Praying for Prisoners

So if you did the full lesson, you just did a full rosary. It reminds me actually of a little story. I think I told you guys that I do prison ministry at a juvenile detention center where teens who have committed a crime go and try to learn from their mistakes to be better people. In one of our visits, all the young people that came had rosaries and they asked us how to pray the rosary. They didn't know the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, so they asked us to write it down for them. We wrote the prayers over and over again for the different young people. It reminded me of how I learned my prayers, writing them out 3, 5, 10 times--that was how they made us learn when I was in school. Aren't you lucky that you didn't have to learn your prayers that way? Aren't you lucky that you've learned your prayers and can pray them whenever you want? Aren't you lucky that even if you're mostly locked indoors right now, that you're safe with your family, and that soon enough you'll be able to go outside and play?

Because you're so lucky and blessed, you can bless others. So I was thinking that it might be good for you all while you're in your houses, feeling locked up, wishing you could be outside, to remember the young people who are in the detention center, who might be worried for their families, missing their families, afraid of getting sick, and pray a decade of the Rosary or even a full rosary for them this week.

And here's a Bonus: Maybe write out the Our Father, Hail Mary, or Glory Be and draw a picture on the other side to make a little prayer card. You can take a picture of it and post them in our Album and I'll print them so that the next time I go to visit when quarantine is over, you'll have already written the prayers out for them for me.

And while we're remembering those in prison in our prayers, since today is also the feast of the canonization of St. Therese of Lisieux, check out this video with a powerful story from the life of St. Therese of how prayer can help a prisoner in the worst of situations.