Tuesday | July 15, 2008

Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

That Mary remained virgin both before and after the birth of Jesus is dogma of the Catholic Church. What is not dogma is under what circumstances she chose to be a virgin all of her life. Catholics believe that the NT indicates her intention of remaining virgin based on her response to the angel Gabriel "How shall this be since I do not know man?" Now if she was expressing disbelief like Zechariah did, she would have been punished like Zechariah. Was she expressing complete ingnorance of the mechanics of getting pregnant? (Unlikely in a farming community.) Or was she curious how that was going to happen since the angel knew she was vowed to be a virgin? One of the possibilities that is suggested in apocryphal works such as the Protoevegelium of James and the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, is that Mary was consecrated as a young girl to work in the temple. When she reached puberty the onset of menstruation would have introduced problems of ceremonial uncleanliness and a guardian, Joseph, was found for her. Here is an article on Catholic Answers that will get you started on references and details. The scholars on all sides are far from agreed on whether there was any such thing as a consecrated virgins in the Temple and I am not attempting to build a case for or against it. My reason for raising this idea is this.....what would the implications for Mary be, if she did spend many years working the in the Temple as a consecrated virgin? She would have been known by the priests, by those who worked in the Temple and its environs and they would have known about her vow of virginity.

Imagine then, showing up with a baby for the ritual purification after childbirth. Imagine the kind of guts it would take to show up with apparent evidence of that vow having been broken. I wonder if that's how Anna and Simeon knew that Jesus was the Messiah. They knew that the Messiah would be born to a virgin and they knew Mary would never break that vow. They had the courage to believe the impossible even when all reasonable explanations suggested a very ordinary reason for her to be carrying that baby. I'm guessing that Anna and Simeon were the exceptions and I wonder if she went home a cried at the end of the day.
Posted by Red Neck Woman at 21:48:04 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday | May 05, 2008

Now About Those Rosaries Hanging From "Our" Rearview Mirrors

The post I made the other day about "Catholic" jewelry and my reasons for wearing the jewelry that I do and those reasons having to do with my relationship with Jesus and what He has called me to do in my life and not Mary-worship or other superstitious stuff, sparked a conversation on the Catholic Spitfire Grill. The conversation was a good mix of those who fessed up to thinking (or formerly thinking) that those who wore distinctively Catholic jewelry often did so for idolatrous or superstitious reasons and many of us shared the various ways that wearing medals has assisted us with prayer and meditation in our very diverse lives. Eventually the conversation worked it's way around to those rosaries hanging from "our" rearview mirrors.



And I confessed to having a real issue with rearview mirror rosaries and rosaries worn as jewelry. Now you see there is ALL sorts of judgmentalism out there and the kind that leads to assuming that our brothers and sisters in Christ are superstitious and idolatrous because it is obvious from the jewelry they wear is not any less bad than my judgmentalism that leans toward assuming that rosaries hanging from necks or rear view mirrors are primarily decoration and not being used as objects of prayer. The Spitfire Grill members had lovely stories about the ways their rosaries hanging from rear view mirrors or from their necks act as a call to prayer for them. As visible or tactile reminders to ask for God's help in the problems of our everyday lives, for the big problems and the small ones. Sometimes they are rosaries or medals given to us by special people in our lives that remind us to pray for them. There are lots of very good reasons for this practice.

I knew all of that before....really I did....and I try very hard NOT to be judgmental about rosaries hanging from rearview mirrors but I still don't like them there. Especially the cheap plastic rosary that my husband insists on hanging from his rearview mirror on the flimsy grounds that my daughter made it for him. I am praying for an early death due to sun rot. Just sign me up for the bad mommy award......

And remember God looks on the heart not the outward appearance. What appears superstitious and trivial on the outside may carry very important meaning to someone else so let's all cut one another some slack.

More on the Rosary

Posted by Red Neck Woman at 14:11:17 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Tuesday | May 15, 2007

Why Does the Rosary Have More Hail Mary's Than Our Father's?

