Praying with Rosaries
To pray with rosaries is to embark on a journey. It will be a journey full of paradoxes and contradictions. We will be traveling by ourselves, but on it we will never be alone. We will be going somewhere, but we will sit almost entirely still. It will be a journey of words conducted in total or near silence. We will travel far, but go only in circles. When we return, we will have gone away without ever having left where we are.
Learning the steps of this journey is the easy part – those are the beads themselves. But staying on those steps is harder: we need the tools of focus, attention, and purpose to help us say the prayers that go with the rosaries. Those tools are the foundation of any meaningful religious practice.
Rosaries are a contemplative prayer tool. The word “contemplation” has its root in Latin and Greek meaning “to look at things” and “in the temple”. Contemplation as a spiritual practice dates back at least to the Middle Ages to a book called “The Cloud of Unknowing” by an anonymous English monk who advises his student to seek God not through knowledge, but through love. Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, two Christian mystics, later defined contemplative prayer as kind of supernatural state in which the intellect and the will are suspended. Instead, the mind enters a state of knowing instead of a state of doing. These two saints, experts at contemplative prayer, described intense feelings of love for God and an almost physical sense of God’s presence in their lives. In the mid-1950’s, Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, helped revive contemplation for modern Christians by describing his own practice in many books and articles. Thomas Keating, another Trappist monk, gave a spark to contemplative prayer, which he calls centering prayer, in his 1986 book, “Open Mind, Open Heart”. “Contemplative prayer is the opening of mind and heart – our whole being – to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words and emotions,” Keating writes. “We open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than choosing – closer than consciousness itself.”
In the New Testament, Jesus tells us to beware of vain repetitions of prayer. He’s not warning against the repetition of prayer, the key word is vain. Jesus is warning against becoming disconnected from our prayers to the point that we are just repeating a series of words without meaning. Rather, our prayers said on rosaries should be deeply felt statements of faith, of praise, of joy that we keep emotionally attached to at all times during the praying. The physical act of grasping a bead, of rotating it gently between the fingers, will anchor you to the words of prayer attached to the beads. If you feel your mind wandering, squeeze or hold the rosary tighter. Your attention will come back to the presence of God. Directing the breathing will also help; this is a well known and widely practiced method for contemplative prayer. As you begin each prayer, breathe in on the first half and out on the second half.
Remember that contemplative prayer takes practices. Be patient with yourself. It is hard to turn off the buzz of everyday life, with all its demands. Your time with rosaries is a time to put aside everyday distractions. Also, remember that rosaries are a tool of prayer and not an object of devotion. The prayers said with the aid of rosaries are more important than the beads with which they are numbered. You don’t need beads to pray. They are not there to be the focus of your prayers, but to help you focus your prayers. So if you find yourself more concerned with the color of your rosaries than the content of your prayers, you may want to think about why you are using rosaries.
How are we to meditate on a scene from Jesus’ life while remembering the prayers and counting them at the same time? Pope John Paul II suggested the use of icons, or other pictures and representations of these scenes. Scores of artists, both the famous and the unsung, have been inspired by the events in the mysteries, and gazing upon them can spark a deep meditation. You can find many fine examples on postcards, prayer cards, or small plaques at Catholic bookstores.