Praying and Running

There are several obstacles that someone who has committed to pray the Rosary will face. Since the Rosary is a long prayer one of the biggest challenges I face is staying focused. If you have read my other posts or if you are just familiar with the prayer, you know that the mental contemplation of the Mysteries is the main focus of the prayer. So getting distracted really detracts from the prayer. Even if I am only praying 1 chaplet of the Rosary, it still takes about 20 minutes. In that amount of time your mind is bound to wander some. I have found several different things to help me when my mind begins to drift off to the worries of everyday life. The first is to understand that this is going to happen and be watching for it. If I am not vigilant I can get through a whole decade and realize I have not thought one single time about the Mystery that I should have been contemplating. So before I begin the prayer I make a conscious determination to be watchful of my wandering mind. O...

I want very badly for my protestant friends to take up the practice of the Rosary because when we pray the Rosary it is like we are at the wedding at Cana. We petition Mary and she points to her Son and says "Do whatever HE tells you". You don't have to be Catholic to pray the Rosary. But there are a few things that prevent protestants, by and large, from the practice of praying the Holy Rosary. Chief among them I would say is an aversion to the Hail Mary, the central prayer of the Rosary. Now, one thing most protestants have in common is a profound belief in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. In other words, most protestants would argue that the Bible alone is the sole source of GOD's word. With that in mind, I will point out in this post where the Hail Mary comes from and why it is a treasured prayer of Catholics. We will go verse by verse and explore the biblical roots. Our prayer begins "Hail Mary full of Grace the LORD is with you". In Luke 1:28(NAB)...

Mathew 3:13-17 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John tried to prevent him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?" Jesus said to him in reply, "Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he allowed him. After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened (for him), and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove (and) coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." One lesson I have learned while meditating on the Baptism of the LORD is that sometimes we must accept a mission or job or task from GOD that we don't think we are up to or worthy to preform. You see how John says, "Oh no, I am not worthy to baptize you. If anything I need to be baptized by you." At this point our LORD wanted to do something. We all know that Ch...

Luke 2:22-40 The Presentation of Jesus When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord, and to offer the sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the Child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took Him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, You may let your servant go in peace, according to Your word, for ...

Today's (1/10/2011 Mark 1:14-20) Gospel reading has really stuck with me and developed in my mind over the course of the day. I wanted to share what I have been contemplating about today as a result of the reading. Believe me, I understand that this sounds cliche. I love it when the readings force me to see the the truth and beauty of what all to often gets written off as cliche. The first thing that struck me was verse 1:15 “This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”  I love this. I think I am so attracted to this saying because it is the LORD Himself saying "Your time has not run out. You have another opportunity to come to me."  Think about it. This is Mercy. The day of the LORD has come. But you still have a chance to repent of the evil you have done and make amends with GOD. If this were not true I think Christ may have said something like "Too late, I am here and you are out of luck." Thank you, J...

When I first began praying the Rosary, I wasn't quite sure how it was done. Through the internet, I found instructions for praying the Rosary and a list of the Mysteries. I learned that to pray the full traditional Rosary you say 15 "decades". a decade is composed of an Our Father, 10 Hail Marys, and a Glory Be. So in the end you have prayed 150 Hail Marys. While you are reciting the prayers you concentrate your mind on the Mysteries. The Mysteries are an important part of praying the Rosary. In fact, they really are the prayer itself. In the Mysteries we contemplate specific parts of the life of Christ. The traditional mysteries are the Joyful, the Sorrowful and the Glorious Mysteries. Because the full Rosary takes so long to pray, I also found that many people say only 1 "chaplet" a day. A chaplet is 5 "decades" and focuses on 1 of the 3 Mysteries. In this case there is a traditional pattern. Saturdays, Sundays, Wednesdays are the Glorious Mys...

I began praying the Rosary about 3 years ago. At the time I was attending Mass on Sundays. My prayer life consisted of saying the Our Father and prayers of my own words. I wasn't spending much time at all in prayer. I didn't really know how. However, it felt like there should be more. I felt like I was cheating God, not giving Him anything more than the bare minimum. But, like I said, I didn't know how to pray more or pray better. I knew about the Rosary. Or at least I thought I did. The Rosary is a plastic strand of beads that all Catholics have lying in some drawer in their home, right? Wrong. That is a rosary. The Rosary is a prayer. I remember from my youth in Catholic school that in order to pray the Rosary a person said some Hail Marys, some Glory be(s) and some Our Fathers. That is it. That was about the extent of what I knew of the Rosary. Even though what I knew about this prayer was very limited; Even though what I did know about it made it seem very boring,...