The husband of one of our members at the Catholic Spitfire Grill (you're welcome to join us!) has opined that the fact there are more Hail Mary's than Our Father's is "proof" that the Rosary is "Mary Worship." He is not the only person in this world to express this opinion. In fact among Protestants who are not familiar with the rosary other than simply the mechanical aspects of the prayer (say one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's.....) it is not uncommon at all. In fact, I have seen websites where the exact percentage of "Mary Worship" praying a rosary actually reflected as determined by the ratio of Hail Mary's to Our Father's was declared. If someone is out there reading and has the statistical and mathematical inclination, I'd love to see a well done parallel to this calculation. What percentage of the rosary is taken directly from Sacred Scripture? Since the Our Father is 100% scripture, the Hail Mary about 50% so, and ALL of the mysteries (15 or 20 depending on how you want to count) are also taken from the Bible, I am confident the number would be pretty high. But I digress....

Why does the rosary have more Hail Mary's than Our Father's? I don't know for sure. How's that for an answer?

I can tell you about the scriptural origins of the rosary. The origins of the practice are traced to the early days of the church when very devout religious (monks, priests, nuns) made it a practice to recite all 150 Psalms daily. Many laypeople wanted to imitate that practice but memorizing all 150 Psalms without being able to afford a copy of them, much less find the time to say them daily was simply beyond reach. What evolved was the practice of saying simple prayers 150 times instead…usually the “Our Father” or a “Hail Mary”. In order to keep track, rocks or stones were placed in one pocket and moved to the other throughout the day as the prayers were said. Eventually, this lead to the knotting of cords, or stringing of beads and of course, some figured out that one needn’t have all 150 on a cord just say 10 (a decade) 15 times etc. Things from other sources also converged to make the Rosary what it is today as well. Many theologians, particularly in the Middle Ages believed that each of the 150 Psalms was reflective of particular events in the life of Jesus and his mother. So underlying the discipline of saying all 150 Psalms daily was the idea that it was a meditation on the life of Jesus and the path to Salvation. Now tie in St. Dominic, who was a primary figure in fighting some of the heresies that were particularly troublesome in the late 12th century and early 13th century. He had a vision that one of the ways to strengthen the church against these heresies was to teach people to meditate on the life of Jesus and his mother so what was once just an underlying idea became the principal idea. One more idea that certainly helped me bring it all together was that in a world that was dominated by the Church and in the absence of clocks…prayer was the principle method of keeping time. The Liturgy of the Hours or the specific prayers said during the day, marked each period of the day as clearly to someone at that time as saying 3 pm would to someone in ours. Likewise, so would telling someone that it would take about 10 Our Fathers as a means of telling them how long it would last. Now put all of the pieces together and you can kind of see where the modern form of the Rosary came from.

That still doesn't answer the question about why there are more Hail Mary's than Our Father's. After all it could have gone the other way. We could say one Hail Mary and 10 Our Father's, or all Hail Mary's or all Our Father's...or some other combination. Somewhere out there, there may be a definitive and historical answer. I'll be honest. I didn't even look for it. The Rosary is about resting in the Gospel. Praying the rosary is about meditating on Sacred Scripture and asking Jesus to speak to us. It's about claiming the promises. It's about imitating the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady. Over the years a big picture of sorts has developed for me, and I am only comfortable in saying that this is my personal understanding of the rosary. I do not wish to impose my understanding on anyone else who prays the rosary since they may have a different and equally valid understanding. This is how Our Lord speaks to me through this prayer at this place in my spiritual journey. I am also equally comfortable in saying that I have only scratched the surface of what the rosary has to offer in the way of other spiritual treasures.

