Learning to Pray the Rosary

In the early 2000’s I became interested in the Rosary.  I was pastoring a Protestant church at the time and really had no idea how to go about it, and I may have been attracted, at first, by the idea of fingering the beads (since I’ve always liked beads anyway).  But I thought rosaries were things of beauty and felt envious of Catholics who had this as a normal part of their prayers.

Around this time I came across a quote by the Anglican priest Austin Farrer: “If I had been asked two dozen years ago for an example of what Christ forbade when he said ‘Use not vain repetitions,’ I should very likely have referred to the fingering of the beads. But now if I wished to name a special sort of private devotion most likely to be of general profit, prayer on the beads is what I should name. Since my previous opinion was based on ignorance and my present opinion is based on experience, I am not ashamed of changing my mind” (“The Heaven-sent Aid,” in Lord I Believe, p. 80).

Farrer offers an alternative to the Hail Mary for those who are not comfortable asking for Mary’s intercession, so I started praying the Rosary using his suggested prayers (and sometimes using the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” as well). And I found, as he suggested, that the Rosary is a great help in meditating on the major events of the Gospel.

Very soon, though, I was increasingly drawn, in ways I could not explain, to the Marian dimension of the Rosary.  But since this was completely foreign to me as a Protestant, I was on unfamiliar ground; so I talked to Fr. Nick, my spiritual director, about it.  And after questioning me at some length he concluded that this was something God was doing in my life and affirmed that I should go ahead.

So I started using the Hail Mary, slightly guiltily at first, and came to love it so much that I ended up using it, while praying the Rosary, nearly every day. I realized that this was a potential problem for me as an Evangelical pastor and that what I as doing had the potential to ruin my career. But I loved it and found that I was able to draw nearer to God and meditate more deeply on the Gospel events than I could any other way.

I also started reading more about Mary and the development of Marian devotions in the history of the Church to better-understand what I was doing and why it was helping me. The Hail Mary begins with the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary, followed by a variation on the words of Elizabeth: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus” (Luke 1:28, 42). Then, the second half is what most Protestants would find objectionable: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” I’ve heard some argue that Mary should only be called the Mother of Jesus, not the Mother of God, but since Jesus is fully man and fully God and Elizabeth identifies Mary as “the mother of my Lord” (Luke 1:43), it shouldn’t be a problem to say that she is the mother of a divine Person, or Theotokos, “birth giver of God,” the name given to her at the council of Ephesus in the early 4th Century (which is the same thing as calling her “mother of God”).

But what about asking for her prayers? I was in a discussion several years ago in a Presbyterian church, where the question came up whether one is permitted to ask the saints to pray for us; one man, an elder in the church, became very angry and insisted “Jesus’ intercession is enough; we don’t need the saints to pray for us!” And no doubt Jesus’ intercession is more than adequate for our needs, but that doesn’t stop us from asking for prayer from others in the Church. (I’ve never heard the question of the adequacy of Jesus’ intercession come up in this context.) So I don’t see any reason, in principle, why we can’t ask for the prayers of those, including Mary, who have gone before us and are now in heaven.

I’ve addressed, in another post (The Benefits of Repetitive Prayer), the issue of repeating the same words over and over, so I won’t say more about that here. But Romano Guardini helpfully describes the Rosary as “a prayer of lingering” and says “The Rosary has the character of a sojourn. Its essence is the sheltering of a quiet, holy world that envelops the person who is praying” (The Rosary of Our Lady, pp. 58, 44).

The Rosary is a “prayer of lingering.” It enables me, over and over again, to linger in the presence of Jesus and to enter more deeply into the major events of His earthly life. I continue praying the Rosary every day, sometimes more than once, and it has become my favorite way of prayer. So I’m thankful for Fr. Nick; his advice was bad for my career, but he wisely discerned that my career was not God’s first priority.