This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
It’s a warm spring day in the South Carolina countryside. A baby, secure in his father’s arms, grasps the crucifix at one end of Dad’s steel rosary beads. A pair of teenage girls kneel in the grass. A long-cassocked seminarian leans against a barn, while hundreds stand or sit in folding chairs in a semicircle, reverently intoning the Our Fathers and Hail Marys of the Rosary.
One might be tempted to see this gathering as something from a bygone era, but it is also thoroughly modern, an expression of the rich Catholic culture that has sprung up in the Greenville area in the last decade or so.
Every gathering of the Church is a work of grace, but God also has his point people, relying on ordinary human desires to save souls and glorify himself. For example, when Troy and Kathleen Billings’ family relocated to South Carolina from the Chicago area in 2020, they were eager to find community in their new home.
“We wanted to meet other Catholics, and so we started inviting just a few families over to pray the Rosary. Well, pretty soon that just very organically grew,” Kathleen told me over the phone. “About six months in, we looked at each other and said, ‘I think the Lord wants us to continue doing this.'”
Currently, anywhere from 200 to 300 people meet monthly on the Billingses’ 5-acre property to eat a potluck dinner and pray the Rosary together — around a bonfire in the cooler months. They come from across South Carolina and even beyond the state.
“As it grew, people knew about it as the place to meet other local Catholics. Or, if they were new to the area, it was a great place to meet other people who shared their same faith,” said Kathleen.
Gathering God’s people
Participants in the Family Rosary are diverse: young families, retired couples, college students, seminarians.
“There are people from different places, from different walks of life, at different places in their journeys in life,” said Kevin Link, an empty nester who has helped with the event for several years.
Community is a key component and character of the Rosary gathering.
Kevin was excited as he told me about the sense of togetherness among the diverse group of people, who are quick to support each other. He pointed to the example of someone losing a job: “You see other people not only comforting them, but even maybe opening up doors for them that might help them find another job.”
“A lot of beautiful friendships have come as a result of this,” Kathleen echoed. “The fellowship, I think, has been such a gift for so many people.”
She believes that community plays an integral role in people living out their vocations.
“Community is so necessary to keep us on track and to keep us accountable in the mission that God’s called each of our marriages and families to,” she told me. “We need community to fully live out our marriage vows and our faith and our family life. And our children need good Catholic friends to be surrounded by — people that will call them on to higher heights of holiness.”
Jennifer Parra has experienced the truth of these words.
Attending the Family Rosary for approximately three years with her husband and children has encouraged her own pursuit of holiness and influenced the kinds of friendships she is interested in, as well as the types of people she wants to be surrounded by.
“It’s kind of contagious and helps us grow ourselves and the way that we want to present ourselves and be godly, more saintly people,” she told me.
Kevin described the Rosary as an opportunity to be among people who share the desire to have healthy marriages and strong faith. “You’re surrounding yourself with people that are trying to do the same thing you’re trying to do, which is to live a good life,” he said.
Individual families are being touched and transformed, and the Billingses themselves are no exception.
“We’ve seen lots and lots of fruits, not only in our own marriage, but with our children,” Troy said.
Sharing in their parents’ gift of hospitality, the Billingses’ five children, aged 10 to 27, help host the event. To accommodate their hundreds of guests, the family converted a large outbuilding into a ministry center, installed washrooms and invested in tables and chairs to assist with logistics.
“We all work together to pull this together,” Kathleen told me.
At the end of each Rosary, the family sits down and reflects on how the Lord worked that night, and “we each always have our own story to share.”
“Personally, it’s been incredible,” said Kathleen. “It’s brought us much closer on a much deeper level in our marriage and in our family life.”
Real-world Rosaries
When I asked about the practicalities of praying the Rosary together as a family, Kathleen had both sage advice as well as down-to-earth suggestions.
“It’s not going to look perfect. It’s not going to be everyone kneeling down around a family altar in quiet with candles lit,” she said. “I think sometimes we have this perfect ideal in our head.”
