Tuesday, November 01, 2005
THE ROSARY
Catholic News Agency reports Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Tarazona recommends that Catholics who seek contemplation should pray the rosary. Good advice.
Start praying the rosary, and I suspect you will not stop. The Blessed Mother will draw you in, and she will not let you go.
I returned to it more than 15 years ago after a couple of decades of ignoring it because I had embraced the modern Church, or so I thought. It was pushed into the Traditional closet after Vatican II by those who claimed it was a foolish repetitive prayer for simpletons, and we were more enlightened now. Some of those same people wanted us to take up the mantra, as though it were not a foolish repetitive practice, but rather a new enlightenment. Unlike the rosary, I don't find a mantra satisfying.
I continue to find it amazing that I always know what mystery I should take up on any given day. Since I've slid into the practice of saying one decade at the end of the day instead of five, it becomes necessary to know where I am in the series of mysteries. Somehow I always do. I may not remember what I wore yesterday. I may not remember what I had for lunch. I may have forgotten that dinner is supposed to be an hour late because my husband has an errand to run after work, but I always know what mystery I should say on a given evening. That's a little miracle right there.
Sometimes I choose to go out of sequence and meditate on a mystery that is exactly the opposite of my particular mood. If I'm happy, I meditate on a sorrowful mystery. If I'm discouraged I meditate on the resurrection. Then there are the days when I'm simply not creative enough to find something new in the same old mysteries. On those days I pick out another event in the life of Christ to think about. Most recently it was the wedding feast at Cana, one of the luminous mysteries.
I should explain. Because of the research I've done on the occult, I am uncomfortable with the word "luminous" and I never say the Luminous Mysteries. Just using the word brings up all the wrong associations. But the events in the life of Christ that they represent are worthy of meditation, and so sometimes I do meditate on them. Even events in the life of Christ which are not a part of the four series of mysteries are just as valid for a private recitation of the rosary as the official mysteries are. So when you pray the rosary, and if you are not in the mood for the usual meditations, pick something else out of Scripture and concentrate on that instead. There's no reason to turn the rosary into a routine prayer that loses its meaning if that is what it is becoming.
If you haven't said the rosary in a while, I challenge you to give it a try. You won't regret it.
