ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE by Pope John Paul II

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djeter

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Recently I’ve hit a dry spot in my prayer life and am sorting through all the reasons I shouldn’t be feeling this way. John Paul II is always a great place to begin…

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/02/reading-selections-from-the-apostolic-letter-rosarium-virginis-mariae-by-pope-john-paul-ii/

What do you do when you find you’ve fallen out of habit and can’t seem to get kick started again, don’t want to make your prayer life to be a chore…

I just decided I would stop for a while and begin when I wanted to. I think its working because recently I’ve been longing to go back to the way I was and feeling badly that I haven’t.

In Christ,

dj
 
Two important things about prayer:

Attention

Intention

Sometimes, you have to make an act of will to do so.
 
A good kick in the behind can get me going.

I read a few passages about Hell and the fear of God and it starts my motor running again, if the love passages don’t encourage me enough to stand up and get to work.

There’s so much good out there that needs to be done, that we are obliged to do out of the very basic levels of charity… for the holy souls… for souls in their last hours… in prayer and good works…

There is so very much we have to do, and if we do, is part of the glory of God.

So you put yourself in the presence of God and all Heaven, the angels and saints, you say the prayers necessary to give you the spiritual strength to move, and you move forwards. 🙂

The comforts of life can make you dull, so wake up and take a breath of the cold sharp winter air and get to work. 🙂

'If none can 'scape death’s dreadful dart,
If rich and poor his beck obey,
If strong, if wise, if all do smart,
Then I to ‘scape shall have no way.
Oh, grant me grace, O God, that I
My life may mend, sith I must die.’

St. Robert Southwell
 
From your replies I see that you haven’t caught the conundrum I’m in. I prayed the rosary for two or three years using the same act of will, “kick in the pants” and intentions that I would bring to a diet or excercising – both of which I’ve been immensely successful at. So the Rosary was part of my Catholic life, as was a weekly quiet time with the Lord at Eucharistic Adoration. Then it ended. I don’t know why or how but the thought that blocks me is that both of those elements of my Catholic life should be joyful and I should be joyful.

And I’m so close these days. It’s like I start up and I am part of a great joy and then the focus becomes lost and stutters to a stop.

Meanwhile I am going through all the things I read about the Rosary. The offering today is a thin volume called “The Rosary Of Our Lady” by Fr. Romano Guardini – Benedict XVI is one of his biggest fans.

You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/03/book-recommendation-the-rosary-of-our-lady-%e2%80%93-romano-guardini/

Thank you so much for your replies.

dj
 
djeter said:
From your replies I see that you haven’t caught the conundrum I’m in. I prayed the rosary for two or three years using the same act of will, “kick in the pants” and intentions that I would bring to a diet or excercising – both of which I’ve been immensely successful at. So the Rosary was part of my Catholic life, as was a weekly quiet time with the Lord at Eucharistic Adoration. Then it ended. I don’t know why or how but the thought that blocks me is that both of those elements of my Catholic life should be joyful and I should be joyful.

And I’m so close these days. It’s like I start up and I am part of a great joy and then the focus becomes lost and stutters to a stop.

Meanwhile I am going through all the things I read about the Rosary. The offering today is a thin volume called “The Rosary Of Our Lady” by Fr. Romano Guardini – Benedict XVI is one of his biggest fans.

You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/03/book-recommendation-the-rosary-of-our-lady-%e2%80%93-romano-guardini/

Thank you so much for your replies.

dj
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The secret to happiness and joy I have always found to be reflecting with gratitude upon the gifts God has given you.

When you contemplate all the immense good that He has done for you, you cannot but wonder at His care for someone so tiny and wretched.

There’re some good meditations on this in various books, including St. Francis de Sale’s ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’, especially the third meditation.
 
Shin said:
The secret to happiness and joy I have always found to be reflecting with gratitude upon the gifts God has given you.

When you contemplate all the immense good that He has done for you, you cannot but wonder at His care for someone so tiny and wretched.

There’re some good meditations on this in various books, including St. Francis de Sale’s ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’, especially the third meditation.
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Thank you Shin. I will check that out.

http://payingattentiontothesky.file...adonna-with-rosary-by-murillo.jpg?w=180&h=275

In the meantime I have made a third post on the Rosary. This time the highly questionable Garry Wills and his book the Rosary. As a convert I hadn’t quite learned the playing field of Catholicism yet so I was reading Luke Timothy Johnson and Garry Wills quite innocently, never knowing how much some of their asides were at variance with the Church’s teachings.

I notice though as I went through my reading notes on the Wills’ book that I had captured mostly his references to scripture and to other Catholic authorities – so I think this book recommendation (with caveat) is OK.

Like I had explained earlier my object here in trying to get myself back on track is to go back and see all the reasons I had collected for praying the Rosary in the first place – an attempt to capture some of the things I had originally learned before my dry season set in.

dj

the post is here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/04/book-recommendation-the-rosary-%e2%80%93-garry-wills/

Our Meditations: An Entry Into The Life Of Christ
“Our meditations are meant to be not merely an escape from self, but an entry into the life of Christ. We Christians believe that we are incorporated into the risen life of Jesus, as members of his mystical body. The spirit prays in us , through Christ, to the Father. Saint Paul says I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” [Galatians 2:20] and “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3:2-4] The rosary invites us to retire into that secret of our deeper life in Christ, to reflect on his actions and their private meaning for us, and to do this at our own pace, seeking our own peace.”

