Blog

One of the greatest ways to enter into the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ is to pray the Rosary. However, praying the Rosary well can be difficult for several reasons. Three of the most common are:

Time constraints. The Rosary is a long prayer and requires setting aside a block of time (for me, that is no less than one-half hour) and busy schedules need to be adjusted to accommodate it.

Distraction. This is one of the three plagues of prayer -- discouragement and dryness or aridity, being the other two. Maintaining our attention during a long prayer can be especially difficult.

Repetition. Some people find the repetition of the decades to be either monotonous and somewhat boring or so comforting they are lulled to sleep.

But remember, next to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Rosary is the most efficacious of all prayers. It has the capacity to take us to contemplative prayer and to a mystical experience of the mysteries of Christ's life. Our Lady of Fatima tells us that praying the Rosary can bring peace to the world and Padre Pio told us the Rosary itself is a weapon against the wiles and tactics of the evil one. All of the great saints exhort us to pray the Rosary. Many have written books about it. Blessed John Paul II gave us one of his most beautiful apostolic letters on it. Clearly, praying the Rosary should not be a prayer option. It should be a prayer standard!

So -- do we fall victim to the difficulties we may encounter as we pray the Rosary or do we mount a defense against them? We take the latter course of action knowing that God will meet our meager generosity of heart with His boundless generosity of love.

Here are some strategies I personally employ to aid me in praying the Rosary well and to overcome the three difficulties outlined above:

I plan to pray the Rosary and even schedule it if necessary. I have a very busy schedule and I don't want to rush my time of prayer, including the beautiful prayer of the Rosary. Since I have resolved to pray the Rosary every day, I plan to pray it and I plan where I will pray it -- in Church before the Blessed Sacrament, at home in my "prayer chair," in the car or airplane, for example.

Distraction. Everyone experiences distraction in prayer, even the most proficient of all pray-ers. It is one of the tactics the evil one uses to entice us away from prayer altogether and the time we have set aside for it. Therefore, we have to be prepared for distraction. I like to use a variety of aids to help me maintain my attention and a prayerful disposition of heart. Some of the "weapons" I use to combat distraction are:

* Good Rosary meditation tapes

* Sacred Scripture

* Holy literature

* Religious music

I change the manner of speech with which I pray the Rosary. We can all "get lost" as we pray a long prayer and find our minds have drifted far away from the discipline at hand. To help me maintain a prayerful attitude of heart while praying the Rosary, I change the manner of speech I am using.

One way I do this is by altering the cadence I am using. I will slow down, pausing frequently to consider the words I am saying and the mystery they are revealing. I may stay there a bit to reflect, enter in, or beg God to take me more deeply into the mystery at hand. I ask Him to imbue the innermost confines of my heart with this moment in the life of our Savior, or the words Gabriel spoke to Mary. At other times, I will speed up the cadence, not to "get through" the Rosary, but to express the spiritual delight of it.

Another way I change my manner of speech is by changing from praying the Rosary silently to praying it out loud -- especially if I have drifted or am getting lulled by it. If I pray it out loud, I like to change the tone I use throughout the recitation -- softer, louder, less emphasis on a word, more emphasis -- especially in light of the mystery being prayed. I often find that I move from meditation to contemplation to thanksgiving, to praise, back to meditation, back to contemplation. The Holy Spirit moves us along the continuum and prays through us.

The Rosary is a journey into the life of Christ and an excellent means through which the life of Christ enters into us. By praying it daily, we will find that our facility to pray it well grows, our experience of it will heighten, and the mysteries it presents will become our own. May daily recitation of this prayer be among your holy resolutions throughout this new year.

( For an excellent Rosary meditation CD, simply click the link. My Soul Magnifies the Lord is celebrating its 20th anniversary in healing hearts, changing lives, and saving souls. http://shop.womenofgrace.com/product/rosary/)

Read the rest

In my reliquary, I have a first class relic of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first native-born American to be canonized. I find it appropriate that a woman was the first of our land to be lifted to the altar of Christ by Holy Mother Church. After all, our country and all of North America is dedicated to the woman: the Blessed Virgin Mary under her title of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our special patroness is also the Blessed Mother under her name, Immaculate Conception.

