Skip to main content

The Rosary

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, I felt drawn to begin praying it. However, as I mentioned I wasn't quite sure how to pray it. I did some googling and found instructions. Here is a nice set of instructions that you can print for easy reference while you are first beginning.

I feel like I have been blessed with this prayer. I want to share with you my thoughts about the Rosary, the struggles of this prayer, and the lessons I have learned through praying it. A series of posts will follow, some on the lessons I have learned in the Mysteries, some in general about the prayer and how it works for me. In the end I hope that if you are already praying the Rosary that we can encourage each other in the practice. If you aren't praying the Rosary, that you will consider giving this great prayer a chance to be a part of your life. Finally, if you pray the Rosary from time to time, I hope that you will find inspiration to make it a more regular habit.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Carmel Marathon 2020 Weeks 2 & 3

Training for the Carmel Marathon on April 4th, 2020 in Carmel Indiana Goal: 2:51 Week 2 Runs: 8 Weekly Milage: 72 Cumulative Milage: 139 Workouts / Long Run: 17 with 8 at Marathon Pace Performance Management Chart for the week showing my running fitness progression from the beginning of the cycle through the current week. The main focus this week was just building my milage a little from last week, about 5 more miles, while being ready for my first MP workout. I am pretty focused right now and I struggled some last week with wanting to do more that the plan called for. I really wanted to add in a threshold workout. Marathon training is about discipline and long term thinking though. I could have added in some threshold miles and it probably would have been ok but doing the plan the way the plan is written will get me where I want to go and will keep me feeling on track and help me from wavering in the other direction as well. I'm doing the plan, period. I ran my fi...

Running Goals or Running Goal; What is it That I Want?

The other day I got all caught up in setting running goals for myself for the rest of the year. After the goals were set, I found myself starting to worry about how I was going to reach them. Wondering if there would be time to sufficiently prepare for them all. My goals were to run a 5k in under 20 minutes, to run a half marathon in 1:25 minutes and qualify for and run in the Boston marathon in 2014. At first, I thought that setting and meeting these goals would make me a more serious runner. In fact, I thought that to be the "serious" runner I want to be that I needed these goals. However, while I was running the other morning I realized that first of all, I was thinking about how to shift my training to meet my 5k goal. Then I began thinking about the right approach to a 1:25 half while training to qualify for Boston in a full marathon a month later. That is when I realized that the ancillary goals were starting to consume my focus and quite possibly i...

The Gosh Darn Tuesday Morning 15-Miler

What can you say about a 15-mile Tuesday morning run? I can say a lot. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I can say about a 15-mile Tuesday morning run on more 15-mile Tuesday Morning runs than I can count. You see, they are a main stay of the marathon training plan that I use. That plan being Pete Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning 18 week 70-85 miles per week plan. The first thing I can say about the Tuesday morning 15-mile run is that it’s not a long run. Pete clearly defines long runs as starting at 16 miles. So, the 15-miler that begins so many Tuesdays of my life is not a long run. I mean, who ever heard of doing a “long run” on a Tuesday morning. That would just be insane. Being that it’s not a long run I can’t do all of the things that I do around a long run. I can’t obsess over the weather for the 15-miler, I can’t eat extra carbs in preparation for the 15-miler, I can’t expect my family to give me deference and make accommodations for me ...