Saturday, September 5, 2015

The Rosary, An Area of Prayer



The Rosary has a character that is concerned solely with the sacred. 

Wherever a Rosary is set, that place can more easily become an area of prayer.  


The Rosary Beads help us to overcome that which impedes our awareness that we live in the Presence of God and in the midst of a "cloud of witnesses" - (Heb. 12:1).  The Rosary therefore is an act of witness.  


In the Remnant Rosary we have sixty-three beads giving witness to the twenty plus Mysteries (I Jn. 1:1-5; Col. 1:27; Acts 1:8).  


The Rosary is made up of Mysteries yet we live in an era of de-Mystification, in which everything must be explained in such a way it becomes as linear as flat, dull old wallpaper with the personality of a popsicle stick.  




Everything about the Rosary, its prayers, mysteries, movements, and the Beads themselves are sacred. 


Rosaries should not be in museums and collections.  


They should be put back into the service of the Church from which they were taken.  


Rosaries are not decorations nor are they to be used for jewelry. 


 Rosaries are for prayer and that prayer is at times simply the act of holding them.   


I so appreciate Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen's word:

"The Rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadows of this world, and open on the substance of the next.  The power of the Rosary is beyond description." 

   -Seraphim