Family experiences God’s grace through Latin prayers

The Holy Spirit is hard at work weaving a tapestry out of our family. As with any project or craft, particularly in the early phases, it appears chaotic—frayed ends abound, messy false starts that will likely have to be reworked are glaring—but the raw materials of a glorious liturgical cloth are present. With God’s grace we hope that this tapestry will find its completion with my wife and I in heaven and our children in their vocations; weaving their own tapestries that will one day adorn heaven as well.

To start from the beginning would prove an arduous journey, so we will pick up at the birth of our third child and first daughter. While I have been convicted of the names we gave our boys, my wife was the one who was struck by the name of Ancilla for our little girl. To the uninitiated, such as myself at the time, Ancilla is the Latin word for “handmaid,” as in the Angelus: ecce ancilla Domine, “the handmaid of the Lord.” We were in the habit of saying the Angelus as a family at the time, but I was inspired to learn the Angelus in Latin. I’m not entirely sure why, other than I wanted a better understanding of our selection of a name and to more effectively articulate its meaning. I found the Angelus in Latin set to Gregorian chant and, of course, the accompanying YouTube video so that we could learn it.

The discovery of the beauty of the Angelus chanted in Latin, and the proclivity of our two and three-year-old to join in, led us to further exploration of the canon of prayers. The next logical step seemed to be learning the prayers of the rosary in Latin—a task made easier by the repetition involved. Additionally, given the increasing chaos of life with three and now four children, we were struggling to develop a rule of prayer that worked with variable routines and expanding ages. We found ourselves gravitating towards praying a rosary with the children as they fell asleep and chanting the Angelus at noon, before lunch. This worked better than our fitful attempts to pray some of the Liturgy of the Hours with the children, so we embraced the structure provided by meals and began saying an appropriate prayer before each one: the Benedictus (Canticle of Zachariah) before breakfast and the Magnificat (Canticle of Mary) before supper. We began praying these in English, but have similarly found ourselves gravitating towards chanting in Latin. Unfortunately, our children did not receive any musical talent that my wife and I lack, so it can be somewhat cacophonous at times. Like I said, frayed ends.

We thus found ourselves uniquely prepared for an unexpected opportunity provided by the COVID-19 lockdowns. We felt that Mass “attended” virtually would pose the risk of confusing our children regarding the nature of worship, so we eschewed it in favor of following the 1962 Latin missal we had procured, with some help from the audio of the countless YouTube videos of the Mass propers. Upon discovering the Mass in this form, I felt as though I had found something I had been searching for my entire life. I had experienced it at times, but didn’t have the necessary initiation to understand what I was a part of. Given some effort learning Latin and the place of the propers in Mass, I am in awe of the unspeakable beauty of the liturgical tradition of the Church, and have come to realize that this beauty is inseparable from the form that it developed in—namely Gregorian chant and Latin.

Despite having developed a proclivity for the limited use of Latin in the liturgical setting, my wife proved resistant to my eager efforts to implement the language in all aspects of our family prayer. She shared with me recently that in listening to the Bible in a Year podcast by Father Mike Schmitz she has come to understand that God set the Israelites apart by teaching them to worship in a manner different from the neighboring people, and different from anything else in their lives. This realization has helped her to understand Latin as the gift it is to the Church—a universal and unchanging language to communicate a universal and unchanging creed. It is a language not used in everyday life but is set aside for use in prayer.

We hope to guide our children down a path that leads them to faith and on which they are open to God’s grace. As parents, we are tasked with helping them to find their vocations, which God will use to lead them to himself. We are finding that the beauty of the traditions of the Church are the means the Holy Spirit is using to weave his tapestry.