It’s Gaudete-Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. Even penitential times have their joyful highlights – the birth of Our Savior is nigh! Here and also here you can read up a little bit on Gaudete-Sunday, and here on the Gaudete Christmas carol you will find below in an a-capella version I particularly enjoy.
Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus Ex Maria virgine, gaudete!
The month of October is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. During her last apparition at Fatima on October 13, 1917, Mary specifically referred to herself as “The Lady of the Rosary.” If you are not in the habit of praying the Rosary but have considered learning or starting again to pray it, this is the perfect month to do so.
Our Lady of the Rosary
On October 7th, the RCC celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. According to tradition, Our Lady famously appeared to St. Dominic de Guzman and gave the prayers of the Holy Rosary (as we know them today) to assist him as a spiritual weapon in combating heresy and leading souls back to the one true Catholic faith. Since then, the Rosary has been an infallible source of grace and strength to those who pray it. At Fatima, for example, Our Lady instructed the three children she appeared to to learn how to read and write so that they could pray the Rosary and spread the devotion to it.
Saints who prayed the Rosary
If and when you pray the Rosary, you are in very good company, both today and throughout the ages. Here is a short, by no means comprehensive list of saints who prayed the Rosary.
St. Benedict XVI
St. Bernadette Soubirous
St. Anthony Mary Claret
St. Dominic
St. Josemaria Escriva
St. John Paul II (who aded the Five Luminous Mysteries)
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
St. Louis de Montfort (who happens to be a relative of ours)
St. Pio of Pietrelcina
St. Pius V
St. Pius X
St. Francis de Sales
Don’t know how to pray the Rosary?
There are many books on how to pray the rosay, and what to contemplate while praying the many Ave Marias. If you are just starting out, here are a few links that might help you:
Halfway between the birthday of Our Lady on September 8th and the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15th, I’d like to introduce the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady chaplet, and explain how to pray it. Since September is particularly dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, this is the perfect month to learn how to pray this chaplet. It commemorates the seven swords that pierced the heart of Our Lady as she suffered with her son.
How to pray the Chaplet
This chaplet is somewhat similar to the Rosary, although using Rosary beads for it can be a little confusing. The reason is that for this chaplet, you pray seven sets of seven Ave Marias, and the ten-plus-one beads of the usual Rosary or tenner doesn’t lend itself very well to the purpose. But what did the Lords gave us fingers for?
When you start the chaplet, make the sign of the cross and pray:
“Mary, who was conceived without sin and who suffered for us, pray for us.”
Then say the Sorrow you are meditation on, and pray seven Ave Marias. At the conclusion of each set of seven, pray:
“Holy Mother hear my prayer, and renew in my heart each wound of Jesus my Savior.”
Repreat this until you have meditated on all seven Sorrows.
What to Meditate On
In this chaplet, we remember each of the seven sorrows of Our Lady while praying the seven Aves mentioned above. These are:
The Prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34-35)
The Flight to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-21)
The Loss of Jesus for Three Days (Luke 2:41-50)
The Carrying of the Cross (John 19:17)
The Crucifixion of Jesus (John 19:18-30)
Taking Jesus Down from the Cross (John 19:39-40)
Placing Jesus in the Tomb (John 19:39-42)
How to Conclude the Chaplet
When you are done with the last Sorrow, pray this closing prayer: “O Mary, you truly became the Queen of all martyrs as these seven bitter swords of sorrow pierced your Immaculate Heart! By the merits of your tearful distress obtain for us and for all sinners the graces of perfect contrition and conversion. Help us always, dear Mother, to imitate you by taking up our crosses and following Jesus with limitless love and generosity. Amen.”
Short Version
If you are looking for a short prayer to pray this month in particular, or to add to your usual Rosary, the opening prayer, said three times, may serve, so I will repeat it here once more:
“Mary, who was conceived without sin and who suffered for us, pray for us.”
We pray the Our Father often, maybe so often that we forget what we are praying for particularly. Seven petitions make up this prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples, seven petitions that we pray to this day. All of them ask God the Father to do something for us, naturally. Many of them require our active participation, some more expressly so than others. And the one petition that sums up this latter part, our part beautifully is: “Thy will be done.”
