Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

 

We celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7th, which is the anniversary of the victory of the Christian army at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.  The victory of the battle secured Europe against Turkish invasion.  Pope St. Pius V had asked for all people throughout Europe to pray the Rosary and attributed the victory to the intercession of the Blessed Mary. 

Teaching our children to pray is very important to our family and has been a learning process for us all.  Different phases of our lives (my husband's medical residency/fellowship, miscarriage, new babies, starting to homeschool, etc) has all added to an ebb and flow of our family prayer life.  Last Lent we made a goal to go to daily Mass and to pray the Rosary together as a family daily.  Having a 6 year, 4 year, 2 year, and 6 month old children made that goal VERY difficult.  We did get into a great schedule of attending daily mass and I was able to pray a rosary myself most days of the week, and included all of the children a handful of the days.  We would most commonly use the Holy Heroes Rosary CD's, watch the Children's Rosary on EWTN or simply pray the rosary as a family.  Summer time came and we came and although we made it to daily Mass most days we really fell off the bandwagon of praying the rosary.  As fall came and homeschooling and activities started back up it only seemed to get busier and taking the time for a daily rosary seemed harder and harder!

Well, as October approached I decided it would be a great time to start our family Rosary again (in 1883 Pope Leo XIII dedicated the month of October to the Holy Rosary) .Well, we got to October 7th and had not prayed it once, but we were able to get back into it today to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary!  We went to daily Mass, ran a few errands, came home to do some school work and then had lots of family Rosary fun!

We got the idea to make and edible Rosary, which was great to help us get back into the swing of praying and also have lots of fun!  We took our time and really discussed each of the prayers of the Rosary.  One part of our oldest son's sacramental preparations with Preparing to Receive Jesus has included not only learning his basic prayers but truly understanding what each prayer means.  He has been studying the Hail Mary, Our Father, Glory Be, Angel of God and Act of Contrition. 

We also got a fantastic new book, The Illustrated Rosary, which is an amazing guide to praying the Rosary.  We used the Illustrated Rosary book and also our Sacred Art Rosary Flip Book to talk about the different mysteries of the Rosary.  We counted out chocolate chips and M&Ms for each Hail Mary and Our Father to construct our edible rosaries and then prayed the rosary together.  Our 3 year old used Rosary Roses from Annery's Handmade to help him count each prayer.  These really help to keep his little hands busy during prayer time!

 

 

I think the biggest thing that I need to keep reminding myself is that prayer time with all of our children is not going to be the same calming prayer as if I would pray individually or with my spouse.  Prayer time with little ones might be prayed "badly", but it is still better than no Rosary at all!  Thanks Kendra from Catholic All Year for this great image of this fantastic quote from Father Mark Kirby and wonderful reminder for us all!