To explain, let me start with a prayer that is commonly said at the end of the recitation of the rosary:

"O God, whose only begotten Son, by his life, death and resurrection, has purchased for us the blessings of eternal life, grant we beseech thee, that by meditating on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

I put it in bold. The nutshell explanation of why there are so many Hail Mary's. May "we imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise" 

Why is that? First, it's important to understand what Mary means in the Catholic understanding of the gospel. Often Catholics are accused of ascribing divinity to Mary and of being less than candid when we say that we do not believe she is divine. (Example Warning. It's ugly...really ugly.) I tell you honestly that it is because she isn't divine that she means so much to Catholics. In Mary's fully-human-not-at-all-divine example of obedience, we see the possibilities for us! By a supernatural, unmerited, unearned GIFT to her, God preserved her from original sin in the Immaculate Conception. She was saved by the One Perfect Sacrifice of Her Son on the Cross, just like we can be. As His Gift to her, God, who is not bound by time, granted her the gift of salvation made possible by the Son she would bear from the moment of her conception. Her salvation, prefigures our own! She is the first Christian and her reward for faithful obedience in heaven (Revelation 12) foreshadows our own reward in heaven. Her response to Word of God is the perfect example of how we should submit our free will to the will of God when she declares, "Let it be done to me according to thy word." (Luke 1:38) When in humility she goes to assist her aging cousin, the Holy Spirit speaks through Elizabeth when she declares "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished." (Luke 1:45) It is these two events that are captured in the scriptural portions of the Hail Mary. It is also important that the only command Mary gives that is recorded in Sacred Scripture is "Do whatever He tells you." (John 2:5) Keep all that in mind and we'll come back to it in a minute. 

The next thing that it is important to fix in your mind is the Catholic attitude toward Sacred Scripture and the Gospels in particular. They are literally the words of God. When the Gospel is read in church, we stand to listen to the words of Our Lord. The Mysteries of the Rosary are taken from Sacred Scripture. When we meditate on the words of the Gospel, it is our Lord speaking to us directly from the printed page. The Our Father are Christ's instructions to us for prayer taken directly from Sacred Scripture. They are the things He has directed us to request from the Throne of Heaven. The Mysteries and the Our Father are the words of Our Lord. He is speaking to us through the gospels while we meditate on the words of Jesus.....and with those words in our mind, in our heart, and often literally on our lips we pray (I am putting the words of the Hail Mary in large italic print)....

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. (Luke 1:28) ...my response to His words should be in imitation of Mary, "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to thy word." Her yes, allowed life for the world a literal "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." My yes to our Lord, will allow Him to work through me and continue to bring His Kingdom here on earth. Was our salvation dependant on Mary? In a certain sense I think it was (although I certainly believe that if she had said 'no' God would have found another way). Her "yes" mattered to God. Her "yes, parallels our own yes to the Lord. Could we be saved without our own "yes" to God? Like her, I ask the Lord for the grace to say to His Words "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to thy word."....imitate what they contain. 

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. (Luke 1:42) ...and I remember "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished." Trust in the Lord to accomplish all that He has promised in the Gospels...obtain what they promise.

Holy Mary, Mother of God...He is My Lord, fully human and fully divine.

Pray for us sinners now...I am a sinner in need of Him just as those at the wedding in Cana needed Him where He turned the water into wine, prefiguring His Precious Blood that would bind us to Him as part of the Bride of Christ...Do whatever He tells you...imitate what they contain.

And at the hour of our death...obtain what they promise.

The rosary is a prayerful conversation. The Lord speaks through Sacred Scripture (in the mysteries and the Our Fathers) and we seek to listen, to imitate, to obey, and to trust in Him for all those things. In the Hail Mary we find our response in Mary, who prefigures our faith, she has gone first. She listened and submitted. Her reward (Assumption and Coronation) prefigures our own reward and we trust in Our Lord just as she did. The Mysteries (the Gospel, the plan of Salvation) and the instructions of how we are to pray from Our Lord himself, remain foremost in our mind as we rest in the Gospel and while we rest and mediate, we recite the Hail Mary which is all about our response to those words. I think there are more Hail Mary's than Our Fathers because the words of Our Lord don't leave our mind while we pray about our response to them and I don't know about you, but I need all ten of those Hail Marys (and probably a few more) because sometimes I don't hear very well.

