The Rosary connects us as one army of prayer warriors under the Pope

My family has been saying the Rosary daily ever since my daughter, Cecilia, was nine years old. I was the editor of the National Catholic Register when she said, “Dad, in the paper you keep talking about how important it is to pray the Rosary. So why don’t we ever do it?’’ Ouch.

We have been praying it ever since, and are so grateful that we have. [...] We have found over the years that when we pray the Rosary, we grow closer and stronger as a family —almost automatically.  This goes for partial rosaries (sometimes we only say a decade, or three), hurried rosaries, bored rosaries, in-the-car rosaries, distracted rosaries, or any rosary.

Why? St. John Paul II describes why in his letter on the Rosary: “To pray the Rosary for children, and even more, with children, training them from their earliest years to experience this daily ‘pause for prayer’ with the family … is a spiritual aid which should not be underestimated.”

The Rosary stops a busy family in its tracks, quiets the world’s noise, gathers us together and focuses us on God and not ourselves. This does wonders for a family psychologically and emotionally. But it does far more.

[...] Pope Francis tells the story from when he was a bishop of joining a group that was praying the Rosary with St. John Paul II:

“I was praying in the middle of the people of God to which I and all those there belonged, led by our pastor. I felt that this man, chosen to lead the Church, was following a path back to his Mother in the sky, a path set out from his childhood. I understood the presence of Mary in the life of the pope, a witness he never ceased to give. From that moment, I recite the 15 mysteries of the Rosary every day.”

[...] There is great disunity within the Church today — real disunity, over substantial issues.  But the Rosary unites us with what we have in common — on our mission and purpose, on Jesus our Founder and Mary, our model. It also connects us to believers all over the world, as one army of prayer warriors under the Pope.

Tom Hoopes, March 6, 2017

Source: https://aleteia.org