Month of the most Holy Rosary

Not going to lie, with the Rosary, for a long time there was a bit of barrier for me when I became a Catholic, but I recently heard an interview from St Mother Teresa of Calcutta say that “we learn how to pray by praying”, and man I a truer word has never been spoken and I can attest to this through my own experience with the rosary.

First I think we should talk a little about what actually prayer is, because there is a reality that prayer can be an amazing ethereal experience where we break through this profane existence and enter into a spiritual plane where communion with God is not only real, it’s almost tangible and like at the transfiguration you feel like you just want to set up a tent and live in this space forever! But Peter was being dumb then and if you think that so are you! Jokes, but not jokes. Bishop Barron has said many things that have resonated with me because he’s amazing (man I want to hang out with him so bad) btu one thing that he’s said, which he’s probably quoting from someone else super awesome is “your life is not about you”, and I will say neither is your prayer!

It’s kind of like going to the gym, (which the Word on Fire team also do, man I so want to be their friend) you don’t go to the gym because you are super fit and muscley, you go there to get and muscley (or i do at least… when I go…). Prayer is an exercise that draws you deeper into where God wants you, where He can speak to you more deeply and reveal to you plans for your life. Just like Elijah in the desert (Kings 19). This is my favourite template for prayer, so you will probably hear me talk about this a lot if you listen to me regularly. Long story short, he surrenders his whole life to God in that moment, not because he’s holy, because he’s weak and pathetic (read the chapter before for context), and then he falls asleep but God sends him and angel to strengthen him and then sends him out on Mission where he encounters God!! THAT COULD BE US!! But we are looking for the wrong thing. We need to learn how to pray by praying, by being really bad at praying, regularly, time and time again, not feeling like we are getting anywhere, not feeling anything cool or getting any special insight, until we do because praying is not about you, it’s about God. Prayer is practicing justice, something that we owe to God, and in His mercy He will acknowledge what we have done by gifting us with Himself and a plan for our lives, we just need to get out our own way and allow God to work.

Back to the Rosary. Through the grace of God I am a pretty simple guy, and straight after I converted to Catholicism at uni, I joined the Catholic society and at the beginning of every meeting we prayed a rosary. Now this seemed dumb to me because I was naive and unformed in the faith, so my reaction was “this is a lot of hail MARYs, for a prayer that's meant to be to God!” But I figured, I am Catholic now I guess this is just something I do now! And straight away the clouds parted and an angel came down from heaven… not really, in fact nothing happened for the best part of a year, maybe longer. I only prayed the rosary at the meetings because that’s what we did. I then finished uni and did a mission year in London at SPEC (check it out) and we did a rosary walk once a week on a Tuesday, so I was obedient and cracked on with it.

Then one day, an angel didn’t quite appear to me but a thought entered my head, that on reflection could have been my guardian angel giving me a nudge. I thought, “If this is a prayer to God, why don’t I use it.” So I started praying for people during my rosary walk, specifically I started praying for a friend who was going through a pretty tough break up. She was so upset at that time that she wasn’t able to sleep and she was just crying every night.

Before I had left, let's call her Amanda, when I joined this community, despite her not being Christian never mind Catholic, I gave her a rosary. After a couple of weeks of doing this rosary walk with Amanda in mind, I got a message from her. She said that last night she was going through what had become her usual nightly routine of getting in bed and just lying in a depressed state and crying when she remembered the rosary I had given her. She went to get the rosary and went back to bed, and not only was that the first night in a long time that she had actually fallen asleep, but she had a dream of a lady in gray that came to meet her and she felt a peace shed never felt before. I thought, cool, this prayer is working, Amanda is getting to sleep. I told the assistant director of our community this story as he was a devout of the rosary and Our Lady and he said, the Our Lady of Sorrows is depicted as being a lady in gray.

The Catholic Church doesn’t want you to just have faith, she wants you to have the fullness of faith and the fallen world we live in means that requires something of us that goes beyond desire, it requires action.

There is a very well known path laid with good intentions, but The Way is laid with the blood sweat and tears of our tangible actions that lead to salvation through Christ. This month is the month of the most Holy Rosary, and there’s a really cool story about the battle of Lepanto that goes with it, but where that battle is written in history, our battle is now and it’s not one fought with swords, it’s done with a string of beads, and it doesn’t take place out in a field, it happens within our hearts. So I pray that today we are able to put ourselves aside and not seek good feelings in prayer, but we recognise that struggle inside ourselves when we pray the rosary and we engage it in battle with the worlds from scripture, “Hail Mary, full of grace the LORD is with thee”.

Thank you for listening, God bless