Tips from the Rosary Challenged

October 31, 2011 By 4 Comments

Part of the Mary Moment Monday series

I have a love-hate relationship with the rosary. In fact, I consider myself Rosary Challenged.

Maybe this falls under guilty confessions, because I have a tremendous love and devotion for Mary. I feel an obligation to get over the hurdles I find in the rosary and keep struggling through it.

I used to think that being Rosary Challenged was a legitimate reason for not praying the rosary. “It’s just not the devotion for me,” I’d think, after another unsuccessful run at trying to pray it regularly. “I’ll try [insert any other devotion] instead.”

Inevitably, after weeks or months or, in one case, years, I would find myself feeling a loud, unmistakable call to pray the rosary.

“But…,” I’d stammer. “I’m NO GOOD at this!”

The call would get pretty annoying, even to the point of people giving me beautiful rosaries as gifts.

“There’s just NO TIME for a rosary!” I’d protest.

Wouldn’t you know, I’d happen to have a reason to rise at a crazy-early time or be up in the wee hours of the silent night? Maybe I’d find myself with a long drive and no radio.

My response most recently has been rather adolescent, I’ll admit.

“FINE! I’ll pray it. BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE ME LIKE IT!”

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The rosary is, and remains, a powerful part of my prayer life. The reassuring path through Jesus’ life and ministry and the insights it holds for my life and my vocation are never-ending.

What follows are rosary tips from one of the Rosary Challenged.

Commit.

Sometimes, you’ll have days where praying the rosary seems trumped by other cares and concerns. Other times, I have days where I just…don’t…cooperate.

I have found, though, that viewing the rosary as Not Optional helps me. It has to be something as non-negotiable as dinner or clean underwear or brushing my teeth for me to take it seriously. It’s a promise I make to myself. And to God.

Hard though it is, I never cease to be blessed by it.

One at a time.

This “one decade at a time” mentality is, in fact, how I got hooked on the rosary. Don’t look at it as 59 prayers. See it as a group of ten Hail Marys. That’s it. Start with the first decade in the set of mysteries you’re praying and get that done. Move to the next mystery. And so forth.

Maybe you’ll pray a decade as you make coffee and breakfast and another in the shower. Or maybe it will be part of your commute to work. Use those times when you would otherwise be twiddling your thumbs and use your fingers to keep track of Hail Marys.

There are times in my life when I have to accept less than ten Hail Marys. Though it may mark me as both a super slacker and heretical, I think it’s better to pray a quality rosary than to get it “done.” One decade, prayed from your heart, means more for you and to God than the whole rosary, prayed as a race. (That said, I don’t know that I’ve ever REALLY prayed a quality rosary.

Change it up.

Feel yourself getting stale? There are audio rosaries (many of them available as free downloads), different kinds of rosaries (the Scriptural Rosary, the Franciscan Crown, for example), sung rosaries, and many books of meditations. Try something different when you feel yourself losing focus or feeling tempted to give it up.

Dedicate your efforts to something special.

Is there someone in your life who needs special prayer? Can you think of someone who could use a miracle? Do you have an intention that really needs some attention? Use the rosary and dedicate your prayer efforts to that intention. Maybe each decade gets dedicated to an intention. I know people who use each bead of their rosary for a person in their life.

There’s no limit to what you can do. I find that giving my rosary a purpose gives me different motivation for praying, motivation that I need to use when rosary praying is especially hard.

Ask your guardian angel to help.

If, as my mother-in-law and others in her generation insist, your guardian angel really does finish your rosary if you don’t or can’t, doesn’t that indicate a vested interest in helping you to pray it in the first place? When I do ask my guardian angel to help me, I’m never disappointed (provided I cooperate with the help he gives me, mind you).

Pray with others.

Whether in person or virtually, this can really help. Come Pray the Rosary (www.ComePraytheRosary.org) allows you to pray from the comfort of your home with people all over the world. You can also call a friend, or commit to praying at a certain time every day, knowing that the other person is also praying.

Involving others in your rosary praying can give you the inclination you might not otherwise have. It can also bless you far beyond what you expect.

Don’t give up.

If today you fail, try again tomorrow, and know there’s grace in the persevering.