Excellent on-line articles about the historical origin of the rosary: Paternoster Row: Historical Rosaries and Paternosters; St. Dominic and the Rosary at Catholic.net; a different article with same name St. Dominic and the Rosary

WikiHow: How to say the rosary. 

Online interactive/multi-media rosaries: The Holy Rosary; Virtual Rosary; Daily Rosary; Fatima Online Rosary (chant); St. Philip Neri Newman Center; Catholic Calendar Rosary Page

Make your own rosary to keep or to give away: Rosary Army; Our Lady's Rosary Makers; RosaryWorkshop.com (this site also has som interesting historical information and pictures of antique rosaries)

Posted by Red Neck Woman at 00:10:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (12) |

Thursday | October 05, 2006

Rosary...part 2

Another post from the thread I linked in "Rosary Part 1".... 
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ...
WOW! Thank you RNW.

So, I'm really making myself vulnerable here and I hope that anyone joining this thread can respect where I'm at.

I'm not interested in converting to Catholicism, but I have really enjoyed what you wrote, RNW, and I also did a bit of research using Google. It sounds to me like the rosary is something that has become quite "versatile" in a sense.

That's OK! And yes, the rosary is very versatile.

Quote:
It seems as though many "religions" use a form or rosary beads. Some call it something else. And that there are many, many versions of prayers that are prayed while using the beads.

I like what you wrote, RNW, about coming up with your own that seemed most relevant to where you were at at the time and what you were studying, etc.

So, this is a very basic jist of what I'm understanding:

For the most part, rosary beads are for the purpose of helping a person stay focused during prayer and/or meditation. Some rosary beads have different types of beads that represent the different parts of the prayer or meditation, so this also helps to remember what you are supposed to be praying or focusing on. Correct?

Yes. That the basic gist. When Catholics refer to "The Rosary", they are usually referring to a specific set of meditations on the life of Christ and there is a set order of those Mysteries (or events in the life of Chirst/Mary) and the connecting prayers. But all the while you say the "connecting prayers" you are meditating on what that part of Christ's life teaches you and/or praying for things that the HS brings to mind. For example, one of the "mysteries" of the rosary is the Agony of Jesus in the Garden. If I was praying that particular mystery I would call to mind the scriptures that relate the events of Jesus in the Garden before His Passion. I would then say the Lord's Prayer. Then, as I say 10 Hail Mary's I would meditate on the value of prayer when facing a difficulty in life and imitating Jesus in that regard, the necessity of persevering in the face of a difficult task, etc. I might also pray for those in my life undergoing hardship and needing strength to face that hardship. I try to pray for our "brothers and sisters in chains" when I pray the mysteries pertaining to the Passion of Jesus. Anyway, that is generally what Catholics mean when they talk about the rosary. You might want to take a look at NachoMam's blog to get an example of what goes on in the mind of a Catholic praying "The Rosary."

To distinguish the rosaries I have written from the "standard" one, I find it useful to describe them as "scriptural meditations using a rosary." Each rosary has an overall theme and then within that, each decade has a smaller theme that supports the overall. For instance, I wrote a rosary titled "Fire" and the 5 themes within that were punishment, guidance, Holy Spirit, purify, and power. The scriptures within each decade then supported the smaller theme. (It's Friday....is this making sense? It just doesn't feel like I am being clear.)

Quote:
So, if that's the case, is it safe to say that a form of rosary beads could be useful even for a non-Catholic and that I could make and use my own version?

Yes. I would be happy to email copies of the ones I have written to you so that you can get some ideas of how to adapt the basic structure of the rosary to the needs of your own prayer life.

Quote:
If I chose to follow a method of prayer that involved that ACTS method (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication), I could make a set of beads that had, say, 10 beads each of four different colors. Then I could just go over and over that. I would say 10 things of Adoration or recite 10 adoration scriptures, then I'd move on and confess 10 things or recite 10 confession scriptures, etc.