Just as it is true that all of the male saints seek to imitate Our Lord Jesus Christ, so too, do the women saints -- but their emulation takes on the characteristics of the feminine, the authentically feminine, as lived to the superlative degree by Our Blessed Lady. While every soul must acquire the virtues of receptivity, trust, and surrender, these are the hallmarks of the handmaid of the Lord, virtues implicit in her by virtue of her gender. To acquire them, however, practice them and live them, can be quite another matter. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, in imitation of the Blessed Virgin, gives us good example. Through all of the vicissitudes of life, Mother Seton lived heroic virtue -- frequently in situations and trials very similar to those experienced by Mary.

Born into an affluent family and married to a wealthy business man, her happiness was to be short-lived. The early death of her father-in-law eventually left young Elizabeth and her husband, William Seton, to rear Will's seven half-brothers and sisters, and to run the family importing business. Young Mr. Seton's health and business began to fail under the increasing pressure of the situation, eventually forcing him to file a petition for bankruptcy, after which he and Elizabeth sailed for Italy to pursue the help of business friends. It was there, in Italy, that Will died of tuberculosis leaving Elizabeth with one consolation -- that he had recently experienced a conversion of heart toward the things of God.

Though the Seton's Italian business friends took her in, supported her spiritually and financially, she eventually needed to return to the United States and to her other children and family. However, a deep and holy friendship had blossomed with her Italian patrons who continued to be of great interior support and consolation to her for all that she would encounter on her home shores.

While in Italy, Elizabeth was drawn to the majesty and beauty of the Catholic Faith which she had witnessed in the lives of her patrons. She longed for Eucharist, hungered really, for the Bread of Life, and found great comfort in the Blessed Virgin to whom she turned for guidance and direction. Mary, she discovered, was her mother, her true mother, whose maternal beatitude was there for her. Consolation filled her with this understanding since she had lost her own mother at an early age. It was Our Lady who eventually led her to join the Church her Son had founded, the Catholic Church.

Upon her returned, poverty greeted her as well. Her resources were dried up and she received no help from her Episcopalian family and community whose  bitter resentment toward her conversion expressed itself in hostility and ostracization. At the suggestion of the president of St. Mary's College in Baltimore, Maryland, Elizabeth opened a school in the city. She engaged two other young women to help her and thus began the religious community she would form, the Sisters of Charity, based on the rule written by St. Vincent de Paul for the Daughers of Charity in France. The Sisters of Charity was the first religious order founded in the United States.

Provision was made for Mother Seton to continue to raise her five natural children in the convent setting, but she would know the searing pain of burying two of them at an early age as well as the loss of spiritual daughters she had borne in faith. Living and embracing the will of God -- the rudder of Mother's spiritual life -- guided her through these times and she was able to say with confidence and conviction,""What is sorrow , what is death? They are but sounds when at peace with Jesus." She knew that physical death is only the passage to eternal life.

Throughout her life, in her joys and in her sorrows, Elizabeth Ann Seton modeled her True Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like Our Lady, Elizabeth knew widowhood at an early age. She experienced abject poverty and no small degree of marginalization and misunderstanding. And she accepted as God's will the most excruciating of all crosses, the death of a child, kissed that cross, and embraced it.

But,also like Our Lady, Elizabeth suffered well. Not only well, but we might suspect, in union with her Savior, Jesus Christ, mystically placing herself on the Cross with Him, that she might be a conduit of redemptive grace in the world. Her travail became the crucible in which He perfected her faith and made her fire-tried gold.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton stands as a model for women today. Wife, mother, widow, founder,religious sister, patron of the death of children, daughter of God, spiritual daughter of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her life, her words, her example, and her desire for God alone, give the women of today a sure and safe path to follow.