This “Finding Faith in Everyday Life” column originally appeared in The Catholic Times.

image source: Trendy Traditions

Filed Under: Inspired by the Virgin Mary, writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Cheat Sheet for Salvation History

October 27, 2011 By 2 Comments

By Joe Wetterling

There are wonderful spiritual benefits, for ourselves and others, when we pray the rosary. What about intellectual benefits? Can the rosary help us understand our faith better? Can it help us transform by renewing our minds, as St. Paul instructed? Yes!

Broadly, the three traditional sets of mysteries take us through the three phases of salvation history. In the passage from joyful to sorrowful to glorious mysteries, we see an echo of the creation, the fall, and the redemption of man. We were made in joyous communion with God, sorrowfully fell, and are gloriously redeemed against all hope.

These same phases are found in good stories, as well. Drama unfolds as a situation is set, then upset, then reset, often in a surprising way. We naturally tell tales of rise, fall, and redemption – and this shouldn’t surprise us one bit. God is the *author* of creation, the teller of the great story in which we’re all part. When we sub-create in making new life, we help make a child in God’s image. When we sub-create in telling a new story, we author as He authors.

To say that history is “his story” may be lousy etymology, but it’s good theology. Our good stories echo THE great story, and, so, our books tell us the same thing that our beads do.

The rosary is a crib sheet or, if you prefer (since we’d never cheat), a study outline for this most-important story. The joyful mysteries cover nearly all of the first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel. These joyful mysteries are five events from early in Jesus’ life, from the announcement of His birth to His parents’ finding Jesus in the temple. They provide the setting for the story; they are part of the initial “rise”, the situation which must be upset to produce the drama. Pope John Paul II filled in another part of this “first act” by giving us the luminous mysteries.  These five sample from all the gospels, highlighting a few significant and, in some cases, sacramental events from Christ’s public ministry.

While the joyful mysteries run straight from Luke 1:26 to the end of chapter 2, you have to go looking for the luminous mysteries, for example in Luke 3:15-22, John 2:1-12, Mark 1:15, Luke 9:28-36, and Mark 26:26-28. In the sorrowful mysteries, the story takes its downturn. It takes THE downturn, that singular lowest point in human history where Satan – and our sins – killed God for three days.

What can overcome such a horrible event? Christ is DEAD. This should be the end of the story, yet, out of seeming failure, the great story changes – literally in a heartbeat. Christ is risen! And this most miraculous event is only the beginning of the glorious mysteries. He ascends to Heaven and sends His Holy Spirit to guide the Church. Lastly, as a first example of our own great hope, a human, Mary, is assumed body and soul into Heaven to be with God forever. She is the example of all we can become and sits beside the King as our Queen Mother.

It is fitting that the rosary begins and ends with Mary. This is not just God’s story, detached from humanity. This is God’s story for us, God reaching into human history and turning it on its head.

It all begins, as it does for each of us, with a “yes” to God. It all ends, if we die in God’s friendship, with our eternal life, body and soul, in God’s presence.

(There are many good sources for scriptural references in the rosary. I recommend the scriptural rosary audio at Rosary Army.)

image credit: All for Mary

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Joe Wetterling delivers adult catechesis through his blog, Ho Kai Paulos. He also comments on sci-fi/fantasy from a Catholic perspective at The Baptized Imagnation. He is a volunteer moderator and presenter for The Catholic Writers Conference, and a volunteer proofreader for the Project Gutenberg archive.

Filed Under: Faith, guest post, Inspired by the Virgin Mary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Reluctantly Agreeing to Pray the Daily Rosary

October 20, 2011 By 6 Comments

By Jennifer Fitz

I’m an auxiliary member of the Legion of Mary, which is a serious commitment.  When you join, you promise to pray prescribed prayers every day, which include a daily rosary.  Not something to just jump into.  As I did.  Completely by accident.  At the wrong parish.

Here’s what happened:  I was praying to God for help with my prayer life.  Which stunk.  One day my mother-in-law was watching the kids for me, and I dropped in at her church to spend a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament for this intention.  When I rose to leave, the groundskeeper stopped me in the aisle, said a few kind words, and asked, “Would you like to join the Legion of Mary?”

No.  Very sorry, but I have four young children, no time for another activity.

“Will you pray for us then?”

Sure.  Be glad too.

“Great.  I’ll go get the forms.”

Forms?

I’d never even heard of the Legion of Mary.  But this lady was fast.  She had my name on those forms in an instant. There’s the x for your signature, here’s a copy of your prayers to say every day, and don’t worry, it’s not a mortal sin if you miss a day, but do keep up with it.