Yep. That sounds like a good idea. If you want to buy a standard Catholic rosary to use then you might want to build your themes in sets of 5 since there are 5 "decades" to go around "the loop" one time. If I were building a rosary around the ACTS method, I would probably add a 'P' somewhere in there for 'praise' to make it 5. (Although one of my rosaries is written with 12 decades....sigh, some rules are just made to be broken.) A "finger rosary" might be a practical aid for you.

Quote:
Or I could just come up with another form based on a theme. Say, healing for example. I could memorize scriptures about healing and focus on stories in the Bible where Jesus healed, etc. and use the beads as a tool to help me focus during meditation on these things.

Another excellent idea. In fact, I book that has a "healing" rosary that is very much like this. One of the things that I liked about this particular rosary was that one of the 5 "mysteries" used was the story of the woman caught in adultery. A useful reminder that our healing from sin, is the most important thing. I have also written a scriptural rosary on healing and reconciliation but from a completely different perspective. (And it is Protestant-friendly since I substituted some scriptures from Lamentations instead of the usual Hail Mary's)

I will say that memorizing the scriptures for a rosary is a laudable and lofty goal. The ones I write have a LOT of scripture and I usually keep a copy sitting in front of me while I pray. I am also in the process of recording some of them so that I can listen to them while I walk.

Quote:
Am I getting this right? I really want to understand this and I hope no one thinks I'm belittling or judging Catholics. I truly am intrigued by this because I have a hard time focusing in prayer or meditation unless I'm WRITING. And I'm finding that writing tends to become too involved and self-centered sometimes.


Well I can't answer for anyone else but you are not bothering me. I don't feel belittled or judged in the least. I can relate 100% to the struggles I had with concentrating on prayer (not to mention an insipid and shallow prayer life) and I have had more than one die-hard never gonna be Catholic Protestant friend that found the rosary to be a useful tool for enriching her prayer life.
Posted by Red Neck Woman at 11:45:29 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Rosary...part 1

The following is a recent post from LLL. It is a combination of both older posts on the rosary and some correspondence I have had over the years.....

OK...let me tell you what has literally transformed my prayer life into something deeper, richer, and more intense that I ever hoped. The rosary. "Well..." you say, "OF COURSE Ms. Mouthy Catholic is gonna say that." I beg to differ. I was a reluctant convert to Catholicism and the rosary was really high on my "List of things I am NOT gonna do even if God is insisting that I be Catholic" Sigh...do you hear God laughing at me?

Anyway...I have my first opportunity to copy a thread from the old Lifelong Learners to this new one:

Quote:
So I won't go over old ground, but I did want to share my experience with the rosary specifically. When I came to the Catholic church I did so because I truly believe God was leading me that way. On the days I was cooperating with God's work in my life, life in the Catholic church was often a case of "Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.".....I would be less than honest however, if I led anyone to believe that I was always completely surrendered to that attitude. When I entered the Catholic church I must say that deep inside (OK sometimes it wasn't even very deep, I wore it right out in the open) I had some "issues" that I explained to the Lord that I "wasn't going to do." Can you hear the Divine Laughter now? One of the things that I "wasn't going to do" was the Rosary. I pretty much said to God, "Ok I'll be Catholic but I am NOT gonna pray the Rosary. Nope. No way." And I didn't because it isn't REQUIRED.....truly. So if this is one of the things that really bothers you, my first suggestion would be to let it go. There are other more important things.

