It was praying to the saints that led me to a deeper, fuller habit of prayer. We suffered a miscarriage a few years ago, which actually ended up reinvigorating my faith. We got pregnant a few months later. Each night I’d say an Our Father, a Hail Mary, then a prayer to St. Gerard asking him to pray for the health of our new baby. By the time she arrived, I’d added a couple more saints to the nightly list. I’d say a few other prayers throughout the day, but my nightly prayers were still rather short and concise. About a year later, we ended up pregnant again. There were problems from the start and my prayer to St. Gerard grew to be a bit lengthier and more involved. We’d also been pretty much ostracized from my extended family due to their disgust over the fact that we’d had our then-youngest daughter, so I’d also added in a nightly prayer to St. Maria Goretti asking her to pray that God grant me the strength to be as forgiving as her. As things went from bad to worse with the newest pregnancy, I added a few other saints into my nightly prayers, then a few more, until I found that my nightly prayers were now taking a good 15-20 minutes.
During my prayers one night, it struck me that I’d never prayed the Rosary. There were a lot of reasons for this, but a big one was my impression that it simply took too long. I looked at how long my nightly prayers were taking and that effectively dispelled that argument. I then tried to come up with any good reason at all not to but couldn’t. I tried praying it after my nightly prayers the following night and found out that it wasn’t nearly as painful (or long) as I thought it would be. I spent the next few weeks sticking with my nightly prayers and praying the Rosary on occasion. I’d also spend a bit of time after each reflecting on whether to keep praying the Rosary. I still couldn’t find any reason to quit.
Then one night it occurred to me that countless other Catholic families actually had an active prayer life together, something that, outside of grace before dinner, I’d never had growing up. I began to wonder whether we shouldn’t start praying the Rosary together as a family. Again, after a bit of introspection after my nightly prayers, I couldn’t come up with any good reason not to. I was worried that my family would shoot down the idea if I asked them about it, so the next night I simply told them that we’re a Catholic family and there’s no good reason for us to not pray together, and since the Rosary is arguably the best prayer we have as Catholics, we were going to start saying it together that night.
I work nights so we don’t always get to say it together each day (I say it every day, regardless), but we say it as a family at least 3-4 times each week. We said it quite a bit during what ended up being a completely healthy and uneventful pregnancy. I’ve also started reading from the Bible afterward, so as a family we get anywhere from 30-40 minutes of prayer and scripture together most nights. I pray a good deal throughout the day, although I’ve replaced a lot of my habitual Hail Marys with Memorares and Hail Holy Queens. I still pray before bed, although with the newborn the regular litany is often replaced by a quick prayer of thanksgiving to God and maybe an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
