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“I saw my father, a man who could hold his place with any man, but a man who realized what it was to stand before God as the husband of a wife, a mother, and a man who realized what it was to stand before our neighbors in that little village of ours to say that he was the head of the Peyton home.  I looked at that man.  When I was a little child, I looked at him down on his knees, at the end of his day, in adoration of God, in praise of God, not in the darkness with the lights out, and secretly and alone, for fear anybody would hear him talk to God.  It wasn’t that.  He was in the kitchen.  The light was on.  He had the rosary in his hands, and he was saying it out loud, in public, with his family.

I saw my mother kneeling beside him.  She had the rosary in her hands.  She was down on her knees beside my father in praise of God in heaven, answering the rosary.  I saw my brothers and sisters, won by the example that they saw when they came to the use of their reason. They were down on their knees beside them.  I joined them.  For nineteen years I had the privilege of living with such a man and woman.  For nineteen blessed years I had the privilege of living with a man and his wife, my mother and father, who had that refinement, who had that beautiful assignment, who had that beautiful sense of appreciation that when they got up in the morning from the beds that they took from God as a family, they gathered around the breakfast table; as a family they took another gift from God; when they went out into the fields and took the sunshine from God; and they took the water from God; and they took the cattle and crops from Him.

So every blessed twenty-four hours, they gathered their sons and daughters around them, and went down on their knees, to say, ‘Dear Father, we have taken from You as a family all the day long, but as a family we’re thanking you.’ They said the rosary.”

~ Father Patrick Peyton, C.S.C.