Following are six resolves Mother Seton made. As they did for her, they may well lead us, too, to sanctity and holiness of life:

She wrote: "Solemnly in the presence of my Judge, I resolve thorugh his grace

1) to remember my infirmity and my sin

2) to keep the door of my lips

3) to consider the causes of sorrow for sin in myself and in them whose souls are as dear to me as my own

4) to check and restrain all useless words

5) to deny myself and exercise the severity that I know is due to my sin

6) to judge myself - thereby trusting through mercy, that I shall not be severely judged by my Lord

Perhaps these resolutions might be good ones to make as we begin this new year in Our Lord, 2012.

(Resolutions of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton taken from http://setonspath.tripod.com/)

Read the rest

"To err is human; to forgive divine." Alexander Pope

For Reflection: According to this quote, am I acting "divinely?" What resolution can I make for the coming new year in light of my answer?

Read the rest

“No punishment can suppress the inalienable dignity of those who have committed evil. The door to repentance and rehabilitation must always remain open.”

Pope John Paul the Great

 For Reflection: To what extent do I keep the door to repentance and rehabilitation open for those who have injured me? Am I seeking to repent and rehabilitate in light of those to whom I have caused injury?

Read the rest

"If you do not receive him who repents, because you are merciless, you sin against the Lord God; for you do not obey Our Lord and God in acting as He acted." Anonymous

For Reflection: How well do I act as Our Lord and God acted in light of mercy?

Read the rest

Yesterday, we celebrated the feast day of St. John the Evangelist who in his writings often referred to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. There was a beautiful relationship of filial love between St. John and Our Lord, a love that we should all be striving for.

On yesterday's Women of Grace Live radio, I shared some reflections from today's Divine Intimacy meditation in which Fr. Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, OCD, offered a powerful reflection about love. He tells us that Our Lord revealed His Love for us by the very fact that He concealed His divinity, His majesty, His power, and His infinite wisdom to assume our human nature. The Divine Infant was completely dependent upon a creature, though He was God, the Word was made flesh for our sake, and was born of a virgin.

Fr. Gabriel then goes on to issue a challenge. He says, "Let us try to understand this mystery in order to apply it to our poor lives." He later continues, "To repay His infinite love, to prove our love for Him, let us resolve to strip ourselves generously of everything that could hinder our union with Him; above all, let us divest ourselves of self-love, pride, vanity, all our righteous pretensions. What a striking contrast between these vain pretenses of our "ego" and the touching humility of the Incarnate Word!"

Let us take time during this holy season of Christmas to really ponder the mysteries of the Incarnation. How can we divest ourselves of the things that hinder our union with God? It is truly a call to a deep ascenticism.

Perhaps take time to meditate upon an image or statue of the Nativity scene, such as the one depicted here which so strikingly displays the humility of that moment of great love, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Then allow the mystery of that great love to reveal itself and come alive in your life in a deeper way than ever before through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

"Who would not love Him who loves us so much?"

 

Read the rest

"We need to smooth off the rough edges a little more each day [to] get rid of the defects in our own lives with a spirit of penance, with small mortifications. Jesus Christ will later make up for whatever is still lacking." St. Josemaria Escriva

For Reflection: How does seeking forgiveness from others help to smooth off rough edges?

Read the rest

"What should characterize our behavior when we ask for pardon? Humility, contriteness of heart, no defensiveness or rationalization of our behavior, no rehashing the argument, no expectation on the reaction we will receive, surrender of the outcome to God." Johnnette Benkovic

For Reflection: Am I willing to apply these characteristics to my behavior when I ask for forgiveness? Why or why not? Which virtue do I need to acquire to do so?Â

Read the rest

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Psalm 51: 10,17

For Reflection: This passage gives us the two characteristics necessary for true contrition - a broken and contrite heart. Is there someone whom I have offended? Are these two characteristics present in me in relation to that person? In light of this, what should I do?

Read the rest

"For the individual who has been injured through the actions of another, it is important to find meaning in the suffering. Such a perspective infuses value and worth into the heartache of the injury sustained. It reminds us that God has a plan in all things and works all things to the good." Johnnette Benkovic

For Reflection: How have I seen God work good out of the sufferings I have endured because of the actions of others? Can I then see this suffering as a blessing and not a curse?

Read the rest