About the Rosary
From: Chuck Darling
April 25, 2025
About the Rosary
The rosary you see belonged to my Grampa Ronald.
If you click the image, Jim Carrey explains his rosary connection.
Raised a Catholic, my earliest pondering of Christian spirituality came from seeing old
people praying the rosary in church, before and after Mass.
They were doing it by themselves, no one
was leading them.. they seemed so serious !
When I made my first Communion, perhaps in the 3rd grade, eight years old, Holy Name of Jesus church gave each of us a missal,
with a vinyl cover that had a rosary in a snap pocket in the back.
I was excited... I had a rosary !
Like those serious Catholic parishoners
that I had admired in younger years...
I asked my mother how to pray it, and
she knew the basics, the beads were
Hail Marys, and the big ones were Our Fathers... but nothing else.
She explained:
I used to pray it when your Father was
sick, but when he died, I never prayed it again ....
That didn't sound right to me, and so
I continued to ask about it.
Go ask Nana... she should be able to tell you.
Nana was a Catholic, but also a Spiritualist.
She told me:
If Pa was still here, (Grampa died in '58 or so)
He could tell you...
He used to WEAR THEM OUT !!!
Years later, as an adult,
I found Grampa Ronald's rosary in a
table drawer at our Cottage.
It was broken, but had been
repaired twice, once with wire, and once with
heavy black fishing line.
I remember when I was an altar boy
at St. Mary's Church in East Arcade.
One Sunday, as I was serving Mass,
I felt a stabbing pain between my toes
every time I would kneel or stand up.
I waited until after Mass to pull off my shoe,
and I found a sewing needle stuck through my sock.
That's what it was ! I said...
I thought it was a pine needle.
(Grampa had planted pine trees between
the lawn and the upper field of the one room schoolhouse he bought as a spiritual retreat, and family vacation spot.)
The priest looked at me puzzled.
Why didn't you take it out earlier ?
he asked.
I couldn't leave the altar during Mass !
(The priests can't leave either. Even when my
baby sister was choking on a piece of orange hard candy that my mother had given her to quiet her down. She was saved by a farmer who picked her up, and held her upside down . The candy fell out when he
untied her bonnet. The priest had just stood
there on the altar, helpless to leave.)
The priest asked me if I had a devotion to Mary...
I asked him what he meant by that...
Do you say any special prayers, or pray the rosary ? He asked.
No, I admitted, only an occasional Hail Mary
with my nightly prayers.
You'll NEED. IT ! he said firmly.
I was an Altar boy in the Summer,
and as a Teenager I began to play and sing with Folk Music Groups at Mass.
Every Sunday, and holiday.
St. Gerard's was a Charismatic Catholic Church in the '70s ...
but there was no emphasis on Mary,
Even though the church had a full sized
Marble Pieta on the right side altar.
It wasn't until I read that Pope John Paul II's
favorite personal prayer was the rosary,
that I began to research it at the
Buffalo Public Library.
The Rosary was given to St. Dominic,
by an appearance of Mary.
This was during the Dark Ages, before the
printing press.
Few people could read,
and no one. had Bibles.
There were major heresies at the time,
the Arhenian, and the Albagentian.
One said that Jesus was only a man,
and not God.
The other said that Jesus was never a man,
he was always God, and so he only appeared
to suffer when he was crucified.
The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus is fully man, and fully God.
Mary explained how to pray the Rosary
to St. Dominic, and to teach the faithful to pray it, to practice their faith daily.
The rosary isn't "praying to Mary"
Only God can answer prayer.
The rosary is a method of remembering
and meditating on the events in the life of Jesus.
It begins with an Our Father, and the Apostle's Creed, then progresses
around the beads.
The beads are in groups of ten.
At the begining of the group, an Our Father
is said.
Then, during the ten hail Mary beads,
you focus on one of the Mysteries.
These are in 3 groups, each holding five Mysteries.
.
The Joyful Mysteries
The Annunciation
The Visitation
The birth of Jesus
The Circumcision of Jesus
Finding the child Jesus in the Temple,.on the third day
The Sorrowful Mysteries
Gethsemane
Jesus is Scourged and condemned
The crown of thorns
Carrying the cross alone
Dying on the cross
The Glorious Mysteries
The Resurrection
The Assension
Pentacost
The Assumption of Mary
Crowning Mary as Queen of the Saints and Angels.
The prayer concludes with a Hail Holy Queen
Glory Be's are said after each mystery,
I discovered that kittens either look at the ceiling in awe, or bury their head in fear,
when this prayer is silently said.
I began building rosaries.
Large wooden ones, and small
transparent blue ones with square maple
decade beads I gave the to my kids friends at St. Rose of Lima School, if they noticed them.
I then began looking into the
Apparitions of Mary,
(she appeared to every saint)
In the 20th Century, she appeared at
Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, to three cousins
who were tending sheep on a hill at
Cova da Ira, Portugal.
In the 1980's, during the Bosnian War,
she appeared to six teenagers, who were visiting their Grandparents at Medjugorje.
The town Medugorge got its name
because it is in a valley between two mountains.
The people are poor grape and chicken farmers.
The church in the little town is quite large,
because one of the popes had a vision
that a church should be built there.
In both Fatima and Medjugorje, the
Government was atheistic.
Like Los Angeles...
They didn't like the stories they heard
about Mary's appearances, and tried their
worst to put a stop to it.
At Fatima, they threatened to boil the children in oil, in individual interrogations,
if they didn't recant their statements.
They stood by their tales.
At Medjugorje, the mountain where Mary was appearing was chained off by the government.
Mary began appearing to the teenagers
in the church.
The teenagers could see and touch her,
no one else could.
After the daily 5:20 pm visitation,
the visionaries would explain to the people
what had happened.
Mary advises them:
Do whatever my Son tells you.
She took them to visit Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.
She asked them to pray for the souls in Purgatory, because they cannot help themselves.
They are only released into Heaven
when the Father allows it.
(Forrest Gump)
My daughter had a nasty possession event
when I prayed the rosary aloud in the car,
on the way to their school's swimming practice.
She wouldn't come out of it until I splashed Holy Water in her face.
Then she was fine.
She eventually became Valedictorian
of Sacred Heart Academy in Buffalo.
She got a scholarship to Georgetown.
My wife refused the Rosary,
Then she divorced me,
told the kids I was crazy,
and not to talk to me,
then she sold our house...
and married someone else.
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