About 15 years ago, I was invited, along with two Jesuit friends, on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Our hosts were members of the Order of Malta. I was extremely excited about the trip. I couldn’t believe my luck in being invited to see the place where Our Lady had appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
Once aboard the plane with my friends, one of the knights asked if I would lead the pilgrims in a recitation of the Rosary. I blushed out of embarrassment. For my entire Catholic life, no matter how hard I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to remember all the ins and outs of the Rosary: the mysteries, the placement of the various prayers and so on. I pray it, but in my own way. So I demurred. Why not ask someone else?
“Oh no, everyone wants you to do it!” said the knight.
For a second time I turned down the invitation. “I really think someone else who knows the Rosary better should do it. I don’t think people will like the way I do it. It’s pretty personal.”
No problem, I was assured. “Everyone wants you!” While I doubted that every single person had expressed that desire, I agreed.
A few minutes later, standing in the front of the crowded plane, I was handed a telephone receiver that would broadcast my voice over the cabin speakers. And since honesty is the best policy, I told them that I pray the Rosary in my own way and asked if anyone minded. Everyone smiled enthusiastically and gave me a thumbs-up. (In retrospect, I realized that they were probably expecting me to add prayers.)
“No problem, Father!” So, I started with the Sign of the Cross.
Then, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally…”
“Father!” someone said. “You’re saying the Nicene Creed, not the Apostles Creed!”
“Yes,” I said, “I use the Nicene Creed when I pray the Rosary. I don’t know the Apostles Creed by heart.” Murmurs filled the plane, and I could see people exchanging glances.
A few minutes later, someone shouted, “Father, you forgot to announce the first mystery.”
“Oh I’m sorry,” I said. “I have a hard time remembering the mysteries, so I usually don’t use them.”
“It’s Wednesday!” someone said, trying to help.
“That doesn’t help,” I said. At the end of the recitation, I took my seat next to my friends. “Well, that was…different.” said one. “You didn’t even say the Fatima prayer!”
Not only didn’t I know the Fatima prayer; I had, in fact, never even heard of it. (I’ve since been to Fatima, the great Marian shrine in Portugal, and have remedied this gap in my knowledge.)
During our time in Lourdes, about a dozen people good-naturedly bought me pamphlets entitled “How to Say the Rosary.” But on the way home they asked another Jesuit to lead the group in the prayer. He did it flawlessly.
I love the Rosary
I love the Rosary. I’ve prayed it almost daily ever since I was given my first set of beads for my first holy Communion way back in 1969. In fact, I still have that rosary: a delicate black set (boys were given black ones, girls white ones) that has lost a few beads over the years. (As a boy, I prayed it in bed at night and it would often fall out of the sheets in the morning onto the floor. One morning my mother ran over it with the vacuum cleaner, which explains the loss of beads.)
My first rosary (which came in a plastic case embossed with those words) resides on my dresser with about 50 other rosaries that I have collected over the decades. Praying with the ones that I have purchased from various pilgrimage spots and holy places—Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Cana, Lourdes, Fatima, Knock—helps me remember my time there and the graces I received. (As an aside, I’ve also become something of a connoisseur of rosaries. One thing I’ve learned: the string-and-wooden rosaries hold up much better than the metal versions, which tend to pull apart.)
But, as I’ve said, I’ve never been able to memorize all the ins and outs of the official way to pray the Rosary. And the most difficult thing for me to commit to memory are the mysteries. This is not for lack of trying, believe me. Obviously, I love all the Gospel narratives and events from the lives of Jesus and Mary that make up the mysteries, but I just can’t keep them straight. And I tend to say the Rosary while I’m walking somewhere, so I usually don’t have the “how to” pamphlets with me. For a while I thought that I was making progress, but when St. John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries in 2002, I thought, “Now I’ll never remember them!”
So how do I pray it? As you would guess, it’s pretty simple: the Nicene Creed for the crucifix, an Our Father for the big beads, a Glory Be for between the decades and a Hail Mary for the smaller beads. That’s how I prayed it as a boy and that’s how I pray it every day on the way to work at America Media. And at night. And whenever I’m in need of some spiritual help: flying, doctor’s visits, worrisome problems.
And it works. At least for me. I feel connected to God. I feel connected to Jesus. And I feel connected to Mary. I love the cadence of the prayers when they are said almost like a mantra, but I also like to slow down and meditate on the individual words of the prayers, slowly, as a Catholic sister taught me on one retreat. “Really think about each of those words,” she said. “Our Father.... What does that really mean to you?”
I suspect that there are other Catholics who may pray it in their own way, too. And, to my mind, any way you pray that leads you closer to God makes sense.
Our Lady of Suffolk County House of Correction
At least one person agrees with me. When I was in graduate theology studies, I worked in a prison in Boston. One day a huge, hulking inmate who must have been 6’4” and was built like a linebacker, told me he worried he was praying the Rosary the “wrong way.” (In fact, he called it the “rosemary.”) I gave him what I thought was a decent pastoral answer: “There is no wrong way to pray it.”
But then he said that it took him only one minute to pray the whole thing, when the other inmates told him it took them at least five minutes. I wondered how that was possible. So I asked him to show me how he did it.
Sure, he said.
“Our Father,” he said fingering his beads. “Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary....”
I grasped the problem.
“You know,” I said, “there’s a whole prayer that goes with those words.”
He looked down at me, quizzically.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...” I said, and finished the prayer.
“Oh man!” he said. “That will take the whole damn day! Can I pray it my own way?”
In response, I told him that the prayers are very beautiful and worth learning, but that whatever way you pray the Rosary, God will hear you.