Instead, she affirms the lived reality of praying the Rosary together as a family: “It’s often messy looking. You might have a baby that’s nursing, a toddler that’s playing, you might have a teenager that’s not able to join you because they’re at work.”
Accordingly, Kathleen encourages families to find a time that is best for them, one that enables the greatest number of its members to be present. For some families that could be first thing in the morning or at mealtime; for others the Rosary might be prayed together at bedtime.
“Find what works for you. But don’t get discouraged if the baby’s crying during it or the toddler’s fussing,” said Kathleen.
She also points to “practical ways to help draw children in at a younger age” including “big picture books of the Rosary” or “a chewable rosary that the baby can hold on to.”
For the Billingses, families ought not be dissuaded because of a perceived ideal they cannot attain.
“The perfect-world scenario is that you do all five decades and you do it start to finish without any interruptions,” said Troy. “But we’re also big believers that some is better than none.”
“Make it work with what you have,” said Kathleen.
This may mean that families focus on one or two decades “to begin that discipline and encourage and cement in children’s minds the importance of the Rosary,” said Troy.
Kathleen and Troy addressed both the authority and leadership of parents regarding the children in their care.
“As parents, if we pray the Rosary … they’re seeing us, who are the leaders of the home, setting that example,” said Troy.
For teenagers who might not be open to family prayer or who may even be rebellious toward it, the Billingses advise different options depending on the situation. This might mean a gradual introduction to the devotion or acquainting a teen with the many Catholic leaders or teen ministries who will reinforce these values.
In combination with the parents praying themselves, Troy believes these varied approaches can “serve as different entry points into their hearts and into their minds of showing them the value and the beauty of the Rosary.”
Jennifer Parra appreciates the involvement of children at the Billingses’ Family Rosary and the effect that’s had on her 7- and 8-year-old daughters, who are now more receptive to praying the Rosary.
“I wasn’t necessarily brought up that way — doing a Rosary,” Parra told me. “To see my children witness that is so powerful, and I know it’s going to stay with them as a childhood memory.”
A larger ministry
The Family Rosary is just one aspect of the Billingses’ ministry to fellow couples and families. The husband-and-wife team also developed a parish ministry called Building Amazing Marriages, give talks, and host marriage retreats and other events.
Prior to attending the Family Rosary, Kevin Link and his wife went to one of the Billingses’ marriage weekends, the couple’s first such retreat since engagement. “Creating the time to really step away and have a faith-based conversation about marriage and your faith — I think that was a gift to do that,” he said.
In addition to facilitating retreats, the Billingses co-authored a devotional titled “Simply Love: Catholic Marriage Day by Day” (OSV). The book offers spouses 365 short reflections and prayers to encourage the habit of daily prayer together.
This book has had an impact on Jennifer and her husband, who conclude their evenings reading the devotional together. “We always get something from it,” she told me. “Every single page has been so helpful to us.”
In fact, the Parras have read through the book more than once.
“We keep just going back through it,” said Parra. “You can get back to the start, and it’s almost fresh because there’s just so much information in there.”
The Billingses are devoted to supporting married couples in living out God’s vision for their vocation.
“His design for marriage is so beautiful, and when it’s lived according to his plan, it brings forth so much beautiful fruit,” said Kathleen.
Even so, this fruit isn’t attained without labor and even brambles. “You definitely have to work at it,” said Troy.
Marriage is not something that one can be lackadaisical about after the wedding day, but a vocation that involves living out your vows with intention.
“It is an ongoing activity,” Troy told me. “It’s a covenant with your spouse and with God, that you’re going to truly die to yourself for the other.”
He believes embracing and pursuing this truth is key to building and maintaining a healthy relationship with one’s spouse. “That, I believe, is truly the ingredient to what can be, what has the full potential to become, a very strong marriage,” said Troy.
The monthly Family Rosary fits seamlessly into the Billingses’ mission to build up Catholic spouses in their vocation — and not just through the contagious joy of community. Troy considers the Rosary as having a unique place in the life of couples.
“I believe, apart from the Eucharist, the Rosary is the anchor of the married life,” he said. “It really is a weapon against evil.”