Now as you might suspect, I am about to tell you about my conversion to the Rosary. The Lord delights in knocking me off of my feet when I try to bargain with Him. I really should know better. Sigh. About 4 years ago, I reached a point of deep dissatisfaction in my prayer life and I began to cry out to the Lord to help me pray. I don't have to time to type out all that the Lord did for me in my life at that time but I have at times corresponded with others regarding the rosary I am pasting a couple of those letters below. The first is from 2001:

Quote:
So here goes....I know that I have told you how much my prayer life sucked and how much I really wanted to fix things up. I know that I have probably alluded to, if not come right out and said, that I seem to have made a real breakthrough in my prayer life as a result of my prayer time during the election crisis. I am sure that I have mentioned that the Psalms played a key role in that which is true, but it isn’t the whole story. I have to tell you that after struggling my entire life with the issue of prayer and feeling like I was missing something (everything) I am starting to feel plugged in maybe even hard-wired. And much to my amazement the thing that seems to have gotten me to where I belong is a rosary.

You know that I am a Catholic convert. I am not sure you know that I went into the Catholic church dragging my heels the whole way...it was very much God’s idea for me, I kept telling Him that I was perfectly happy where I was and didn’t WANT to be a Catholic. I have come around somewhat but to be quite honest, I was still very much a Protestant in many areas of my thinking and using a rosary was certainly one of them. I don’t want to get into a really lengthy discussion of how exactly God prepared me for this if you want me to tell you someday I will, but tonight I don’t have time to type it all out. Let me just say that over the years God planted the seeds necessary to soften my heart and even brought a few resources into my home all in preparation for my prayer this fall for God to help me with my prayer life. One of the things that I learned is that the practice of saying the rosary has evolved significantly over time and that how this prayer is commonly practiced by Catholics today is very unlike its origins. There is a movement currently in parts of the Catholic Church to reconnect the rosary to its deeply scriptural origins. (It started as a meditation on each of the 150 Psalms.) Well I had a couple of books with some scriptural rosaries in them and one of them was based on the Psalms so I pulled it out during the days before and the desperate hours of the 35 days following the election. It was amazing to me...for the very first time prayer became a sustained conversation. I had NEVER been able to pray for more than a few minutes....I said what I had to say and then I found I was repeating myself and that didn’t seem right either. All of a sudden I found I could pray for an hour (and more) without even realizing that much time had gone by. I was stunned. I put away the book that had selected verses from the Psalms and got out the Psalms themselves and WHAM! praying through an entire Supreme Court hearing was a piece of cake. I put away the rosary (after all the Protestant left in me is still VERY uncomfortable with all of this) and said I can do this just reading the Psalms....nope. Didn’t work. I am not suggesting that there is anything magical or especially blessed about a rosary per se, but what I have found is that the rosary helps with the pacing of prayer and mediations. I read a section of scripture meditate, pray as I feel God leads me, listen to what God has to say, say a Hail Mary and move on to the next.

I am so excited about my prayer life now. Last week I got and read The Prayer of Jabez and was so inspired that I sat down this last weekend and fashioned a set of scripture meditations based on the prayer and in the form of a rosary. That got me to thinking about the 30 days of prayer for my kids and I reworked that into the form of a rosary too. And I have a list made of other ideas I want to work with. (Not to mention that I now have an excuse for hunting for antique rosaries on eBay.)...please note that I worked on these just this last weekend and I have found plenty of typos but have not yet had time to fix them.

Now what really bums me out about all of this is that I have been utterly unable to share this with anyone. I have finally for the first time in my life been able to immerse myself in prayer. I am excited about prayer and I watch the clock because an hour just isn’t long enough anymore not because I am wondering how those “super-spiritual” types prayer for hours. I have stumbled on something that I think others might be able to adapt to help them in their own prayer lives and I don’t have a clue who would be interested in hearing about it. Your average Catholic might have a rosary dangling from his/her rearview mirror but certainly doesn’t use it. Your devout Catholic is very likely to be offended at the very idea of tinkering with the way they were taught to say the rosary, and clearly this has the potential to offend a very wide variety of Protestants....can you imagine me sharing this with many of the people we know? I have thought of ways that Protestants might adapt this to something that they felt more comfortable with and have thought that perhaps substituting Psalm 117 for a Hail Mary and some other favorite passage of scripture for the Hail Holy Queen might make the practice more palatable. Anyway, for whatever it is worth. I offer to you what has worked so well for me in the last months. Perhaps there is a nugget or two that may inspire you. Know that I am including you in my prayer time.


