For the past six years, St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish and school have created special moments of prayer for families around the rosary and the cross.

Each October, for the month of the rosary, classes in the religious education program and the school receive hand-carved wooden crosses made from old pews from the church, along with rosaries. Each week one student in each class takes a cross and rosary home, promising to pray the rosary together with his or her family.

Students return the crosses and other students take them home for a week. If a class has a large number of students, the class receives two crosses so that each student gets a turn to take one home and pray.

The tradition began when parishioner Sergio Robles and his wife, Edith, the parish’s director of religious education, were trying to come up with ways to teach the children to pray.

Sergio, a professional woodworker, came up with the idea to make the crosses for families to encourage praying the rosary. Soon after he started, the parish removed some pews to make space for a shrine to their patron, St. Nicholas of Tolentine, and Sergio has been using that wood for the crosses.

“We kept thinking of ways we can teach the youth how to pray. With this ministry they learn how to pray the rosary together as a family,” Sergio Robles said.

Each family also receives information about the rosary and how to pray it, both in English and Spanish, when their child brings the cross home. There is a ritual involved in the classrooms, Edith Robles said. Teachers and catechists have short prayer services each week to receive and then send off the crosses.

This year there are 440 students in the school and 480 students in religious education.

The crosses are blessed and distributed during a special Mass for religious education and school families in October. This year’s Mass took place Oct. 14.

“The families look forward to and treasure the opportunity to have the cross at home,” Edith said.

It makes such an impact that some families ask to keep the crosses.

“The moms will say, ‘I could never get my children to pray and now they want to pray,”’ Edith said. “It’s just a joy.”

Families are also encouraged to invite friends and families over during the week to join them in prayer. For those who feel they can’t pray a full rosary, they are encouraged to at least pray one decade each day.

Annette Gutierrez’s daughter Sophia Sierra is a second-grader at the school. She took the cross home following the Oct. 14 Mass.

“We’re a very close family so the first few days my husband, my daughter and I pray the rosary at home,” she said. “Then we include the family members. We all live within a few blocks of each other.”

Gutierrez said her family’s faith has  grown since her daughter Sophia started attending St. Nicholas of Tolentine School. That matters to Gutierrez so much that they’ve kept her there even after moving out of the neighborhood.

“It really brings us close to our religion and brings peace,” she said. “The community is really close.”