Life is fragile... handle with prayer

Amen to that one. Life is FRAGILE. The problem is - trying to remember to pray.

(Yes, another Lent journey blog entry.)

I woke up this morning struggling to think what I wanted to write about. You may not realize it, but I made a promise to myself a while back that I would write at least one journal entry a day. It is part of 1. Using my brain in the am. 2. Creative process 3. Because I like to connect with people using words.

While sitting at my laptop, drinking my doubleshot espresso and taking a few random photographs (another thing I do daily - trying to get this photography thing going..), I looked around my desk for inspiration. Nothing really happened yesterday to warrant a vent. Yass was happy, I was content, work went exceptionally well. It was an odd -GOOD day. So.. what about a topic. I looked at the books lined up to my left - the titles in this order are: My Prayer Journal; The Purpose Driven Life; Becoming a Vessel God Can Use (with prayer journal); New Rules of Marketing & PR; The Art of Cause Marketing; Robin Hood Marketing - and then a binder of family recipes. lol.

I look up - and there is a beautiful ceramic vase my friend Angela gave me for my wedding - it says "Life is Fragile... handle with prayer."

I guess with all of the prayer books, and that - I am inspired to write about prayer.

I definitely believe there is no right way or wrong way to pray. This is your time with your higher power. I witness the egyptian praying five times a day. He pulls out his prayer mat, and says a series of prayers with involve kneeling and completely laying your head on the ground. He does this "religiously" - every day. It is beautiful to see his devotion to Allah.

I found this picture of a muslim boy praying. This is a perfect example of what is expected of someone following the teachings of Islam.

As a Christian and a Catholic to be exact - I have many options.

1. I can recite pre written prayers

2. I can pray the rosary

3. I can pray on my own in my own words.

Each denomination has a different set of prayers they may use. Majority of the prayers came from the Catholic Church (since it is the first Christian church.)

My Daily Prayer -

O My God, I place my trust and confidence in You,who will reward the good and punish the wicked.

I believe in You and accept everything You have taught and revealed.

I believe that in one God there are three Divine Persons -God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

I believe that God the Son became Man without ceasing to be God.

He is Jesus Christ, my lord and my Saviour, the Redeemer of the human race.

He died on the Cross for my salvation and eternal happiness.

O my God, give me a strong faith.

Help me to believe with lively faith.

O my God, all-good and all-merciful, I sincerely hope to be saved.

Help me to do all that is necessary to gain eternal salvation.

I have committed many sins in my life, but now I turn away from them.

I am sorry, truly sorry for all of them,because I have offended You, my God, Who are all-good, all-perfect,all-holy and all-merciful.

I love you, O my God, with all my heart.

Please forgive me for having offended You.

I promise that, with Your help, I will never offend You again.

My God, have mercy on me.

There are so many more beautiful prayers. You can find them on the website - catholiconline.com. Follow that link and you will have hundreds of pre-written devotions and prayers.

I can even pray the rosary. I am sure many of my protestant friends are completely confused on this one. That is okay. I will attempt to explain it in simple terms.

The word rosary comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary.

If you were to ask what object is most emblematic of Catholics, people would probably say, "The rosary, of course."

We’re familiar with the images: the silently moving lips of the old woman fingering her beads; the oversized rosary hanging from the waist of the nun; more recently, the merely decorative rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. (which I have.. lol)

After Vatican II the rosary fell into relative disuse.

The same is true for Marian devotions as a whole.

But in recent years the rosary has made a comeback, and not just among Catholics.

Many Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the Bible.

Basically, the rosary is a devotion in honor of the Virgin Mary. It consists of a set number of specific prayers.

First are the introductory prayers: one Apostles’ Creed (Credo), one Our Father (the Pater Noster or the Lord’s Prayer), three Hail Mary’s (Ave’s), one Glory Be (Gloria Patri).

The Apostles’ Creed is so called not because it was composed by the apostles themselves, but because it expresses their teachings. The original form of the creed came into use around A.D. 125, and the present form dates from the 400s. It reads this way:

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day he arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

From thence he shall come 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."

