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The October Rosary
In the Catholic Church, October is always dedicated to the prayer of the holy Rosary of Our Blessed Lady. This beautiful and ancient prayer is living and vibrant, changing over time – some of the prayers, for example, were dded long after the Rosary itself came into being; the Gloria was added three hundred years ago by St Louis de Montfort, while the ‘O My Jesus’ prayer was added at the request of Our Lady in Fatima just over one hundred years ago. And in our own time, we have been given an entirely new group of meditations upon which to pray, in the form of the Luminous Mysteries, added…
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Rosary Meditations III
Here are some further brief meditations on the Mysteries of the holy Rosary. Each Mystery focuses on one brief line from Scripture as the starting point for meditation – the meditation is the soul of the Rosary, even as the words of the prayers are it’s body. It can only truly come to life when both parts are present. I hope you might find these simple meditations beneficial. The Sorrowful Mysteries The Agony in the Garden “Jesus..came forward and said to them – whom do you seek? They answered Him – Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them – I am He.” (Jn.18:4-5) Merciful Lord, how often we seek…
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Mysterious Gems
I have a sense that when people are praying the prayer of the Rosary, the common practice is to consider each of the twenty Mysteries in isolation within it, seeing each one as a separate thing within it’s own particular group. In other words, we consider one Mystery, and then the next. What we tend not to do is to see each group of Mysteries as a whole, with a connection between succeeding Mysteries. And we tend not to see real connections between succeeding Mysteries within each group. Trying to perceive those connections, however, can offer us new insights into the Mysteries and into the whole of the Rosary itself.…
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Leaving Sacred Space
I’ve mentioned previously that these days, I tend not to buy very many religious books, as my shelves are full and I already have all I need. The only real exceptions to this unwritten rule is if there happens to be a particular translation of the Bible I am looking for, and the odd little prayer book. And that rule was broken very recently. In town the other day, I visited the St Paul Media store and within, I found a new little book of Rosary meditations, called ‘Praying The Rosary – A Journey Through Scripture And Art’, by Denis McBride CSsR. I always like to have a few different…
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The Lord of Grace
For me, Advent is a very particular moment of grace. In it, we are awaiting the coming of the Lord in the flesh – and He is the Lord of All Grace. Consequently, we await the coming of He who is grace itself, who dispenses it freely and liberally if only we will ask Him for it. It’s a truly wonderful moment, this moment of grace. Our liturgical prayers throughout this season remind us of our waiting and our hoping. And our personal prayers and devotions are likely focused on this theme also. Even the Advent calendars accentuate this time of waiting, through which we move daily in the opening…
