My mother-in-law has a saying that she often likes to quote, “begin with the end in mind.” This applies to a lot of areas in life, but most recently it has been on my mind regarding my children’s faith. If I am beginning with the end in mind, the end here being their salvation, what do I need to be doing now, in the early years of their lives to cultivate it? The answer to this question is, many things, but since the month of October is the month of the Rosary, it is our current family focus.
My husband and I recently began the habit of praying a rosary together each evening. What once seemed like a gargantuan task has, not surprisingly, become the most peaceful and fruitful part of our evenings. I miss it on nights when it doesn’t happen. It’s an opportunity to lift our friends, family, children, and each other up in prayer, and to do it as a couple has been a huge blessing to our marriage. In the long term, we would like our nightly rosary to evolve into a family rosary. This is unrealistic in our current stage of life- our kids are just too little. At almost four, two and a half, and not even one yet, they can’t sit still for the length of a rosary. They also often go to bed before my husband is home from work in the evenings.
But, but, but, we can prepare with the end in mind! Over the course of the past year, we have been teaching them the most basic prayers, one at a time. We began with the Hail Mary, for the simple reason that it’s short and of a conversational nature, which I think makes it easy to understand. In the beginning, we said the words out loud, slowly. Over time, we would pause at the ends of stanzas, leaving the kids room to fill in the blanks. And eventually, they knew all the words to the prayer and would join in it with us. We did the same for the Our Father, Glory Be, and O My Jesus.
At this point, we started to teach them about prayer intentions. Each night we pray with each child before they go to bed (for us, staggered bedtimes improve my sanity and give me some guaranteed one-on-one with each kiddo). In addition to thanking God for the day and praying a blessing over them, we offer them the chance to pray for anyone who’s special to them or on their heart. We also let them choose which prayer they would like to say. I am always surprised by the people my children remember to pray for, and the sincerity and wholehearted reverence of their prayers are a good reminder for my own.
(As an aside, my husband, the rockstar, and a man after St. Joseph’s heart, reads a Psalm of their choosing to them each night at bedtime. It is the sweetest thing to listen to. G, who is adept at stalling bedtime when she wants to, has already figured out that Psalm 119 is the longest, and often requests that one, stipulating that she wants to “hear all the verses!”)
Which brings us to today, and the month of the Rosary. Now that our kids know all the prayers of the rosary (the Hail Holy Queen and the Apostles’ Creed being the exceptions) and understand the concept of offering prayers for those they love, they easily slid into the idea of praying a decade when I explained to them that October is a special month for the rosary and how wonderful it is that they are now old enough to join us. We snuggle up in our big rocker or on the couch, decide who to pray for, and count the prayers on our fingers. Sometimes they get squirrely and sometimes they are completely focused, but there is so much grace for even the most distracted of decades!