Five years ago, Tim and Emily Malloy resolved to accept their pastor’s challenge to families to pray at least a decade of the Rosary every night during Lent. They’d say the decade with their four young children before bedtime, then finish the other four decades themselves later.
“The fruit that this practice bore was extraordinary,” said Emily, a frequent Register contributor who is floral and food editor of the faith-centered lifestyle website Theology of the Home. So much so, the Mississippi couple decided to continue the prayer practice beyond Lent, gradually adding additional decades until the family’s nighttime routine was a full Rosary.
“It established a beautiful routine as a family, but it provided us with the opportunity to teach our children certain postures and expectations for prayer that eventually spilled over into the Mass,” Emily explained. “The children began to understand that the Mass and prayer were times to behave and be as still as they could be (relatively).”
Lenten practices such as these can lead to a fruitful Lent and continuously blossom in unexpected ways all year.
During Pope Leo XIV’s Lenten retreat, Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, who Pope Leo asked to preach a weeklong