I think I have lost that “entry into the life of Christ” and found myselt merely “escaping from self” or maybe even into a prideful self who was keeping score at how religious he had become. It strikes me that the reason I have stopped is because none of the things I’ve been reading from John Paul II or Fr. Guardini and now in the Wills’ book was becoming true for me. Could it be a phony prayer life is worth none at all? And showing the phoniness of it all up is this dry spell?

Thoughts for a Friday…

dj
 
I think at one time Mother Theresa had said to just pray the rosary if you hit a dry patch in your life. What she meant is not to worry about which set of mysteries you were to use, or what you were to meditate on just pray the Rosary. Eventually you will get through that dry patch and you can get back into the swing of things.

However you choose to get over this may I suggest not to stop praying. That’s how doubts or spiritual laziness can enter your life and pretty soon temptations and other sins can become stronger and more alluring.

ChadS
 
ChadS said:
However you choose to get over this may I suggest not to stop praying. That’s how doubts or spiritual laziness can enter your life and pretty soon temptations and other sins can become stronger and more alluring.

ChadS
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Well thankfully there has been no great temptations or sin newly present in my life – just an ending of my prayer life.

It really seemed as though I didn’t DO anything, that it just happened. I’ve suffered weight gain along with it and have had to resume all my diabetic medications which I had previously gotten rid of when I lost weight. In fact I will probably have to start injecting insulin, which makes me really angry and frustrated.

Doctors want me to start on happy pills for depression but I believe what I am suffering from is acedia – which I have explored in several posts:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/10/09/learning-to-dwell-in-this-desert/

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/07/17/life-emerging-out-of-what-had-seemed-dead/

I do attend mass every Sunday and pray from time to time when I feel overcome by misery but its nothing like the rich prayer life I had before.

dj
 
If you’re gaining weight are you eating for happiness?

The love of God in the Sacred Heart is also a great devotion for inciting one to fervency again.

I find the most success in my spiritual life the more worldly entertainments I give up, the fewer belongings I keep and the more I throw away or give away – and the more I spend my time only in spiritual entertainment, converting my happinesses into gaining spiritual gains rather than temporary pleasures.

If you think that you have done something lasting and good with Christ, that is ALWAYS something to think upon with a gleam in one’s eye, if one just brings the moment truly again to memory.

You can think of all Heaven’s happiness on seeing a truly good deed, and that is something that is real.

And if you habitually do this rather than seeking other outlets as happinesses that gain you no merit in Heaven… you will have lasting good memories to return to.
 
Shin said:
If you’re gaining weight are you eating for happiness?

You can think of all Heaven’s happiness on seeing a truly good deed, and that is something that is real.

And if you habitually do this rather than seeking other outlets as happinesses that gain you no merit in Heaven… you will have lasting good memories to return to.
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I like your last thought there Shin – that is highly motivational and very profound. As for eating for happiness, like most fat people I eat to anesthetize myself – there is very little happiness in the act.

One of the greatest motivators I encountered in the first few years of my faith was Fr. Robert Barron’s little book The Strangest Path. A reading selection on Christian Practices and a link to Fr. Barron speaking about the book here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/07/practices-of-the-christian-path/

dj
 
The Parisian Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) is one of the last century’s greatest Catholic novelists, and this is probably his most admired book, “The Diary of A Country Priest.” Reading selections here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/08/book-recommendation-the-diary-of-a-country-priest-%e2%80%93-georges-bernanos/

Sometimes I have read these books a couple of years ago. Look at how this one spoke to me:

“Losing” Faith
"No, I have not lost my faith. The expression ‘to lose one’s faith,’ as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish. It must be one of those sayings of bourgeois piety, a legacy of those wretched priests of the eighteenth century who talked so much.

***Faith is not a thing which one ‘loses,’ we merely cease to shape our lives by it. ***That is why old-fashioned confessors are not far wrong in showing a certain amount of skepticism when dealing with ‘intellectual crises,’ doubtless far more rare than people imagine. An educated man may come by degrees to tuck away his faith in some back corner of his brain, where he can find it again on reflection, by an effort of memory; yet even if he feels a tender regret for what no longer exists and might have been, the term ‘faith’ would nevertheless be inapplicable to such an abstraction, no more like real faith, to use a very well-worn simile, than the constellation of Cygnus is like a swan."

I can’t tell you how my fear at the loss of my prayer life might have been related to “losing” my faith – even though I didn’t feel it all. Still my post from yesterday was speaking to DOING CATHOLIC as opposed to BEING CATHOLIC. (payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/12/07/practices-of-the-christian-path/) Hence the fear when a part of the doing slips away. But this quote (and what follows) puts it a lot better into perspective. Quite simply, I have not lost my faith because my life is still shaped by it.

dj
 
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