“But I don’t go to this parish,” I told her.

They weren’t picky.

I signed.  And then I had to go home and explain this to my poor husband, a protestant who believed in neither the Blessed Sacrament nor prayers to Mary.  Oops.   Luckily he recognized the swift hand of God in answering my prayers for a better prayer life, and if it made no sense to him personally, who was he to argue with God?

And who am I to argue either?  Here are three things I’ve learned about myself as a result:

I need to get over my intellectual pretensions.  The rosary is for normal people.  You don’t have to be smart or trendy or oh-so-educated to pray the rosary.  Apparently God doesn’t need me to show off how sophisticated I am.

Same prayer.  Every day.  I’m all about the next new thing.  I tried the liturgy of the hours one week, the chaplet of divine mercy the next, some Jesuit meditative thing another time. What I really needed?  To be bored.  Because then my prayer life would be about me and God, not about me and my latest idea.

Just go pray.  I never would have settled into a daily rosary on my own.  I would have waffled, always trying to find the perfect prayer.  Now I can quit agonizing and start praying.

Show up.  Do the work.  It was what I needed, and what I still need.  I do experience answered prayers, moments of enlightenment, feelings of love.  But mysticism is simpler than that: Am I willing to do what God asks of me?  If yes, pick up those beads and get started.

image credit: Trendy Traditions

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Jennifer Fitz is a homeschooling mom, catechist, accountant, and writer. She helps out at the Catholic Writers Guild blog and writes on Catholic topics at Riparians at the Gate.

Filed Under: Faith, guest post, Inspired by the Virgin Mary Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Rosary that Changed the Way I Pray the Rosary

October 18, 2011 By 3 Comments

By Victoria Q. DeBayle


There was one rosary that forever changed the way I pray the Rosary.

At the end of my freshman year of college, our Campus Minister announced that she would be leaving her post to follow a religious vocation.  As a parting gift, a member of the Catholic Student Association suggested that we record a rosary with the Campus Minister’s five favorite mysteries.

Five of us, including my friend D., gathered one afternoon to record the rosary.  As we prayed, I noticed that D. seemed to savor every word of the prayers and give them each a special meaning, especially the Hail Mary.  He said it like this,”…and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, (pause) Jesus.”

This stayed with me.  Whenever I had prayed that part before, “womb” ended up being the most emphasized word in the sentence.  D. said “Jesus” with so much emphasis and joy, as if He were at the center of it all.  And then it occurred to me: He is. 

The Hail Marys we repeat as we pray the rosary are not about Mary.  Mary isn’t about Mary.  Mary is the ultimate example of a human being who focused her life on Christ.  Mary is about Christ, and so is her prayer.  Mary takes us to Him, to Jesus.

I may not be the best at keeping Jesus as the focus of my life at all times, but since that day, it is He who holds all my attention when I pray the rosary.  The fruit of Mary’s womb…JESUS!

image credit: On This Day Designs

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Victoria Q. DeBayle is a practicing lawyer and freelance writer for The Florida Catholic.  She is actively involved in her parish in Florida where she currently serves on the Leadership Team of the parish’s Young Adults Group. 

Filed Under: Faith, guest post, Inspired by the Virgin Mary Tagged With: , , , ,

Where You’ll Find Me

October 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

I’m talking blogging, as I do most Wednesdays, over at the Catholic Writers Guild blog. This week: how facebook has changed my blogging.

Tuesdays are for tech talk over at CatholicMom.com, and this week I shared some non-app rosary resources.

In case you missed it on Monday, I have a guest column over at Patheos about the many challenges I face with three little letters which, when joined together, form the word “Yes.”

Filed Under: blogging, Inspired by the Virgin Mary, writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

My Rosary Habit

October 10, 2011 By 4 Comments

A Mary Moment Monday post

The rosary’s inevitably on my mind in October. At this point, call it habit.

I love that it’s a yearly–and, right now, a daily–habit. And…I hate that it’s a habit.

There’s something about it being a habit that makes it seem boring, unexciting, planned, rote. Aren’t those the very things I don’t want my prayer to be?

Well, maybe. But maybe not.

Prayer is, first and foremost, conversation with God. As I journey through the rosary, whether I’m distracted or focused, I’m holding Mary’s hand. I may only have the very tips of her fingers, or I may be gripping her arm. Sometimes, I’m carrying an intention that brings me to tears, that has my heart burdened, or that needs special attention. Other times, I’m just going through the motions.

