I don’t know if it is an effect of the Montfortian consecration prep or not, but I seem to be drawn more strongly to the Rosary these days.
The Rosary has never captivated me. “To each their own,” I would say, “the Rosary is nice, but it’s the Divine Office I love.” I prayed the Rosary once in a while, and when I did, I truly got something out of it, every time. I was always glad afterwards. But I would never have said that I loved it, or that it had changed my life, the way that some people do. And I never looked forward to it, or felt that it fed me.
Lately it seems different. I don’t pick up the beads every day, but I find myself wanting to at odd moments (sometimes when there isn’t time). I got to Mass early this morning and borrowed my daughter’s clunky blue plastic rosary to use while we waited. Most of the time I can never get five decades in before Mass, even if we arrive quite early, because of squirrelly kids. Today it happened that Mark had the baby and the five- and seven-year-olds were interested in their books, and so I prayed all five decades, finishing the Salve Regina as the processional hymn started up.
Do you find that you begin each mystery thinking about it the same way every time? I do. The Ascension, for me, begins always by meditating on the Scripture verse, “This Jesus who is taken up from heaven shall return in the same way you have seen him go.” (paraphrasing from memory). And, for another example, the mystery of finding Jesus in the temple begins with a meditation on the idea I have that Mary must have thought the twelve-year-old was with Joseph and the men, and Joseph must have thought he was with Mary and the women and children.
Even though I always begin the same way, the meditations can take me in very different directions once I start. That is some thing that I find pretty cool about it. I keep expecting to run out of new (to me) thoughts about them, but I almost never do. I mean, not for all five mysteries each time do I think a new thought, but almost every time there is something new there.
Today, on the Ascension, I thought that maybe the “in the same way that you have seen him go” mainly means “don’t expect him to come the way he came the first time, born again as a helpless baby.” And that this maybe is connected to the identity of Mary as mother of God, because the flesh she gave him is sufficient for eternity. But another time, I found myself wondering why this particular event was marked by angels, and not others.
The last time I thought about the finding of Jesus in the temple, I wondered if the doctrine of her sinlessness meant that losing Jesus must have been Joseph’s fault, or if they could both have made honest mistakes. But another time I thought about how it will not be long before I have a twelve-year-old, and how that is an age when many parents fear they are “losing” their children, and what a comfort the story could be to such parents.
Do you start each mystery the same way? What strange places have they taken you?
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