‘May my prayer be set before you like incense’

Lent is upon us!

The traditional hallmarks of Lent are fasting, prayer and almsgiving. As you prepare for this Lenten season, I would encourage you to reexamine what you are doing in your family’s prayer life.

Aside from Mass, prayers at meals and bedtime, does your family have additional prayer practices? Do you pray together as a couple? Do you pray with your children? Do you pray the Rosary together?

Recently, each of my family members received a beautifully crafted marble rosary. I was a bit overwhelmed by the beauty of the rosaries themselves, but thought how much more beautiful the prayer must be that is prayed with each rosary.

After we received these special rosaries, my oldest daughter suggested that we make it a spiritual practice to pray the Rosary during Lent. We committed to saying a rosary together at least twice a week. For many families who already pray the rosary together regularly, this might not be a big challenge. For others, it will be a time of significant growth and blessing for your family if you try it.

Recently, I have begun to ask those for whom I pray what their favorite mystery of the Rosary is. One friend told me that he likes the mystery of the Annunciation, so he is on my prayer list for that mystery. Another said she wanted to be remembered during the Proclamation of the Gospel in the Luminous Mysteries given to us by St. John Paul II, so I remember her intentions on Thursdays. I have found it a great way to ground the reflection of the mysteries in the lives of people I support spiritually.

In his book The Secret of the Rosary, St. Louis de Montfort describes the Rosary as a spiritual crown of roses, where each prayer is like a rose offered to Mary. He emphasizes that praying the Rosary is like crowning Mary with a garland of beautiful roses, symbolizing love, honor, and devotion. I would encourage your family to bombard heaven with the fragrance of this Lent’s spiritual roses.

In Pope John Paul II’s The Call of Families, the Church discusses the value of saying the Rosary as a family prayer:

The Rosary should be considered one of the best and most efficacious prayers in common that the Christian family is invited to recite… In this way, authentic devotion to Mary, which finds expression in sincere love and generous imitation of the Blessed Virgin’s interior spiritual attitude, constitutes a special instrument for nourishing loving communion in the family and for developing conjugal and family spirituality. For she who is the Mother of Christ and the Church is in a special way the Mother of Christian families, of domestic Churches. (FC, 61).

The great American apostle of the Rosary was Father Patrick Payton. Father Payton was known for coining the phrase: “The family that prays together, stays together.” In a world where the family continues to fall apart, we might ask ourselves if the answer to rebuilding the family is simply rebuilding a life of prayer in the home.

Dr. Mark Gray, research professor at Georgetown University and director of Catholic polls at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), noted, “Only 17 percent of Catholic families regularly pray together.” I was stunned when I read Dr. Gray’s statistic in the 2020 OSV book Renewing Catholic Family Life: Experts Explore New Directions in Family Spirituality and Family Ministry.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between people’s daily lives and their prayer practices. As I have shared in the past, there is a crisis of identity in the family, which the Church tries to remedy by teaching the lay faithful to participate intimately in Christ’s priestly, prophetic and kingly roles.

This quote from Pope St. John Paul II’s Call Of Families helps me better understand the connection:

Family prayer is about fulfilling the sanctifying or ‘priestly’ roles of the spouses in the domestic church: “Joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, births and birthday celebrations, wedding anniversaries of the parents, departures, separations and homecomings, important and far-reaching decisions, the death of those who are dear—all of these mark God’s loving intervention in the family’s history. They should be seen as suitable moments for thanksgiving, for petition, for trusting abandonment of the family into the hands of their common Father in heaven.” (FC, 59).

As you prepare for the Easter mysteries, I encourage you to consider the words of Psalm 141:2: “May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.” The Book of Revelation adds, “The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.”

May your Lent be filled with prayer like incense, lifting everything to God.