7th Grade FAMILY FEATURE – Centering Your Family on Christ
For a while I could not understand why my dad always insisted on having us pray the Rosary every night. It would be late in the evening after dinner when we were all sleepy – most especially my mom, who was so tired from work that she would often fall asleep in the middle of her “Hail Mary’s”. I knew he was the most religious member of our family because not only did he stay awake during the Rosary, he also prayed in his knees while everyone else lay like sardines on top of my parents’ queen-size bed (that was four of us kids, plus my mom).
It wasn’t until Thanksgiving weekend of 1995 that I realized the value of those daily Rosaries. My dad had fallen off the couch one evening as my mom was cooking dinner. He tried to play it off and say he was okay as I picked him up and walked him to the dinner table, but something about him made me concerned. My mother confirmed this fear when in the morning she told me that I had to drive my dad to the hospital because he had a stroke. He was having a hard time moving one side of his body and was overall very weak.
At seventeen years old, I had never been so scared in my life. The man who I looked up to since I was a little girl – the pillar of our family – started to deteriorate as the days went by. First it was his physical strength, then it was his mental alertness, and after some time he couldn’t wake up and talk to us anymore.
The one thing that got us through those next eight months before his death was the Rosary. The same wife and kids who would struggle through those fifteen minutes of prayer with my dad’s faithful leading now begged God with those same prayers for courage and strength. We stood around his hospital bed and prayed every night for a miracle. Maybe we didn’t get the miracle we had hoped for – for my father had gone to meet our Lord in his time – but each of us was transformed through the experience and realized that God would always be there in times of distress and sadness.
Life is busy and we cannot deny that, but to go through our days pulling together as family in prayer definitely helps us when things happen that we don’t expect. Prayer helps us to keep God first in our lives and to lift up both our joys and our sorrows. Just those few minutes we spend together each week (or every day, if possible) will open us up to the blessings and graces the Lord wants to pour into our hearts if we simply allow Him the chance…
- Mrs. Dyogi
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