The above letter was written to a woman that I corresponded with about how using the rosary has helped me to pray for my children. I would be happy to provide copies of the scriptural rosaries that I have written to anyone who would like them. Just PM me with your email address....you also have to promise not to be offended. There are so many very good "traditional" scriptural roasaries that I have never felt the need to write one of my own. Mine are all more un-traditional. In the 4 years since the Lord brought me to the roasary, I have found blessings in both the traditional and more un-traditional rosaries.

Quote:
Joy here is some more about the origins of the Rosary….

Although it certainly wasn’t called a Rosary way back when, but the origins of the practice are traced to the early days of the church when very devout religious (monks, priests, nuns) made it a practice to recite all 150 Psalms daily. Many laypeople wanted to imitate that practice but memorizing all 150 Psalms without being able to afford a copy of them, much less find the time to say them daily was simply beyond reach. What evolved was the practice of saying simple prayers 150 times instead…usually the “Our Father” or a “Hail Mary”. In order to keep track, rocks or stones were placed in one pocket and moved to the other throughout the day as the prayers were said. Eventually, this lead to the knotting of cords, or stringing of beads and of course, some figured out that one needn’t have all 150 on a cord just say 10 (a decade) 15 times etc. Things from other sources also converged to make the Rosary what it is today as well. Many theologians, particularly in the Middle Ages believed that each of the 150 Psalms was reflective of particular events in the life of Jesus and his mother. So underlying the discipline of saying all 150 Psalms daily was the idea that it was a meditation on the life of Jesus and the path to Salvation. Now tie in St. Dominic, who was a primary figure in fighting some of the heresies that were particularly troublesome in the 1200’s (?…thereabouts anyway). He had a vision that one of the ways to strengthen the church against these heresies was to teach people to meditate on the life of Jesus and his mother so what was once just an underlying idea became the principal idea. One more idea that certainly helped me tie it all together was that in a world that was dominated by the Church and in the absence of clocks…prayer was the principle method of keeping time. The Liturgy of the Hours or the specific prayers said during the day, marked each period of the day as clearly to someone at that time as saying 3 pm would to someone in ours. Likewise, so would telling someone that it would take about 10 Our Fathers as a means of telling them how long it would last. NOW put all of the pieces together and you can kind of see where the modern form of the Rosary came from.

This next part will probably make more sense if you look at the Praying for Your Children Rosary that I sent….

Until this last fall when 5 more “Mysteries” were added, the Rosary was basically a series of 15 meditations on the lives of Jesus and Mary. There are a few introductory prayers, then each Mystery (or event) is contemplated with its implications for our own personal walk while reciting 10 Hail Marys. At times in the past and there is a move towards it at present, each of the Hail Mary’s was interspersed with a scripture which in some way told the story or illuminated the Mystery. That is the pattern that I have used in what I wrote. For me, what has resulted in the deepest prayer is to say each part out loud. I read the particular verse and then continue to prayer as the Lord leads me until I am done, then I say a Hail Mary and move onto the next verse. I only wish I had more time to be alone so that I could pray out loud like that all the time, but I have found that what I have learned by praying out loud has helped me in my more quiet contemplative times. I know this is really long and probably WAY more than you wanted. I will send you the Monthly/Daily prayer schedule that I worked out….I found that using that to guide our opening prayer for school to be very effective. You should see my kid’s eyes bug out when I pray that the Lord will cause them to be caught when they are in the wrong! I will also send the Rosary that I wrote along with a written out copy of the prayers that Catholics say as part of that (the Apostle’s Creed, etc.) . There are some other prayers that are included in that document but I won’t take the time to sort them all out. I like to play with fonts and it is highly unlikely that you will have all of the fonts you need to make these look like they do on my computer. If it translates to gobbledygook try changing the font and see if that helps.
Posted by Red Neck Woman at 11:43:14 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |