THE FAMILY ROSARY

New Zealand Tablet, 13 February 1919, Page 28

THE FAMILY ROSARY

In Under the Cedars and Stars, Canon Sheehan, the famous Irish author-priest, thus pictures for us an Irish family Rosary. The scene is laid in Lisdoonvarna, the well-known County Clare health resort : “Passing along the corridor of my hotel that night on my way to my own room, I was accosted by a friend. After a few minutes’ conversation he invited me to his room. Oysters and champagne? No. A game of nap? No. A whole family, three generations of them, were gathered into the father’s bedroom. They were saying their night prayers before retiring for the night. The aged grandmother was reciting the first decade of the Rosary as we entered. We knelt. When she had finished she looked around and said, ‘Alice, go on.’ Alice was a tiny tot of seven summers. She promptly took up the recitation, repeated the form of meditation as found in the Catholic prayer books, and slowly and sweetly gave out the decade to the end. The grandmother looked around again, and called out, ‘Go on, Willie.’ Willie was the father, a grey-haired man of fifty-seven. In the mother’s imagination he was still but the child she had carried in her arms half a century ago. Willie finished and the aged mistress of ceremonies called- out, now a grandchild, now the mother, until all was ended. Then the children kissed ‘good night” and departed.”— -The Liguorian.