Today, I have a story about family prayer that is not in my book, The Prayer List. This one requires a visual, so go put your hands on a set of rosary beads before you read any further. If you don’t have a rosary, that’s fine; a simple necklace of any kind will work.
My daughter, Ellen, age seven, had just made her First Holy Communion, and I had followed tradition by buying her a pretty rosary, along with a prayer book. She took the prayer book with her to Mass a couple of times, but it didn’t really grab her imagination. The rosary, however, was something that she toted along on errands, draped over her stuffed animals, and generally kept out in the open and close to hand in her bedroom.
One day, I was reading out loud to her and her little sister, Martha. Martha was tucked in my lap, turning the pages, while Ellen sprawled across the sofa, legs in the air. She was listening to the story, but she also had her rosary beads in her hands, playing with them by looping the sparkling beads through her fingers and rotating the loop.
At the end of the story, Ellen mused, “My rosary is always smiling.”
“It’s what? Smiling?” I looked at her. “Why do you say that?”
“Look,” she answered. “No matter how I hold it, it always smiles. I can’t make it frown at all.” She held the rosary with both hands over her head, her fingers about eight inches apart on the loop, (go ahead and do this with your beads), and moved them to different places, but sure enough, the beads always formed a smile. She changed her hand positions several times to demonstrate the phenomena.
“You are right,” I said. “I never noticed that before.”
And ever since that day, the smile in my rosary beads always makes me smile too.
I was a catechist for 7 years and have been a youth minister for 14. I am often struck by the serious prayers of our children, the things they and their loved ones have gone through. Giving them an opportunity to pray out loud in community helps all of us see that we all need prayer.