07/21/2022 – Family Daily Rosary

A father and husband writes of his family’s daily rosary:

“The Rosary is meant to be an entirely incarnational prayer experience encompassing the whole Christian — body, mind and spirit. …It engages the mind and spirit by meditation and contemplation of the saving mysteries of Jesus Christ. It engages our senses when we finger the beads and while we audibly recite the three greatest prayers: Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.

The more we occupy our whole person in prayer the more it resembles the prayer of Jesus, Who Is Wisdom Incarnate. Other than the basic structure of prayers and contemplating the prescribed Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries, there is no single way to pray the Rosary. God gave us an intellect to be creative in how we serve Him. Thanks to my wife, I have overcome my own ridiculous rigidity and scrupulosity with saying the Rosary — insisting it must be prayed the same monotonous way every single time — that led to more naps for my family than it did mystical experiences and insights.

One way my family made the Rosary more of an incarnational experience was to actively engage our senses while we pray through the use of essential oils. …We engage our senses all the time at Mass with incense and in the use of sacramental oils. Let’s use what God has given us similarly in our family. Inspired by this, my wife designed oil-absorbing rosaries that allow our senses to experience the therapeutic aroma of oils like frankincense and myrrh as we meditate on the mysteries like the Birth of Our Lord and Christ’s death and burial.

Another Inspiration of my wife to enhance our family rosary experience stems from her Byzantine roots and her mother teaching her family a Byzantine-style chant of the Rosary. My family later developed our own version where all of us (even our two-year daughter) chant a different harmony to a simple tone that makes the Rosary and its mysteries come alive because of the beautiful and prayerful singing.

I quickly discovered that it was really my favorite way to pray the Rosary — and it still is! (Peter Howard)PS There is a special afternoon in Knock on Saturday for the poor Holy Souls. Stations of the Cross from 2pm followed by Rosary, and Holy Mass.