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R a i s i n' S a i n t s
PRAYING TOGETHER
By LESLIE RYLAND
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The prayer cards seemed like a good idea. One evening last November, my husband Tim sat at the dining room table. In the stillness that descends on the house after our three young daughters have gone to bed, he flipped through the pages of a religious articles catalog. "If we order $20 worth of stuff," he told me, "we get fifty prayer cards-free."
"Sounds like a good deal," I answered, my arms sunk elbow-deep in a sink full of soapy dish water.
The next day, Tim ordered a holy water font for his brother and sister-in-law and some small pewter saint figurines for his nieces and nephews. A few weeks later when the package arrived, he handed me the pile of prayer cards. "These'll be great," he crowed. "We'll let the girls choose one every night when we say prayers before bed."
I turned the cards over in my hands. Each three-by-five-inch laminated card showed a painting of a religious figure on the front and a prayer on the back. Five-year-old Rebecca looked up from where she sat coloring at the kitchen table. "What is it?" she asked.
"They're prayer cards, sweetie," I told her. "We can use them at night to learn new prayers."
"Can I see them?"
I handed the cards to Rebecca. Three-year-old Angela wandered in from the living room. "What is it, Rebecca?" she asked.
"They're prayer cards," Rebecca explained. The two girls pored over the cards, exclaiming over some of the pictures of Mary and the saints.
"She's beautiful," Angela sighed over a painting of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
"Yes, she is," I agreed.
That night, after we'd bathed the girls and dressed them in their pajamas, I handed the prayer cards to Angela. "Okay, sweetie," I said, "choose one and we'll say the prayer on the back before we say our rosary."
Angela chose the Immaculate Heart she'd admired earlier in the day. Rebecca peered over Angela's shoulder. "I wanted that one," she announced, snatching the card from Angela's hand.
"Noooo," Angela wailed. "The Immaculate Heart is mine."
"But I wanted it too." Rebecca folded her arms and clutched the card with white-knuckled intensity.
"Rebecca," I intoned, prying the card out of her hand, "Angie got to choose first tonight. You can choose that card another night."
Rebecca pouted. As I handed the Immaculate Heart back to Angela, she shot Rebecca a triumphant look. I glanced at Tim. His eyes told me, "This isn't what I had in mind."
I don't remember praying as a family when I was a child. Every night before dinner, we folded our hands and raced through an obligatory grace: "Blessusolordandthesethygiftswhichweareabouttoreceivefromthybountythroughchristourlordamen." Until I was nine or ten, I did not know the blessing had individual words. We recited as people speaking in tongues. The prayer might have been Greek or Hebrew for all I knew.
In first and second grade catechism classes, I learned prayers-the Apostles' Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Acts of Hope, Love, and Contrition. Each time we memorized a new prayer, Mrs. Blodgett pasted a gold star beside the prayer in our catechism books. After I memorized each prayer, I promptly forgot it. You don't remember what you don't use. Tim and I have tried to follow the Church's directive to make family prayer the heart of family life. The Catechism tells us that the Christian family is the first place children receive education in prayer.
"For young children in particular, daily family prayer is the first witness of the Church's living memory as awakened patiently by the Holy Spirit" (CCC 2685). In his Letter to Families, Pope John Paul II reminds us that prayer increases the strength and spiritual unity of the family and helps the family partake of God's strength (Letter to Families 4). A more detailed examination of family prayer appears in Familiaris Consortio. The Holy Father tells us that the Eucharist, sacraments, and family prayer transform daily family life into spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. He goes on to explain that all the circumstances of family life, "joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, births and birthday celebrations," present opportunities for prayer, "for thanksgiving, for petition, for trusting abandonment of the family into the hands of their common Father in heaven" (Familiaris Consortio 59).
When Rebecca was a baby, it seemed I prayed constantly. Every time I sat down to nurse, I picked up In Conversation With God or worked my way through the mysteries of the rosary. With the addition of each child, I find less time for individual prayer but more opportunities for family prayer. In our house, we say a blessing before each meal. Seated at their little table in the kitchen this morning, Rebecca, Angela, and Lucy folded their hands and asked God's blessing upon their scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. Lucy hasn't quite mastered the sign of the cross. At the blessing's conclusion, she waved her right hand back and forth across her neck like a film director yelling, "Cut."
Every time I fix the girls a snack, Angela asks if she needs to say an additional blessing. My answer varies depending on the size of the snack and how long since the last meal. If we had lunch at 11:30 and she's eating crackers and cheese at 4:00, I'll probably let her say a blessing. If we ate breakfast at 8:30 and she's eating yogurt at 10:00, I'm likely to say, "No, sweetie. This is just a snack. You don't have to say a blessing. But you can always thank God in your heart for the food he gives us."
We always ask God's blessing upon food we eat in restaurants as well. I remember the first time I went out to eat with a young man I dated soon after I returned to the Church in my late twenties. Rusty and I sat opposite each other at a candle lit table. When our salads arrived, I was mortified to see Rusty make the sign of the cross and launch into the blessing. I followed his lead, if a bit sheepishly. I hoped no one would notice us. Since then, I've learned to live with the funny looks and the hush that sometimes falls over the restaurant when people hear us blessing the food. On good days, I thank God for the opportunity to witness in even this small way.
At other times during the day, we encourage our girls to pray. If we're going someplace that requires a long drive, we ask God to protect us on the road and help us arrive safely at our destination. We pray for people in trouble, people we know who are sick. On a few occasions, Rebecca has asked about homeless people she's seen on the street. We tell her we need to pray for them to find a place to live and to have enough food to eat.
Most of our family prayer takes place at night before the girls go to bed. Every evening after their baths, Rebecca clambers up to her top bunk and Angela climbs into the bottom. When we've kissed both of them good night, we turn out the light and sit in the semi-darkness. Lucy wanders back and forth between Tim and me, flopping into our laps or wrapping her arms around our necks. We thank God for the day just gone by and for all his blessings. We thank him for all the fun things we did during the day.
The girls chime in with their own thanks, for a trip to the zoo or the chance to play with a special friend. We thank God for our family and ask his blessing upon all the members of our family. We ask his blessing upon all the unborn babies, especially those in danger of abortion. We ask God's blessing and healing upon everyone we know who is sick. We ask for his blessing upon those who have died. We pray for the Pope. We pray for all the people in the world who aren't blessed the way that we are with a loving family and every material gift we could possibly want.
Sometimes the girls ask us to remember someone special in our prayers, a cousin or aunt or friend they might be thinking about. Often they interrupt us to ask a question or to talk about something that happened during the day. One night as I was waxing on about God's many blessings, the girls lay silently in their beds. "I'm really making an impact," I thought to myself. "They're thinking about the ways God has blessed us." When I paused to take a breath, Rebecca piped up, "Mommy, when will we go shopping for my new school clothes?"
"So much for my impact," I thought.
After our prayers, we say a decade of the rosary. As the hypnotic rhythm of the prayers washes over the room, Angela's breathing grows slow and even. Lucy relaxes in Tim's arms. I pray our prayers are sinking in. I pray I'm not just speaking Greek.
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