suddenly turned from the
inspiring artifacts collected by the
Vatican to a white-clad figure walk-
ing toward them. “The Holy Father!”
they whispered, their eyes fixed on
the surprise visitor.
Pope Pius IX walked up to the
tourists and began talking with them.
“Do you like what you have seen?”
the Pope asked. “Oh, Holy Father,
they are magnificent. Just gorgeous”,
they replied. Then the Holy Father
said, “Would you like to see the real
treasure of the Vatican?” Thinking
there must be a secret chamber
containing some priceless, rarely
viewed treasure, they responded
immediately. “Certainly, Holy Father,
where is it?” “Right here”, he said.
And he opened the palm of his hand,
showing them the Rosary he had
been saying as he walked along.
Pope Pius IX looked upon the
Rosary as a real treasure. More than
a hundred years later, the popes con-
tinued to extol the treasure and value
of the Rosary.
Pope Paul VI, in his Papal ex-
hortation, Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin Mary, strongly recommends
the saying of the Rosary as a family
prayer. The Second Vatican Council,
in The Decree on the Lay Apostolate,
states that the family shows itself
to be the domestic sanctuary of the
Church through the mutual love of
its members and the common prayer
they offer to God. The pope used
this statement from the council to
reinforce this principle. “A concrete
effort must be made to reinstate
communal prayer in family life”. He
went on to add, “The Rosary should
be considered as one of the best and
most efficacious prayers in common
that the Christian family is invited to
recite”.
Why should the Holy Father put
such a strong emphasis on the Rosary
as a form of family prayer? While the
Rosary is related to Mary, it is really
Christ-centered. It has its inspiration
from the Scriptures and takes into
account the saving events in Christ’s
life, from the virginal conception,
through his childhood and adult
years, to the Passion, death, and Res-
urrection. It likewise takes into ac-
count the effects of Christ’s life on the
early Church — the day of Pentecost,
and Mary’s being taken into heaven,
body and soul, at the end of her life.
Pope Paul VI stated that meditation
on the mysteries of the Rosary can
be an excellent preparation for the
celebration of the same mysteries in
the liturgy. Consequently, as families
pray the Rosary together, dwell-
ing on the mysteries, they become
more alive and echo, in a sense, the
celebration of these mysteries in the
Mass.
The family Rosary is an excellent
way for children to learn the prayers
and mysteries of the Rosary. As the
children be- come
familiar
with
basic
prayers
like the Our Father, the
Hail Mary and the Glory Be,
let them join in the recitation
of the Rosary, announce the particu-
lar mystery, and lead a decade of the
Rosary. Perhaps the member leading
the Rosary could announce an
intention for each decade or one for
the whole Rosary on that particular
day. At the beginning of each decade,
a short passage of Scripture might be
read pertaining to that mystery of the
Rosary.
Care must be taken, however, not
to make the Rosary a mere mechan-
ical exercise. Otherwise, it becomes
a mere moving from bead to bead,
much like the “prayer beads” of the
Moslems. Mere mechanical repe-
tition could make the words of St.
Matthew become a reality: “In your
prayer, do not rattle on like the
pagans. They think they will win a
hearing by the sheer multiplication of
words” (Matt. 6:7).
One of the biggest obstacles to
family prayer is time. Some will
complain, “Where is the time to get
together to pray? It is hard enough
to get the family together just to eat
a meal, much less to pray!” It is true
that the changing conditions of life
today do not make family gatherings
easy.
On the other hand, how many
hours will the family sit with their
eyes glued to the TV set? They seem
almost oblivious of one another, with
rarely a word
spoken,
except
perhaps
to decide
which
channel
to watch
for the next
hour. Then there
are all the activities
the children are involved in:
school home work, various
sports and extracurricular
school programmes. For Mom and
Dad, there are the Church meetings,
associations and cultural meetings,
social events and so on. The list be-
comes endless. Can this be why there
is no time for family prayer, especial-
ly the Rosary?
Fr. Patrick Peyton, the famous
family-rosary preacher, says that
“the family that prays together, stays
together” while Pope Paul VI warned
that families who want to live in the
full measure of the vocation and
spirituality proper to the Christian
family must therefore devote all their
energies to overcoming the pressures
that hinder family gatherings and
prayer in common.
For the things we appreciate and
value, or consider important in our
lives, we either find or make time.
The Scriptures remind us, “Where
your treasure is, there will your heart
also be”. Today, when the very exist-
ence of family life is being threat-
ened, the family Rosary can become
an effective tool in strengthening our
family life, in promoting peace and
harmony within our families, and in
nurturing love for each other.
The Rosary is not the only form
of prayer that a family can use in
praying together, it is merely one
form. But, as Pope Paul VI stated, it is
one of the best and most efficacious
prayers we have. Catholic families
in the sixteenth century used the
Rosary to seek God’s intervention in
preventing the Turks from entering
Europe. Their lives and lifestyles were
threatened. The Turks were already at
the gates of Vienna. The effectiveness
of their prayers was evident in the
famous Battle of Lepanto in which
the Turkish fleet was destroyed. What
would be the effectiveness of Catholic
families in the twenty-first century if
they used this same powerful tool?
We will never know until we use it.