It’s not so different from my conversations with other people in my life, if I’m honest. There are times when I’m on fire, paying attention, and totally worth their time. And then there’s the rest of the time.

I’m not trying to justify my mediocrity, but I do think there’s something comforting that there’s an approachability to God through the rosary. I’m reminded, every day, of the reality of the Gospel and of the accessibility he wants to have. No matter how poorly I pray, I’m trying and I’m showing up.

It’s so tempting to give up, to toss in the towel and say, feeling justified, “I’m no good at this.” It’s so appealing to think of tossing the rosary away and call it a devotion I don’t “get” or “do well praying.”

Yeah, it’s out, my guilty secret: I’m a quitter. That’s the voice my tempter uses for any number of things, and the rosary’s just an ongoing battle. I fail, quite often, in my praying of it.

But maybe my success–if you want to play along and call it that–comes from making it a habit, from clinging to it as the lifeline it is, from turning back, again and again, to the mystery of the mysteries.

image credit: Trendy Traditions

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Mary’s Dowry and the Rosary

October 6, 2011 By 1 Comment

By Stephanie Mann
Before the 16th century English Reformation, England was called Mary’s Dowry. The English people and their monarchs had great devotion to Mary. They often went on pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

When Henry VIII broke away from the universal Catholic Church and the authority of the papacy, all that changed. Henry ordered Mary’s shrines destroyed – even Walsingham, where he had travelled on pilgrimage. Soon the altars on which Her Son was worshipped and adored were torn down.

The people who wanted to worship Jesus and honor Mary as they and their ancestors always had could feel very alone. The parish churches they once attended looked different, without the altar, or candles, or statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints. The Sacrifice of the Mass and the Eucharist was gone, too.

They would rather pay a fine every month than attend the new services in those churches. They might have to wait months before the young Jesuit or Franciscan priest, wearing a disguise because he was considered a traitor to the state, came back to the local Catholic noble’s house to offer the Sacraments.

What could they do? They could pray the Rosary. They didn’t have to use beads; they could use their fingers.

Praying the Rosary they meditated on the Catholic Church’s teachings on the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, the Sacraments, Mary’s special role, and the Communion of Saints. If they were thrown into prison for not paying their fines, they could recall Christ’s Passion and offer their own discomforts, cold and hunger. As they witnessed the dreadful execution of a Catholic priest, they would pray for him as he suffered.

Nathan D. Mitchell describes the significance of the Rosary for English Catholics in this era in the fifth chapter of his book The Mystery of the Rosary. Like oppressed Catholics throughout the world today, they prayed the Rosary for strength and consolation.

Decades passed and finally Parliament in England allowed Catholics to worship freely, build churches, follow their vocations, vote, and hold public office.

The Catholic Church welcomed many converts, including John Henry Newman from Oxford, who joined the Catholic Church in 1845. He developed a great devotion to Mary and to the Rosary.

Years after his conversion Newman spoke to some young boys and reminded them to pray the Rosary:

Now the great power of the Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer; of course, the Creed is in some sense a prayer and a great act of homage to God; but the Rosary gives us the great truths of His life and death to meditate upon, and brings them nearer to our hearts. And so we contemplate all the great mysteries of His life and His birth in the manger; and so too the mysteries of His suffering and His glorified life. But even Christians, with all their knowledge of God, have usually more awe than love of Him, and the special virtue of the Rosary lies in the special way in which it looks at these mysteries; for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled thoughts of His Mother, and in the relations between Mother and Son we have set before us the Holy Family, the home in which God lived. [source]

Newman lived to be a very old man; once his sight had failed, he prayed the Rosary instead of reading the Breviary. Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman last year in England and proclaimed his feast day as October 9.

On September 24 this year both Catholics and Anglicans celebrated the 950th anniversary of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, and Catholics are welcoming groups of former Anglicans into the Catholic Church in the first Ordinariate as announced by Pope Benedict. The name of the Ordinariate is Our Lady of Walsingham and it is under the patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman.

England just might be Mary’s Dowry again.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.
Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us.

image credit: Wikipedia

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Stephanie A. Mann is author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation (Scepter Publishers). She is a member of the Catholic Writers Guild and blogs at www.supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com.

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