The rosary is a prayer. You don't need to say it with the beads, but the beads help you keep your place on which prayer you're on so you can concentrate on praying instead of trying to count.
I have great respect for the rosary because I know it brings comfort and peace to many people. I know of several wonderful Protestant Christians who were slowly converted into Catholicism via the power of the rosary--which is to say, the power of prayer, because the beads themselves have no power at all. The item isn't holy: the prayers are.
The word itself comes from Latin
rosarium, which means "crown of roses". The beads used to count the prayers are a rosary with a lowercase r. The prayer itself, made up of a series of smaller prayers, is called a Rosary with a capital R.
While only the Triune God has power to answer prayer, the rosary helps us
seek Christ through Mary. This is in symmetry with the Biblical story of the wedding at Cana, which most people know as the time Jesus changed water into wine. Christ came to us through Mary, and as such she has a special place in the Christian faith as the Bearer of Christ (
christopheros) and therefore also the Bearer of God (
thepheros). While she has no special powers herself, unlike the pagan concepts of goddesses or other female deities, she does enjoy a special relationship with Christ--she's His mother, and He honors her. At Cana, He wasn't going to solve the whole "no more wine" problem until His mother asked him to. We see there that, through His love for her, He granted her request for help for another person. Catholics believe that she still enjoys that relationship with Him today in heaven, and so just as she interceded for the wedding couple at Cana, we ask her to go to Him and intercede for us.
The rosary is a meditation form of prayer. I have never been very good at meditation. My mind races too much, I get sidetracked and I start to worry. I can't
be still and know that He is God. Well, my body can, but my mind can't. I've never really gotten much from any attempts at meditation, whether it was prayerful or just trying to relax in a P.E. class that was having a meditation day. My mind is just too scattered for meditation, and as such I've never really enjoyed the rosary or had much connection to it. The times I've tried to pray it, I felt bored. Reciting the prayers was boring rather than cleansing. My mind kept wandering. I finally decided that the Rosary might be a lovely tool for older ladies in church, and I respected that it had brought some Protestant pastors back into the Catholic faith, but it wasn't really for me. If you liked it, though, good for you.
That's been changing for me. In my recent grief I've discovered a need for the Rosary.
Before when I prayed the Rosary, I was too young. This is not to say I didn't know grief or disappointment or spiritual trials, but I hadn't known
so many of them yet. At 25 I just hadn't gone through yet what I've gone through now at 32.
After our miscarriage in August, it's been a dark time. I'm struggling physically with my health and emotionally. My old companions, depression and anxiety, who've never left me, suddenly grew teeth and fangs. New companions showed up after years away: panic attacks, crying bouts, overwhelming saddness, muscle fatigue. And a few new ones I'd never met appeared: stress-related hives that popped up from sun exposure, walking outside, or simply feeling stressed. My body hasn't been able to bounce back and I'm suffering from lack of fertility, which makes me more sad and depressed.... you see where this is going.
God has never left me. In fact, He is here even more. He is the peace that told me, not whether my baby was going to live or not, but that He would be there holding me even if she did not. He is the dream that told my husband her gender when she was gone too soon for us to know any other way. He Named her. He put into my life my dear friends, Susan and Lori, who have been such a support and have been reaching out to me and taking care of my sad heart in such a beautiful way, and an online support group of women of staggering faith. I feel Him and, in many ways, He is bringing great beauty from the ashes of our grief and disappointment. Death and loss are part of the package deal of this Earth experience: we are in a fallen place, and so pain and tragedy are etched into the stories of every one of us, the faithful and the faithless. Every story has dark chapters full of tragedy, and this is one of mine. While I know the fallenness of this world, and thus the death of babies and children, is not in His plan, He has still been good to comfort me in the darkness. I felt Him there from before I lost her and I feel Him here 3 months later, as the path seems to be getting more narrow and darker rather than easier.
But His presence is not the kind the erases the pain. We still carry the grief of our losses and hurts, even while He comforts us. Some of the most devoted Christians in the world, many of whom are in heaven and praying for us poor lost children of Eve still walking the path they've successfully finished, endured the most heartache and pain during their Earthly lives. Think of the early saints. Think of the ancient prophets. Look at the garden of Gethsemane.
So I trudge on, grateful for the healing comfort but reeling from the losses and the pain. My heart is being broken open. Like gold through fire, my faith is burning, smoldering, igniting. I'm drawn more to Confession, where I can talk to a spiritual advisor about my sins, several of which I know are related to depression since the miscarriage but which doesn't make them any less sinful. I'm drawn to Catholic groups, where I can cry and grieve and share with women whose babies also went to heaven too soon. I have hope that, knowing her father and I would have dearly loved to baptize her, and trusting in Jesus' special love for little children, God will allow her a place at His feet for eternity, and she is there praying for me and her dad and sister before Him. My marriage is stronger, as we've grown together in our grief. My heart has been softened toward the idea of more children. In great suffering, I'm learning forbearance and patience and not to judge because you never know what terrible pain is hiding behind the face of someone who seems just fine. Certainly no one at my work knows or has any idea the suffering I've been dragging quietly along behind me these months, nor the reasons for my unexplained absences when my depression weighs me down too much to go, or my panic and crying attacks keep me from attending class. I'm learning the pain Mary felt when her Son died, and I'm learning to accept suffering and offer it up for my own and others' intentions.
But my heart is still broken. The pain is still consuming me alive. At the end of a 3-hour crying stint, I am no less dehydrated and puffy-eyed and exhausted than any person of any faith or none would be.
Finally, I "got" the Rosary.
I was crying too hard to stop. Couldn't pray, couldn't talk, couldn't breathe. I, who had always scoffed at the "lack of creativity" in praying prayers by rote, couldn't muster the creativity to make up my own prayer. I was too tired, too sad, too busy crying. My mind just couldn't. My words were gone.
Enter the rosary. Those "prayers by rote" I'd rolled my eyes at were all I could say. My own words were gone, so I used the words given to me by others. That I could do: recite, recite, cry. Recite, recite, cry. Pray pray pray. Help me, have mercy on me, a sinner. I didn't pray a whole Rosary, but I prayed my first Divine Chaplet, begging God: "For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on me and on the whole world." I am not worthy. I don't deserve it. Not for my sake, Lord. For His. Your Son died for me. Painfully, horribly. For His sake, and for all He went through to bring me to you, have mercy on me. Have mercy.
My hands, empty and searching, could grasp the beads. They were tangible, unlike my grief. Unlike my daughter. I could clutch them, number them, squeeze them.
I didn't have my own words. I knew Mary wouldn't mind me borrowing hers. Nor, I'm assuming, would the saints who'd gone to glory before me. And I needed their prayers, from the whole Body of Christ, those on earth and those already in heaven, my family, my community-- I asked them to pray for me. Remind God that I am here. Remind Him of my grief. I feel too small to do it myself. Tell Him I am here, and I am sad and small, and I am waiting for Him.
And He came.
He always comes.
I didn't "get" the rosary before because I wasn't ready for it. I hadn't felt grief deep enough; I hadn't been quite so lost and alone before. But then I was, and I touched the beads, and I prayed, and it clicked for me. It was a thing a beauty. It wasn't just for other people anymore. It was for me, too.
