Praying the Rosary

[jimmy]

tenax propositi:

Hi.

I’m a Protestant, but have started to pray the Rosary: I love it. I never feel closer to Jesus than when I’m praying it. I’d love to hear from Catholics about how you pray it, and why you love it. I have made some changes to the Rosary though, which I’d like to share:

After each decade, I pray the second verse of the Te Deum on the ‘large bead’. (I still feel uneasy with the Hail Holy Queen). I don’t know if the Te Deum is in the Missal (we Anglicans use it rgularly) so here is the second verse:

You are the King of Glory, O Christ!
You are the everlasting Son of the Father.
When you took our flesh to redeem mankind,
You humbly chose the Virgin’s womb;
You overcame the sting of death
And opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers;
You are seated at the right hand of God
In the glory of the Father.
We believe you will come to be our Judge;
Come then Lord and help your people,
Whom you have redeemed by Your precious Blood…
(Here I add special request)
Bring us with all Your saints to Your eternal kingdom. Amen.

Are Catholics free to ‘meddle’ with the rosary? Do any of you do it?

God bless, TP

The Te Deum is a great prayer. It is said in the liturgy of the hours. I never thought to use it with the rosary but now that you mention it it sounds like a good idea.

I normally say it and end with the memorare which goes like this.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired with with confidence, I fly to you, O virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy, hear and answer me. Amen.

 

[jimmy]

I agree with notworthy. I think that if you feel uncomfortable saying the Hail Holy Queen then refrain from it. If you pray it against your conscience you will sin. Look at 1Corinthians8 I think it is. Paul speaks of Meat sacrificed to idols but it is a similar situation.

 

[tenax_propositi]

TJ Miller, You said…
*“I had heard of the Rosary and knew it was a set of beads that Catholics prayed with/on, but that was all. But when I was forcefully inspired to become a Catholic one day through a profound Marian experience, I was possessed also of the impulsion to acquire a Rosary.” *

Could you share with us a little of that experience?

Never having been exposed to the reprehensible, atrocious manner in which the Rosary is all too often recited, it was for me rather a quiet, attentive, lingering, affectively intimate and profoundly meditative prayer - but also impassioned, exciting, and intoxicating.

I agree - I know for whom the Rosary is merely a device, a magic formula. They merely mumble a formula, and believe they’ve prayed. I think they are missing terribly. For me, the key is meditation on the mysteries. I think Paul VI said that the Rosary without meditation on the mysteries was like a body without a soul.

Anyhow, I would love to hear you share some more of your love of the rosary. You said that you associated it with wonders. Could you tell us more>

 

[tjmiller]

This is as brief as I can make my story:

I was raised, not merely non-Catholic but anti-Catholic. However, during my 'teens, I had occasional dreams of a surpassingly beautiful, fully actualized, transcendent Woman, a Mystical Princess if you will.

By the time I was in college, no longer a practicing Protestant, I had journaled reflections and written poems about Her. On the one hand, I believed Her to be no more than a ravishing figment of my imagination; on the other hand, as a philosophy student, I could not help but feel that somehow She was Real, in the sense that Platonic Forms could be real: that perhaps She was the perfect, sublime and ineffable Idea of Woman in the Mind of God.

Out of shallow curiosity and the prospect perhaps of meeting some Nice Girls, I attended Mass one Sunday with a Catholic schoolmate. It happened to be the Solemnity of the Transfiguration. As I looked over the pew missalette, featuring on its cover an image of Mary and the caption, “Hail, Holy Queen”, I experienced what some Charismatic Catholic friends later called the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” (I prefer “fiery outpouring”).

I promptly was given to understand (among many other revelations) the identity of my mysterious Lady, and the fact that I had been predestined from all eternity to be a Catholic. Needless to say, I was shocked and amazed. :bigyikes: But I was overjoyed, too: at last, I had found Her! (I saw rather that it was she who had ever pursued me…)

The Holy Spirit directed me to get a Rosary and a medal with a Mary-image on it (what I later understood to be the “Miraculous Medal” of the Immaculate Conception. The rest of the story I previously wrote, above…

I came to observe many “signs and wonders” and miracles, both of grace and of nature, associated with the Rosary: prophecies, fragrances, visions, physical healings, conversions, transmutations, etc. In re: the last, perhaps you’ve heard of rosaries (i.e., the metal chainlinks) “turning gold” in connection with alleged Marian apparition sites? I’ve seen this occur many, many times, and still possess a few such rosaries. The parish in which I was that year received into the Catholic Church (1st Confession, 1st Communion, Confirmation), and later married, was such a Marian site.

Today, the Rosary means most to me as a meditative means of contemplative union with Christ through Mary - in terms of Carmelite spirituality: as an instrument both of active, aqcuired recollection and of passive, infused, supernatural contemplation: the prayer of quiet, the prayer of union, the prayer of transforming union.

Thanks for the opportunity to share!