On Prayer

The Dutchman had an excellent post on Catholic Dads blog a couple days ago on prayer. And on his own blog, he included one excerpt from said post, some wise words from Marshal Foch on the rosary.

I commented thusly:

My earliest memories of praying the rosary were on car trips with my parents.

We lived (and they still live) in Minneapolis, and every fall we would drive to La Crosse, WI to visit my dad's aunt, Sister Mileta Ludwig, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration. (She died in 1994 and was buried on what would have been her 99th birthday.)

As a kid, my thoughts on the rosary was that it is Something That Takes a Really Long Time; I didn't like it, but I didn't dislike it either.

In January of 1991, when I was in seventh grade, the first Gulf War had just begun, and my mom decided that we as a family would start praying the rosary every day for peace.

I wasn't thrilled about the idea, and less than enthusiastically went along with it.

To this day, though, I am forever grateful to my mom for instituting this custom in our family. I've now come to love praying the rosary, and our family does it each day now as well.