RosaryMeds

Rosary Meditation: The First Sorrowful Mystery

This rosary meditation reflects on the First Sorrowful Mystery — The Agony in the Garden.  Before Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified, He prayed in a garden for strength.  First, He prayed that God would let this horrible ordeal pass over Him.  He later found his apostles asleep after he asked them to pray with Him.  Finally, Jesus said that He would do God’s will despite any fears He had.

This mystery revolves around prayer as well as the lack of it.  First we see Jesus facing His certain death.  But what does He do in that situation?  Does He run and hide?  Does He ask the apostles to fight and protect Him?  Does he complain endlessly and ask, “why me?”  No, instead He prays and prays earnestly.  Jesus prays so hard that He starts sweating blood.  That make me wonder, have I every prayed so hard for anything in my life?  When I face large challenges, do I first turn to prayer and ask God for strength and guidance or do I try to figure out some way to avoid them?  Or do I just throw out a quick “God, help me!” without much effort or faith that God will actually do anything.

This rosary mystery really forces us to focus on the quality of our prayers.  Ask yourself, do you earnestly lay your soul before God in prayer or do you just go through the words and motions?  I know from my experience that when I pray I am often thinking of other things.  I’m thinking about work, a television show or movie, finances, something someone said, or politics.  When we pray are we like Jesus laying ourselves out before God or are we like the apostles — physically there but spiritually asleep?

We also see the dichotomy of Jesus being both fully human and fully God.  He shows us very human emotions such as the fear of being tortured and killed and disappointment upon discovering His apostles sleeping instead of praying.  He pleads with God that this terrible fate not befall Him.  Fear and desperation are not exactly traits we associate with God but ones we use to describe ourselves.  And there lies the reason why we see Jesus in this very human state.  If we saw the fully divine Jesus go to His death, fully at peace because He knew about His ultimate resurrection and redemption, we would not be able to relate to Him much less imitate Him.  Seeing Jesus scared reminds us that being scared is a normal human response when facing monumental obstacles and challenges in our lives.  However, Jesus shows us that we cannot let those emotions impede us from doing God’s will.  We truly follow in Jesus’ footsteps when we imitate His ways despite our human fears and doubts that make us want to do otherwise.

Jesus’ experience in the garden mirrors the apostles’ experience in the Third Glorious Mystery – The Decent of the Holy Spirit.  The apostles were scared of the fate that might befall them but God gave them strength and guidance through the Holy Spirit.  Their worldly circumstances did not change and they still faced some rather monumental challenges.  Similarly, God did not change the world so that Jesus could escape crucifixion.  God knew, as Jesus did, that ultimate salvation could only be found at the cross.  We should remember that the reason God does not remove obstacles and challenges in our lives is so that we can grow closer to Him and become better people by enduring those challenges.  In other words, God shows His might, not by removing obstacles, but by giving us the strength to overcome them.

What can we do to put this mystery into practice?  For starters, let us try to pray earnestly with our whole heart, mind, and soul.  Our relationship with God is something too important for Him to occupy our thoughts alongside the latest episode of “American Idol”, a funny joke, or where the stock market is currently trading.  Wherever we are in our prayer life I know we can all probably step up our intensity.  That might mean trying to concentrate harder when praying the rosary, taking time out to say grace before a meal, or really focusing on prayers during Mass.  Perhaps we can take the time to go to Adoration and really focus and building a stronger relationship with God.  We should also pray for those who are feeling scared and trapped by life’s obstacles.  Whether they know it or not, they follow in Jesus’ footsteps and God will give them strength and guidance just as He gave those gifts to Jesus in that lonely garden.

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January 30 2009 | meditation and prayer and rosary and rosary meditation and rosary prayer | No Comments »

Rosary Meditation: The Third Glorious Mystery

This rosary meditation reflects on the Third Glorious Mystery — The Decent of the Holy Spirit.  The apostles, scared of suffering a similar fate as Jesus Christ, hid in a locked house.  Suddenly, a strong wind came through and tongues of fire appeared above the their heads.  Strengthened with the gift of the Holy Spirit they went out and made bold proclamations understood in any foreign language.

Many of us have heard this story before.  In fact, we often pray for the Holy Spirit to guide us through our daily lives.  We ask for just one good day where we don’t make any big mistakes at work.  We ask the Holy Spirit to be with us as we take that big exam.  We ask that we say all the right things to all the right people.  In short, we ask the Holy Spirit to make our lives easier and not screw up in any large ways.

But what gifts does the Holy Spirit really give us?  Is the Holy Spirit supposed to be a sort of spiritual cheat sheet to give us the answers to life’s big problems?  How many times do we ask God or the Holy Spirit for a “favor” with the only purpose to make our lives easier?  Like the Second Luminous Mystery, we have the tendency to only ask for God’s gifts when it will somehow help us out.  For example, how many times have you uttered a small prayer when buying a lottery ticket?  Like a little child we like to tell God that we’ll be good if He just helps us out this one time.  That, of course, is missing the entire point of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not come down to magically change the world to make our lives easier.  As much as we may wish it, the gifts do not “pave over” all of life’s obstacles so that we may continue living any way we wish.  The world in which the apostles lived did not magically change after they received the tongues of fire.  The people who wished them harm were still there.  Those who crucified Jesus did not vanish.  Nor where the apostles filled with any more knowledge than what they had learned from Jesus’ own words.  After all, did they not already have experience preaching the way of Christ when Jesus was still alive?