Thy Will Be Done
Seven Petitions
The seven petitions are:
Hallowed be Thy Name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
Give us this day our daily [epiousion] bread;
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
All of these, one can argue, are solely gifts from God. All of these, one can also argue, require a degree of choice on our part. The very fact that we are asking these particular things simply because Our Lord taught us to ask for them, is already a choice. On the other hand, some of these seem quite out of our control, like deliverance from evil, bringing about the kingdom of God, or being given our ‘daily’ bread. Our main responsibility here is to prepare our heart for these, so it seems.
The Hardest Thing
But the hardest thing among the seven, and the one on which the other six hinge, is the third:
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Why is this so hard? It is so hard because in order for God’s will to be done on earth, we have to do what God wants. Not what we want, but what God wants. Therein lies the difficulty, and surely because it is so difficult, this is the one petition that we find reconfirmed by Our Lord during the Agony in the Garden, when he saw all that was going to happen to him in agonizing detail and prayed for the cup to pass Him by. “Thy will be done”, was the end of this petition, however. “Thy will be done, not mine.”
Jesus Gives the Example
So let us draw comfort from the example of Our Lord. “Thy will be done”, even if I am scared, and do not understand why. My understanding is not required. All I need to do is to ask for God’s will to be done, here on earth as well as in heaven, and let things happen the way God wants them to be, rather than be in the way with my own ideas and interpretations. No matter what happens: God knows why.
The Lord’s Prayer by James Tissot
How do I start aligning my will with God’s? How do I return to a life in accordance with God’s will? Contrition is the first step, and contemplative prayer might be a way past your own understanding and into a closer connection with the divine Will. Start today.
Contemplative prayer requires a certain humbling of the intellect. Our thoughts usually take up too much space in our head and often crowd out or drown the quiet voice of the Spirit. Therefore, contemplative prayer aims at creating an inner silence that allows us to listen.
But we all know how difficult it is to ‘think of nothing’. This is where repetition steps in. Repetitive prayer, rather than being vain (see Matthew 6:7), opens a door within that leads to a place where the intellect does not rule. Like the Rosary prayers or the well-known Jesus prayer (see below), it is the soul that turns to God in these repetitions: No new thought needs developed, no new words found. The intensity of our words is increased in contemplative repetitions, not their quantity. Indeed, repetitive prayer is particularly soul-opening when we pray in a language foreign to us because the intellect has no part in it.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Domine Jesu Christe, Filii Dei, miserere mei.
Thus, we do not need to empty our mind. Instead, we fill it with praise, petition, or adoration, in short, with prayer. We cannot think our way to God.
“In books we seek God; in prayer we find Him.” Padre Pio
But while we cannot think our way to God, neither can we feel our way to Him. He will not be limited to the extent of our understanding, and neither will He be limited to the capability of our emotions. Feeling ‘good’ during prayer has very little to do with the intensity or ‘success’ of our prayer, much like having found the ‘right words’ to phrase our worries or petitions has little impact on the quality of our prayer. It might help us think differently about a problem and therefore feel differently about it, too, but it takes no prayer to do that: The Stoics expostulated as much, and successfully so.
Contemplative prayer is not a self-help program, in fact, no prayer, vocal or otherwise, can sufficiently be described as such. Prayer turns our gaze away from ourselves. It looks to God, it addresses God, it listens to God.
“Contemplative prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” St. Teresa of Avila
Seven falls can represent various sets of seven, depending on the direction of your contemplation. Consider the following three examples of sets of seven.
The Seven Deadly Sins
The Seven Deadly Sins we contemplate so that we can shun them effectively. They are, alphabetically, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath.
The Seven Last Words
The Seven Last Words of Our Lord from the Cross are technically seven phrases. When we contemplate on them in their proper order, we get a glimpse of the progression of the salvation process, and deepen our understanding of Christ Crucified. Without Christ’s suffering, own sacrifices, penenances and mortification would not, could not be meritorious. The seven falls thus stand for Forgiveness, Salvation, Relationship, Abandonment, Distress, Triumph and Reunion:
Forgiveness: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. Salvation: Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. Relationship: Woman, behold thy son! and Behold thy mother! Abandonment: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Distress: I thirst. Triumph: It is finished. Reunion: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
The seven sorrows of Our Lady
The Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, a popular devotion especially during Lent, recall to our mind the seven swords that pierces the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate Heart. When we contemplate her sorrows, we align our suffering with hers along with that of Our Lord Jesus. The Seven Sorrows of Our Lady are often prayed alongside the Stations of the Cross, a devotion which was started by the Blessed Virgin herself.
