The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-03-08
FAMILY PRAYERS IN LENT

few more sweet and tender memories
of youth than that which recalls the
saying of the Rosary by the family
in years gone by. Charles Phillips,
whose beautiful little book Back
Home" is filled with pictures of
happy home life that touch the heart
of the reader deeply, has done moth
ing better than the passage in which
he makes us see the kneeling fam
lily group, and makes us hear the
murmur of voices raised in that
sweetest of prayers:
Softly! l hear them now-those even
ing prayers;
And the swift sounds of memory's
wings become
The mingled voices of the Rosary.
First, mothers low and even-and
the prayers
From her dear lips sound now the
sweetest music
My ears shall ever hear;-then faith
er's, low
And in his voice something of sol
emn chant.
So, one by one, with lowly reverence
The Sacred Mysteries we're told
and proudly,
If 1 so hap was chosen to repeat
Some of the prayers. All, vesper
voices,
Calling to me from the deathless
past,
l hear you and 1 heed your treas
ured message!
Happy for all of us if we can con-
jure up such a picture of the days
of childhood! And thrice happy if
we can say with this Catholic poet
that in our present life we heed as
we'll as hear the message that the
'vesper voices" of the, past bring to
us across the years!
What heritage much more endur-
ing than gold the Catholic father and
mother may leave their children in
making their home religious home;
home in which God and His BLESSED
Mother find a place and welcome;
a home in which Gods love and
| family love are so closely intertwined
that they become as one uplifting
and purifying influence! In the days
to come the children grown to man.
hood and wonanhood will bless with
many blessings the parents who took
care to make them seek first the
Kingdom of God and His Justice
the parents who taught them to be-
lieve in God and to pray to God, who
filed their home with the love of
God, and sanctified their days with
the thought that all their happiness
was from God and all their crosses
borne in union with His supreme
sacrifice.
A man who was once mayor of
Boston said in explanation of his sue.
cessful life: 81 always had home,
and great mother was there" And
this same thought or something very
like it is expressed by the poet from
whom we quoted above when, in the
same book, he says:
Think you, father,
That the long, weary days of toll
and labor,
OF sweat in sun-hot fields, of colo
and hardship
In winter days were lost? And you
my mother!
In one the dearest wife, the truest
mother
A home has ever hidden! Think yor
ever
The burdens you have borne, the
cares you've carried.
The sorrows you have hidden in your
/ heart
Think you these all, my mother, have
been only
The weight of crosses? Nay! if OF
4 your soul
They have perforce weighed down
upon your children
They sit as crowns, with all the sig
nal uplift
OF coronals! And in our hearts we
carry
The greatest heritage than man may
Sonship to a great mother, gooC
father!
1t is to such sentiments as these
tender, uplifting and truly Catholic
that we would turn the attention
of our readers during the holy sea
son of Lent. Here we find the true
ideal of a Catholic family life, {
simple, faithful, prayerful life, from
which, alas, we seem in too many
cases to be drifting away. For We
are all of us more or less touched
with the spirit of the age, the hur
rying, restless, impatient desire eth
er for gain, or for amusement; fol
power or for the pleasure that passes
until it may be truly said of u:
that the seed of the word of God il
our hearts is choked with the care.
and riches and pleasures of the
world
Let us, during Lent, strive to re
capture the spirit of our simple
sturdy fathers and mothers. Let u:
get back to the Rosary said by the
assembled family. Let us, if we arr
parents, aim to leave to our children
the memory of a home in which
Christ and His Blessed Mother wer,
honored not only privately and in
dividually but by the family collec
lively. The blessing of God surel!
/ rests upon the family that says thu
Rosary. 'Wheresoever," says oul
Blessed Lord Himself, two or tire,
are gathered together in Ny Name
there am / in the midst of them.