Teach Us To Pray

Prayer does change things. It does heal the heart, the mind and the spirit. I’m sharing some of my thoughts and beliefs about prayer in the next few weeks. This is not an attempt to convince or convert anyone. Simply my explanations and hopefully this and other articles will shed some light for those of you with interest. In these tough days in our country,  I think its important that we pray.

Lord, teach us to pray
It’s been a long and cold December kind of day,
with our hearts and hands all busy in our private little wars.
We stand and watch each other now from separate shores;
we lose the way. Joseph Wise

I was born a Catholic, baptized as an infant and raised in an Italian Catholic family. I was blessed to be able to receive a primarily Catholic education. I grew up, married in the church and had a family. I left my abusive husband and in so doing, I left the church I had grown up in.  While I eventually found a new church home and community and gained a much better perspective on the Bible as a whole, there are certain prayers, actions and beliefs I cling to. Perhaps they bring comfort from familiarity.

In particular, I find that the prayers I have kept with me all of my life that have helped me the most are the prayers that are connected to the rosary.

I have been studying the rosary for basically all of my life and have been very involved in the practice of meditative prayer. The beads of course do nothing but keep track of which prayer you are praying. They are not magical or have any special “powers”. They are, however, quite beautiful.

The word rosary comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary. If you were to ask what object is most emblematic of Catholics, people would probably say, “The rosary, of course.” We’re familiar with the images: the silently moving lips of the old woman fingering her beads; the oversized rosary hanging from the waist of the wimpled nun; more recently, the merely decorative rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.

After Vatican II the rosary fell into relative disuse. The same is true for Marian devotions as a whole. But in recent years the rosary has made a comeback, and not just among Catholics. Many Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the Bible.

The rosary is a devotion in honor of the Virgin Mary. It consists of a set number of specific prayers. First are the introductory prayers: one Apostles’ Creed (Credo), one Our Father (the Pater Noster or the Lord’s Prayer), three Hail Mary’s (Ave’s), one Glory Be (Gloria Patri).

Catholic Answers has a great article on the complete meanings of the prayers and symbolism of the rosary.

I welcome your conversation and interest in catholicism and I’d love to talk to you and hear your thoughts on prayer.