What better way to celebrate October, the month of the Holy Rosary and Respect Life, than with a beautiful floating Rosary! Our homeschool group, FISCHE, wanted to honor our Blessed Mother and the many lives lost to abortion by praying a public Rosary. Although our original thought was to do this at an abortion clinic or church, we ultimately chose a park in order to avoid being a distraction to the many busy roads and highways in the area.
It took about an hour to assemble the Rosary with the help of our fabulous FISCHETeens who tied the 60 balloons together and steered them clear from the pavilion’s threatening wooden beams. We did lose a few balloons in the process but thankfully we were well prepared for that and had enough balloons left for little ones to play with.
Once the Rosary was assembled, we tied some long pieces of ribbon to tether the Rosary down while we prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries. The Rosary was then released into the sky and the children squealed with excitement. It was truly a beautiful sight, to see it taking on a life of its own and floating gently into the sky, not in a quick upward manner, but clear across the park and over the trees where it rested a while before making it’s upward climb into the heavens. The enormous 50 ft. Rosary was a wonderful testimony to life, the Blessed Mother, and our beautiful Catholic faith.
Instructions for making this beautiful floating Rosary can be found here.
**Becky Saucedo is the Coordinator for FISCHE (Families in Support of Catholic Home Education). She greatly enjoys serving her parish and homeschool community but she especially loves the many blessings of being home with her family. Becky and her husband Tony reside in central Texas with 8 of their 11 beautiful children. You can follow her blog at Becky’s World.**
I just love how graceful the rosary is in the video, making its way up. Job well done, FISCHTeens! 🙂
This is a wonderful idea and I’m going to share it with our Gospel of Life Committee. Maybe we can create a youth event for our diocese centered on this activity! Thank you for sharing!
I just wanted to add that I shared this post on my Facebook wall and received the following response from a youth group leader near me:
“Love it Birgit, have been looking for something for our youth to do with the Confirmation class think this is the best idea I have gotten yet. Thanks for sharing:)”
That’s great birgitj! Thank you for sharing. btw–Something we will try to add next year is to have the kids write prayer intentions to put into the balloons so that they can send their prayers up to heaven.
This was a wonderful idea and a great way to honor Our Lady!!
Here it is, months later, and our Gospel of Life Committee is planning to launch a balloon rosary as a part of our 1st Youth Rally for Life! I tried finding contact information for you on your blog but gave up (nice blog btw) and resorted to trying to reach out to you here. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about your balloon rosary – type of balloons, etc. If you have any answers for me, please send an email to designsbybirgit@me.com Thank you so much!
My girl scout troop at St. Justin Martyr Catholic Church was asked to make a balloon rosary for this coming weekend in honor of our Blessed Mother. We are honored to do it and so grateful for your instructions. Thanks a Million. I have been looking for instructions for weeks now and had it not been for your site I would still be wondering how to do it.
HIthere
A few years later – we did this Rosary on our Parish Feast day – The Feast of Assumption (in August)
Look at our Parish Web Site for Photos :http://www.assumptiondurban.org/#!general-gallery/c1puy
Nola (Assumption Parish)
Please do not promote balloon releases. These ‘floating rosaries’ become hazardous litter. There are many others methods to “Respect Life” than to put other lives at risk. The fallen balloons become an entanglement risk to innocent animals, the spent latex are mistken as food – both causing a slow agonizing death. It is troubling, so many children are being taught this type of aerial litteroing is acceptable. We are hopeful you will make efforts to inform others why we should not perform balloon releases. Learn more here: http://balloonsblow.org/
Please do not pollute in celebration. There is a better way. Please and thank you.
The balloons do not go “upwards into the heavens”, they go up to where the wind blows them for many, many miles until they either pop or drift back down from the helium leaking. They land on people’s lawns, get stuck in their trees, fall into oceans and waterways, litter conservation areas, tangle farm equipment, and so on. Please do unto others…if you don’t like people littering your neighborhood then please don’t send up litter that falls into ours.
Please stop your balloon releases, killing wildlife and littering is a horrible way to respect and honor lifw
Pope Francis would not approve of littering. Take care of the earth and its inhabitants please.
Balloon releases are flying litter, illegal in many places and can cause the slow, agonizing deaths of animals who mistake the trash for food. Many state conservation agencies therefore ban balloon releases. Please look into this before/if you plan this again. Thank you.
What a terrible idea to fill Gods beautiful Earth with litter. Just where do you think the balloons go? You may as well have just made a rosary out of McDonald wrappers and tossed then into the ocean, same concept….
I work in the desert doing wildlife surveys and balloons are one of the most numerous trash items seen. Wildlife does attempt to digest them, which of course they cannot. Or become entangled in ribbons! Please respect all life and do not promote releasing balloons when there are so many other creative ways to honor your causes!
Balloon releases cause many animals to lose their lives. Do not release balloons for a few minutes of fun for you but killing many other animals along the way. It is also littering, where do you think they go? What goes up must come down.
You really don’t care about the environment do you? Not only your balloon releases but your religion that encourages people to have far too many children or, perhaps more accurately, prevents doing something about it. Cheers for wrecking the planet!
What an assinine idea. A balloon rosary??? Where do you think they go after you release them? To HEAVEN? No, they have to eventually land somewhere, in forests, on agricultural land, or adding to the detritis that mars our cityscapes. Often they land in rivers or estuaries where they appear food-like to many sea creatures and for whom digesting a balloon can be fatal. Pope Francis wrote an encyclical about EXACTLY THIS KIND OF DESTRUCTION OF OUR PLANET. Jesus God, please STOP this idiocy. Amen.
Please please stop encouraging others to release trash to our beautiful Mother Earth. Think about the affect this littering has on ocean life and all other animals. Please stop
Although I appreciate your sentiments, using balloons has a horrible impact on the environment and terrible consequences for animals and in particular marine life.
Please, find another method for celebrating the rosary.