FAMILY PRAYER A GARDEN OF VIRTUES | KAIROS GLOBAL | JULY 2019

Author: Sujatha joseph

Intro: Sujatha Joseph views our families like a garden that needs care and nurture daily. She shares that family prayer is one of the integral elements that can water and nurture our family life

I love summer. I get excited seeing the beauty of nature, especially the beautiful flowers and gardens in our neighborhood. This year, I decided to add more flowers to my already crowded garden. I bought some marigold plants since they make me  nostalgic about my home town and my childhood. With great excitement I planted them in my front yard and watered them daily.  As days passed, I wasn’t enthusiastic about watering them daily. After a few days of skipping to water them, I realized my plants did not look as healthy as when I bought them. The flowers that bloomed started dying quickly and the plants seemed hesitant to blossom again. To add to my despair, the garden next to my house had many beautiful fully bloomed marigold plants (of course, my neighbor waters them daily). Though I felt envious about their garden, my about to die marigold plants became my teacher. 

Our family is like a garden that needs care and nurture daily. And, family prayer is one of the integral elements that water and nurture our family life. It connects us to our Father in heaven and to each other.  It helps us to grow individually, and as a family, in our eternal home.

When I think of family prayer, I envision a beautiful gathering where all family members come together around the head of the family, dad or grandpa of the house, and share the joy, the excitement, the sadness, and disappointments of the day to him and in exchange he gives us consolation, advice, and shares his concerns and worries to the members. Family prayer helps us to focus as a family on God. When all of us come together to talk to our dad in heaven, we are proclaiming that he is the head of our family whom we love, adore, respect and thank. We also have our heavenly mother, and all the saints present in communion with us. 

Family prayer brings unity in the family.  Our Father gave clear instructions to our ancestors how he wanted us to be closer to him so that we can be in love with him all the time. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:5-9). Family prayer is a great opportunity to bring our family to the love of the Father and experience it individually and collectively. I have often felt that family prayer helps to melt the anger, dissentients, and frustrations we hide inside for each other. 

It is also the forum where our children witness our faith, adapt it and start their journey towards a deeper relationship with God, the father. ‘The Christian family is the first place of education in prayer. Based on the sacrament of marriage, the family is the "domestic church" where God's children learn to pray "as the Church" and to persevere 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)

Interceding for each other, for our family and people around us, brings a new dimension to our prayer.  Intercession makes our Lord happy and we feel that we are all connected to each other and belong to our Father and our ultimate goal is to reach heaven together.

We may encounter some or many obstacles when we decide to come together in prayer as a family. It could be a crying infant, a busy toddler running around and distracting, an elementary child who was very active few minutes ago falling asleep at the start of the first decade of rosary, a middle schooler trying to distract his little brother or sister, a teenager wanting to play with his or her phone, or a young adult with an ‘I don’t care’ attitude. Against all the odds when the family comes together to sit in front of the Lord, it is very valuable to our Father, because He loves to see us together. He loves to pour out His blessings to nurture us as a family, ‘the domestic church’, to grow to its fullest to glorify HIM. It is through family prayer that our family gets the water that keeps our family healthy, happy, growing, and fruitful.  

Sujatha Joseph is a nurse and has been part of the Jesus Youth movement for a decade. She lives with her husband and three children in Dallas, USA.