20 February 2023 · 2023-02 newsletter
Recently my husband and I decided to attend the church which featured much in our children’s lives at school for celebrations, graduations and general school masses. We had heard the priest speak before and knew he had the capacity to lift our spirits.
What we didn’t know that evening was that not only would he lift our spirits but the voice of the young girl of 14 singing with her parents –one playing guitar and the other the piano lifted our spirits no end.
What has this got to do with the Rosary? Father in his homily that night had us smiling when he facetiously told the story of racing through the Rosary to ‘get it over and done with’ with little to no connection with the actual spiritual meaning of what one was praying.
This got me to thinking that I was a bit like what he was talking about not so much in the way I raced through praying the Rosary but in some ways ignored it as part of my spiritual daily order. So resolving to do something about this after doing my normal prayers I opened up ‘Heavenwards’ and started with the first station of the Joyful Mysteries ‘The Annunciation’. Having prayed the Our Father and read the Schoenstatt introductions my heart, for lack of a better way to describe it, ‘revolted’ against just sprouting the’ Hail Mary’s’ in rote style, as I have been accustomed.
I stopped for a while and reflected and it came to me that perhaps I would be far better off at this point praying ‘The Covenant of Love’ prayer 10 times over and really reflecting on it. So away I went and really had to concentrate on it because it wasn’t normal but ended up being really thought provoking.
I have resolved to do the whole of the four sets of Mysteries this way as a discipline and attention to detail. Am I being sacrilegious doing it this way? I don’t think so because Fr. Kentenich would say to me I’m sure:
“Dealing with life means dealing with tensions. Or: Where there is no tension, there is no life. Every person, community and plan of God involves the interaction of many different factors, motives and perspectives. For instance, all life has both a ‘conservative’ side that seeks to preserve itself just as it is, and a ‘progressive’ side that seeks to grow and change and become something greater.” (200 Questions p. 80).
Fr. Kentenich did not try to eliminate tensions but to bring them into creative interaction. He knew and cherished the way tensions can propel life forward in the play of God.
So I leave you with my last prayer from the 5th Joyful Mystery:
“We will remain still when God wants to form us as instruments for the redemption of the world” (Heavenwards p. 95).
Angela
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