You haven't really talked about the Roman Catholic Church and its apparent differences from Protestant Christianity unless you've addressed the rosary. You know: that thing that Catholic taxi drivers hang from their rear-view mirrors. That necklace that doesn't mesh with any fashion statement but a nun's or monk's habit - and then is as likely to be hung from a belt as worn around the neck. That movie prop that old ladies in Catholic churches are focused on just before they give the main characters dirty looks for talking in an otherwise empty church.
But, before I write anything more, please accept my recommendation to review my blogs/chapters about the communion of the saints, composed or sponaneous prayer, tactile prayer, and the Virgin Mary first, because they all shed light on this phenomenon.
Welcome back. Let's begin with how this enabler of tactile meditional prayer looks. It's like a beaded necklace with a crucifix pendant hanging at the bottom. This "pendant" part is connected to the "necklace" part of the rosary through three small beads and one larger one, and then to a three-way piece that joins the two ends of the necklace with the pendant. The necklace portion is made of five sets of ten small beads each, separated by single larger beads. If you find that challenging to imagine, just Google "rosary" or look it up on Wikipedia to get plenty of pictures.
Tradition has it that the Virgin Mary revealed the original rosary to Saint Dominic in 1214. Since then, the basic physical form of the rosary has stayed relatively stable, though the materials used to make it have varied significantly.
From the very beginning, the rosary was used as a way to guide oneself through a long series of meditations in prayer. Early on, it was used to recite the psalms - three times around the necklace part made for all 150 of them. Later, every bead was an occasion to recite the Lord's Prayer. However, as the meditation itself gained emphasis, the small beads came to be occasions to recite the Hail Mary, and the large beads to recite the Lord's Prayer.
And what was that meditation? It was about the story of Christ's redemption of humanity, beginning with the Annunciation to Mary by the Angel Gabriel.
So, taking hold of the rosary at the crucifix, after saying the Apostle's Creed, then the Lord's Prayer, then three Hail Maries - one each for the theological virtues of faith, hope and love (see I Cor. 13:13), and then a prayer giving glory to God, all while moving your grasp along the relevant beads to keep tactile track of your progress, you reach the place where the necklace portion begins, and announce the first of five "mysteries" of Christ's redemption of humanity that you'll be mediatating on. Then, you say the Lord's Prayer again, followed by ten Hail Maries, getting into a gentle repeating pattern that is tracked by your advancing grasp on the relevant beads in the rosary. All this time, you are thinking about the historical story, the images of what occurred, and what it means in your life.
At the conclusion of each group - or "decade" - of ten "Hail Mary" beads, you finsih by giving glory to God again, and then may recite a prayer to Jesus thanking him for his redeeming act that you've just been thinking about, or affirming your willingness to receive his redemption and desire that others do as well.
The prayer used to give glory to God goes like this:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen
A popular prayer to confirm our acceptance of Christ's forgiveness and ask that others accept it as well is:
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.
Once the five chosen historical mysteries of Christ's redemption have been reviewed, you conclude with another one or two prayers meditating on God's redemption of the world, the way that the Virgin Mary was made able to participate in it, and confirming our desire to take that journey as a fellow Christian with the Virgin Mary.
For centuries, there were only three sets of "mysteries" to choose from: the Joyful Mysteries, which talk about the time from Jesus' conception to when he was found in the Temple as a child; the Sorrowful Mysteries, so well-embodied in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"; and the Glorious Mysteries, beginning with the resurrection and continuing through the end of history as described in the Revelation.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries to shed light on Jesus' ministry, from his baptism through the last supper.
This seems like an awful lot of effort compared to just spontaneously saying a prayer to Jesus whenever we feel like it. But it can also be seen as a great way to meditate on the history of salvation while allowing God's redemptive work to flow through us as we relax in His presence, sharing a time of prayer with a fellow saint who knows Jesus as her own son.
Clearly, the above doesn't do the rosary, its history or its practice justice, which is fine since there's so much else that has been written about it (including a book that I'll recommend at the conclusion of this book/blogging). However, any discussion of the experience of Catholicism from the perspective of a former Protestant would be incomplete without spending some time considering this special way of tactile, meditative prayer.
(Copyright (c) 2011, Reg Harbeck, all rights reserved)
No comments:
Post a Comment