Traditional Protestants are able to recite the Apostles’ Creed without qualms, meaning every line of it, though to some lines they must give meanings different from those given by Catholics, who composed the creed.

For instance, we refer to "the holy Catholic Church," meaning a particular, identifiable Church on earth.

Protestants typically re-interpret this to refer to an "invisible church" consisting of all "true believers" in Jesus.

Protestants, when they say the prayer, refer to the (lower-cased) "holy catholic church," using "catholic" merely in the sense of "universal," not implying any connection with the (upper-case) Catholic Church, which is based in Rome. (This is despite the fact that the term "Catholic" was already used to refer to a particular, visible Church by the second century and had already lost its broader meaning of "universal."

Despite these differences Protestants embrace the Apostles’ Creed without reluctance, seeing it as embodying basic Christian truths as they understand them.

The next prayer in the rosary—Our Father or the Pater Noster (from its opening words in Latin), also known as the Lord’s Prayer—is even more acceptable to Protestants because Jesus himself taught it to his disciples.

It is given in the Bible in two slightly different versions (Matt. 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4). The one given in Matthew is the one we say. (I won’t reproduce it here. All Christians should have it memorized.)

The next prayer in the rosary, and the prayer which is really at the center of the devotion, is the Hail Mary.

Since the Hail Mary is a prayer to Mary, many Protestants assume it’s unbiblical.

Quite the contrary, actually. Let’s look at it. The prayer begins, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee."

This is nothing other than the greeting the angel Gabriel gave Mary in Luke 1:28 (Confraternity Version).

The next part reads this way: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

This was exactly what Mary’s cousin Elizabeth said to her in Luke 1:42. The only thing that has been added to these two verses are the names "Jesus" and "Mary," to make clear who is being referred to.

So the first part of the Hail Mary is entirely biblical.

The second part of the Hail Mary is not taken straight from Scripture, but it is entirely biblical in the thoughts it expresses.

It reads: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Let’s look at the first words. Some Protestants do object to saying "Holy Mary" because they claim Mary was a sinner like the rest of us.

But Mary was a Christian (the first Christian, actually, the first to accept Jesus; cf. Luke 1:45), and the Bible describes Christians in general as holy.

In fact, they are called saints, which means "holy ones" (Eph. 1:1, Phil. 1:1, Col. 1:2).

Furthermore, as the mother of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Mary was certainly a very holy woman.

Some Protestants object to the title "Mother of God," but suffice it to say that the title doesn’t mean Mary is older than God; it means the person who was born of her was a divine person, not a human person. (Jesus is one person, the divine, but has two natures, the divine and the human; it is incorrect to say he is a human person.)

The denial that Mary had God in her womb is a heresy known as Nestorianism (which claims that Jesus was two persons, one divine and one human), which has been condemned since the early 400s and which the Reformers and Protestant Bible scholars have always rejected.

Another Mediator?The most problematic line for non-Catholics is usually the last: "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

Many non-Catholics think such a request denies the teaching of 1 Timothy 2:5: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

But in the preceding four verses (1 Tim. 2:1-4), Paul instructs Christians to pray for each other, meaning it cannot interfere with Christ’s mediatorship: "I urge that prayers, supplications, petitions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone. . . . This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior."

We know this exhortation to pray for others applies to the saints in heaven who, as Revelation 5:8 reveals, intercede for us by offering our prayers to God: "The twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. "

The fourth prayer found in the rosary is the Glory Be, sometimes called the Gloria or Gloria Patri.

The last two names are taken from the opening words of the Latin version of the prayer, which in English reads: "Glory be 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."

The Gloria is a brief hymn of praise in which all Christians can join. It has been used since the fourth century (though its present form is from the seventh) and traditionally has been recited at the end of each Psalm in the Divine Office.

Between the introductory prayers and the concluding prayer is the meat of the rosary: the decades.

Each decade—there are fifteen in a full rosary (which takes about forty-five minutes to say)—is composed of ten Hail Marys.