The real gift of the Holy Spirit is courage to do God’s will.  When it comes down to it, we all know the basics of right and wrong.  Very few of us deal with those moral edge cases on a daily basis if at all (my prayers go out to those that do).  We know the Ten Commandments and we have an understanding that Jesus’ way is one of love.  And yet, often we fail to act on that knowledge.  But there are those times when we do the right thing even when we know doing something different would be a lot easier.  I think those are the times when the Holy Spirit is driving us the most in our lives.  In short, if we resolve to live God’s will — to choose good over evil and right over wrong the Holy Spirit will give us that little push in the right direction.

I do not want to reduce the Holy Spirity to just one characteristic.  Instead, I think we should look at courage to do God’s will as one of the gifts we often overlook.  Let us pray and reflect that the Holy Spirit will give us the courage to do God’s will even if it makes our earthly lives more difficult.  The next time we think about taking an easy way out of a difficult situation, let us look to the Holy Spirit to lead is back to what is right and face whatever consequences come our way.  After all, God never gives us challenges we cannot handle, is more than generous in His gift of the Holy Spirit, and is infinitely forgiving when we fall short and sin.  Armed with knowledge of Jesus’ teachings, courage from the Holy Spirit, and God’s forgiveness, what do we really have to fear from this world?

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January 20 2009 | catholic and meditation and prayer and religion and rosary | 2 Comments »

Exercising Spiritually

I am going to take a short divergence from my rosary meditation to offer up some thoughts on WHY I think prayer is such an important part of life.  Thank you for reading my meditations on the mysteries of the rosary and there will certainly be more to come.  However, I know that there are many out there that ask, “why should I pray the rosary at all?”  While there are more reasons to pray it than you and I can possible know (and definitely more than what I can put into one article) I want to try to explain the importance of the rosary by comparing it to exercise.

First of all, why do we exercise physically?  It is hard, sometimes painful, takes time, and often we do not see any immediate, tangible results for our hard effort.  However, many of us exercise because we understand that it has many benefits:

• Keeps us in good health and decreases the chances of illness.
• Increases our strength and endurance for those times when we need it (like sports or work).
• Improves our physical appearance.
• Relieves stress.

Many of us, no matter how busy we are, make the time to exercise because we know that it is an important part of healthy living.  Not only is exercise important enough to schedule into our daily routines, but it is also important enough to spend our hard-earned money on gym memberships, equipment, clothing, and diet foods and supplements.

It is amazing how much time, money, and effort we put into physical exercise and how little we put into spiritual exercise.  Many of us somehow find an hour of our day to “hit the gym” but we cannot find one hour a week to go to church, 20 minutes to pray a rosary mystery or even 30 seconds to say a short prayer of thanks before a meal.  If the exercise analogy does not work for you, then replace that with work or a hobby (and go for a walk).  How much time do you spend browsing the Internet or playing video games compared to how much time you spend in prayer and mediation?

It is important to work out our spiritual muscles just as much as our physical ones.  When you build up your spiritual muscle you will be much more prepared when you are challenged.  Whether the challenge comes as a problem of faith or just handling day-to-day complications, you can better handle any challenge when you pray regularly.  Trying to handle difficult life challenges without a deep faith is like trying to run a marathon with only minimal training.  Sure, you may finish the race but it will be more difficult and painful than if you were adequately prepared.  But more likely, we tend to just give up when the going gets tough because we have not conditioned our heart, mind, and soul to work through life’s obstacles. 

Like exercise, you only need to put in small, but constant effort praying in order to feel results over time.  It takes 20 minutes to pray a mystery of the rosary which is shorter than the time it takes to watch a sitcom.  You most likely will not feel like a saint after a week of prayer (or a month or even longer) but it will start to change you over time.  It will change the way you see the world and your life and really puts into perspective what is really important.  I have a hard time explaining how praying the rosary has changed me.  Unlike exercise I cannot point to a certain metric that tracks my progress.  Unfortunately there is not a faith ranking I can improve.  But I know the rosary has affected me positively as seen in the way I interact with others and in just my overall outlook on life.  It has also brought me closer to my Catholic faith by making it a priority in my life.  Now my faith is every bit as important as my physical health, my finances, my family, and my career.

I could draw out the exercise/rosary analogy longer (since I love analogies) but hopefully you get the idea.  I hope these words might encourage some of you to give rosary meditation a try. 

And like many exercise programs advertised on television (like this one), I’m going to end with my prayer sales pitch:

Technorati Tags: catholic, meditation, prayer, rosary, spirituality

January 10 2009 | catholic and prayer and religion and rosary | 1 Comment »