Mike Roberts is a public speaker, TV personality, former meteorologist at St. Louis’s Channel 5 KSDK, and four-time Emmy Award winner for Best Weathercast-Weathercaster.
He’s also a devout Catholic who prays the Rosary daily!
Originally from Detroit, MI., Mike and his late wife, Anne, moved to St. Louis after he took on the role of “weatherman” at KSDK.
Sadly, after 34 years of marriage, Anne died in 2013 after a long struggle with cervical cancer.
Mike considers his time caring for his dying wife as a personal “storm” that led to a deeper and stronger faith.
A few years after his wife’s death, Mike retired from television, and eventually became Manager of Communications and Public Relations at the visiting Nurse Association of Greater St. Louis.
Six reasons you should pray the Rosary
We recently sat down with Mike to ask him his reasons for devoting himself to a daily Rosary. Here’s his response:
I learned it from my mom and dad
Parents have an unshakable formative influence on their children. This is especially true for faith-life. Study after study shows that children whose parents maintained a vibrant faith-life tend to grow up keeping the Faith. As the saying goes, “The family that prays together stays together.”
I taught it to my children
Chances are, if you grew up in a family that practiced the daily family Rosary, you’ve probably passed this tradition on to your kids as well. Even if you didn’t grow up praying the daily family Rosary, consider starting this tradition in your own family and teaching the Rosary to your children. It’s amazing how much teaching reinforces our own faith.
My wife and I pray it for our children and one another
You want your children to live lives of authentic happiness as God intends, and you want your marriage to be the happy and holy marriage you know it is meant to be. The Rosary is the most powerful intercessory prayer for making this happen!
Sometimes because I can’t sleep
Many of us were taught by our mothers to say the Rosary as we lay in bed trying to fall asleep. I remember my mother teaching me not to worry if I fall asleep praying the Rosary. She insisted that my guardian angel would finish the Rosary for me.
When I’m concerned about our country
If you’re concerned over the direction our country, the Church, or the world at large is headed, there’s no better way to effect change than to turn to our Blessed Mother through the Rosary. Time and again the course of history has made a complete 180 because the faithful turned to Mary in the Rosary and begged her intercession.
Because I’m called to
At Fatima, and many times since, Mary called on all faithful Catholics to pray the Rosary daily for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of those most in need of Jesus’ loving mercy. She is calling on you and I, right now, to take up this powerful weapon once more in the battle against the darkness of our age.
A personal invitation
If you want to dive deeper in the spiritual life, to grow in intimacy with Jesus through His mother Mary, and to enter into the intimate life of the Holy Family, then I invite you to commit to praying the Rosary daily.
It sounds like a huge commitment, I know. Most of us have a hard time sitting down to prayer for more than five minutes.
That’s okay.
Like physical health, growing in prayer takes time and exercise. Start small. Say just one decade a day for the first month, then grow from there. And don’t sweat it if you can’t even make it through a single decade without getting distracted. That’s completely normal! (For tips on how to handle distraction, check out this article!)
If you’re committing to praying the Rosary on a daily basis, please let us know.
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and join the growing community of others committed to praying the Rosary throughout the Easter season. Share what you’re doing on our Facebook page, and let us know if we’ve missed anything. It is our sincere hope that our community will inspire you to continue this extremely fruitful practice.