Each decade is bracketed between an Our Father and a Glory Be, so each decade actually has twelve prayers.

Each decade is devoted to a mystery regarding the life of Jesus or his mother.

Here the word mystery refers to a truth of the faith, not to something incomprehensible, as in the line, "It’s a mystery to me!"

The fifteen mysteries are divided into three groups of five: the Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious. When people speak of "saying the rosary" they usually mean saying any set of five (which takes about fifteen minutes) rather than the recitation of all fifteen mysteries. Let’s look at the mysteries.

First we must understand that they are meditations. When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary, they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade.

If they merely recite the prayers, whether vocally or silently, they’re missing the essence of the rosary. It isn’t just a recitation of prayers, but a meditation on the grace of God.

Critics, not knowing about the meditation part, imagine the rosary must be boring, uselessly repetitious, meaningless, and their criticism carries weight if you reduce the rosary to a formula.

Christ forbade meaningless repetition (Matt. 6:7), but the Bible itself prescribes some prayers that involve repetition.

Look at Psalms 136, which is a litany (a prayer with a recurring refrain) meant to be sung in the Jewish Temple. In the psalm the refrain is "His mercy endures forever." Sometimes in Psalms 136 the refrain starts before a sentence is finished, meaning it is more repetitious than the rosary, though this prayer was written directly under the inspiration of God.

It is the meditation on the mysteries that gives the rosary its staying power.

The Joyful Mysteries are these: the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), the Visitation (Luke 1:40-56), the Nativity (Luke 2:6-20), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-39), and the Finding of the child Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51).

Then come the Sorrowful Mysteries: the Agony in the Garden (Matt. 26:36-46), the Scourging (Matt. 27:26), the Crowning with Thorns (Matt. 27:29), the Carrying of the Cross (John 19:17), and the Crucifixion (Luke 23:33-46).

The final Mysteries are the Glorious: the Resurrection (Luke 24:1-12), the Ascension (Luke 24:50-51), the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4), the Assumption of Mary into heaven (Rev. 12), and her Coronation (cf. Rev. 12:1).

With the exception of the last two, each mystery is explicitly scriptural. True, the Assumption and Coronation of Mary are not explicitly stated in the Bible, but they are not contrary to it, so there is no reason to reject them out of hand. Given the scriptural basis of most of the mysteries, it’s little wonder that many Protestants, once they understand the meditations that are the essence of the rosary, happily take it up as a devotion.

I’ve looked at the prayers found in the rosary and the mysteries around which it is formed. Now let’s see how it was formed historically.

It’s commonly said that St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans), instituted the rosary. Not so. Certain parts of the rosary predated Dominic; others arose only after his death.

Centuries before Dominic, monks had begun to recite all 150 psalms on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, known as the conversi, should have some form of prayer of their own. They were distinct from the choir monks, and a chief distinction was that they were illiterate. Since they couldn’t read the psalms, they couldn’t recite them with the monks. They needed an easily remembered prayer.

The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, and, depending on circumstances, it was said either fifty or a hundred times.

These conversi used rosaries to keep count, and the rosaries were known then as Paternosters ("Our Fathers").

In England there arose a craftsmen’s guild of some importance, the members of which made these rosaries. In London you can find a street, named Paternoster Row, which preserves the memory of the area where these craftsmen worked. The rosaries that originally were used to count Our Fathers came to be used, during the twelfth century, to count Hail Marys—or, more properly, the first half of what we now call the Hail Mary. (The second half was added some time later.)

When it comes to personal prayer... the sky is the limit. I pray when I am sad, I pray when I am mad, I pray when scared, hurt, happy, and peaceful. I pray for friends, family, coworkers, enemies.

If you are agnostic or an atheist. If you simply believe something completely different - then you probably understand meditation, or other ceremonial activities that give you that feeling of connection. Perhaps you jog in the morning alone, and find peace in that.

I think that is all it is. A deep connection. I will continue to find new ways to pray - and to be open and honest in all of my prayer. ;-)