First Sorrow: The Prophecy of Simeon during the Presentation in the Temple Second Sorrow: The Flight into Egypt Third Sorrow: The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem for Three Days Fourth Sorrow: Mary meeting Jesus on the Via Dolorosa, which we pray as the the Fourth Station of the Cross. It is not found in the Bible. Fifth Sorrow: The Crucifixion of Jesus on Mount Calvary Sixth Sorrow: Jesus’s Descent from the Cross Seventh Sorrow: The Burial of Jesus
New to praying the Rosary? Here are the basics you need to know to start. If you have rosary beads to pray with, fine. If not, fine too. God has given us ten fingers to count on!
Introduction
Generally, the Rosary consists of five groups of ten Hail Mary prayers (represented by ten beads evenly spaced from each other), interspersed with one Our Father prayer (represented by one set-apart bead). These groups, or decades, are called Mysteries and relate to stages in the life of Our Lord Jesus and His Blessed Mother. Traditionally, there are three groups of five Mysteries: The Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the Glorious Mysteries, relating respectively to Our Lord Jesus’ birth and youth, His passion and crucifixion, and His resurrexion and ascension. Saint John Paul II added another set of five Mysteries known as the Luminous Mysteries. They relate to incidents in the life of Our Lord Jesus as recorded in the New Testament.
How to Start Praying the Rosary
Naturally, the Rosary has an introduction that we pray before the Mysteries begin. Rosary beads usually have a cross or crucifix and five beads on the bottom (three evenly spaced, framed by two set-apart beads), which we use to pray the introduction as follows:
Make the Sign of the Cross, saying “In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”
Pray the Sanctus (Holy Holy Holy)
Pray the Apostles Creed holding the cross/crucifix.
Pray the Our Father holding a set-apart bead
Pray three times Hail Mary holding one of the evenly spaced beads after the other
On reaching the second set-apar bead, pray a Glory Be and an O My Jesus prayer (also known as the Fatima Prayer)
Then we use the round of beads to keep track of how many Hail Mary prayers we have prayed: Hold the first bead while praying the first Hail Mary, move on to the next while praying the second Hail Mary and so forth. If you have no rosary beads, use your fingers to keep track. After ten Hail Mary prayers we reach the set-apart bead, upon which we again pray a Glory Be and an O My Jesus prayer, then announce the next Mystery, pray an Our Father, and start into the next decade of Hail Mary Prayers. Thus we continue until we have made it around the Rosary.
Praying the Mysteries
These are the Mysteries we ponder while praying the Rosary:
The Joyful Mysteries
The Annunciation
The Visitation
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus
The Presentation in the Temple
Finding Our Lord Jesus in the Temple when He was Twelve
The Sorrowful Mysteries
The Agony in the Garden
The Scourging at the Pillar
The Crowning with Thorns
The Carrying of the Cross
The Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord Jesus
The Glorious Mysteries
The Resurrexion
The Ascension
The Coming of the Holy Spirit
The Assumption of Our Lady
The Crowning of Our Lady in Heaven
Good to Know
Many people pray one set of Mysteries per day. If so, the general association of Mysteries and weekdays is that
Mondays and Thursdays the Joyful Mysteries are prayed,
Tuesdays and Fridays the Sorrowful Mysteries, and
Wednesdays and Saturdays the Glorious Mysteries.
Sunday is reserved for the Glorious Mysteries.
During Advent, only the Joyful Mysteries are prayed, and
during Lent, only the Sorrowful Mysteries.
There are also many people who pray all three (or four) sets of Mysteries every day, especially after Our Lady encouraged the three children she appeared to in Fatima to pray the Rosary daily.
While praying each Mystery, we contemplate the situation alluded to in the Mystery, and the virtue this meditation can produce in us. Some people add a short description of the situation into the Hail Mary (following the Name of Jesus) in order to remind themselves which Mystery they are praying at the moment.
Here are collected all the prayers that you need to pray the Rosary in English, in the order in which you will need them.
Our Lady of the Rosary
Sanctus
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, descended into hell, rose again from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty, who will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Our Father
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hail Mary
Hail Mary, full of grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Glory Be
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
O My Jesus (Fatima Prayer)
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need of your mercy.
