A Little Prayer
Posted on: May 19, 2014
- In: Everyday Life | Faith | Prayer | Resources for (New) Catholics
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The Blessed Virgin is like a good mother who, not content with looking after all her children in general, watches over each one separately.
~ St. John Vianney, quoted in “Celebrate May 2014,” Catholic Digest, May 2014
Last week, the women in my parish’s Catholic Women’s League group joined teachers and parent volunteers to teach some children about the rosary.
The children learned about the prayers we say on the various beads and a bit about the mysteries we reflect on. They also got to make a simple rosary and have it blessed by our parish priest.
Not only was this a valuable lesson for the Grade 3 students, it was also a refresher course for me, and probably for some of the other volunteers as well:
- In the rosary, we pray through Mary to God; she carries our prayers to the Lord.
- We meditate on the life of Jesus and his mother, from the Annunciation to the Ascension to the Assumption and Coronation of Mary.
- It can take as little as fifteen minutes to pray five decades, and so we could easily pray one decade each day.
- The rosary is a powerful spiritual weapon.
My three rosaries
How many of us have a rosary (or even more than one) that we received on the occasion of our First Holy Communion, purchased in a Catholic gift shop, or got in the mail from a Catholic charity? How many of these rosaries sit in a drawer, on a night table, or in a purse, unused?
When I bought my first rosary a little while after I began attending Mass, I prayed five decades nearly every day. Over time, I found that it became one more to-do in a busy day, and I seldom found the time to pray even one decade. But lately I’ve been making this time to quiet my mind, focus on Jesus, and ask for prayers for others and for myself.
If it’s been a while since you’ve picked up your rosary or used a rosary app, or you’ve never prayed the rosary before, I encourage you to give this meditative prayer a try.
When we have handled something fragrant, our hands perfume whatever they touch, let our prayers pass through the Blessed Virgin’s hands, and she will give them fragrance.
~ St. John Vianney, quoted in “Celebrate May 2014,” Catholic Digest, May 2014
A Catholic Convert in Ottawa 