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Step One: Start Small.
If you want to intimidate yourself out of following through, say you’re doing this forever, every day, starting right now.
Oh, hon. Don’t do that. Start with a commitment small enough to manage in your life as it is right now. Some possibilities for your Small Goal:
- A triduum leading up to a stressful holiday party
- A novena leading up to a special liturgical feast (Immaculate Conception, maybe?)
- Just through Advent
- Just for the 12 days of Christmas.
At the end of your Small Goal, set another one, just a little bit bigger than your last one. In each of these bursts of consistency, make it your prayer intention to ask Mary to help you get your family to her Son through the daily Family Rosary. Do you really think she’s going to say no to that?
Step Two: Study the Schedule.
Once you’ve set your Small Goal, evaluate the family schedule and pick one place for each day of the week when you can fit in those fifteen minutes during the days of your Small Goal. Some windows that might work for your family:
- In the car on the way to Sunday Mass
- Right before breakfast on Saturday
- Right after everyone is home from basketball on Wednesday nights.
Whatever might work for your family, use it. If it helps, assign each family member a day to be “Rosary Captain,” to make sure Rosary gets prayed on that day. If your family sees that you can pray the Rosary every day for the length of your Small Goal, it won’t be such a stretch for you to see that you could make this a more regular thing.
Step Three: Study the Spouse, Siblings and Self.
Consider each family member’s personal resources: age, temperament, special needs, sleep patterns, scheduling requirements, developmental level, and so on. By all means, consider what might make the physics of the Rosary more difficult for each family member, but consider each family member’s gifts that might actually make this discipline easier! Do you have a crafty kid who can knot as you pray to make rosaries to give away? Do you have an older child who is especially—okay, maybe just slightly good—at helping younger siblings?
More importantly, can you turn seeming liabilities into advantages? That one kid who has anxiety over leaving anything undone can be in charge of announcing the mysteries. The wiggly toddler can line up ten small toys as each Hail Mary is prayed. The teen tired of being told what to do can be in charge for once, rounding everyone up for Rosary time. Once each family member’s gifts are being incorporated into this family prayer time, a certain edge should come off of any foot dragging.
I’m not saying you’ll never encounter any foot dragging. That’s where the next step comes in.
Step Four: Pick a Carrot.
Positive reinforcement time. Okay, I know, I know. There should be no greater reward than sitting in attendance on the Queen of Heaven and Earth as she stands beside the heavenly throne. I also know we live in a fallen world, where concupiscence in all its forms lures us away from all that is good. So pick your carrot and tie it to the end of your family’s Rosary stick:
- After we pray the Rosary, dessert time!
- After we pray the Rosary, TV time!
- After we pray the Rosary, story time!
- After we pray the Rosary, everybody rubs Mommy’s aching feet and folds the laundry for her and cleans the—wait. That’s a carrot for me, not the kids. Drat. Anyway, you get the idea.