16 May, 2008...1:55 pm
Holy Father and rosary
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The picture combines two favorites: the Holy Father and the Rosary.
BTW: I lost my favorite rosary a couple of weeks ago. It must have happened when I pulled my car keys out of my pocket. It was broken (favorite past-time during Mass was fixing it!) and old - a lot like me - but it was my constant companion. I have picked another one from the rosary box but it’s never quite the same.
9 Comments
16 May, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Lovely picture! Thanks for sharing. :-)
17 May, 2008 at 12:19 am
I have given up on having a favorite rosary and now I simply wear one around my neck under my shirt that is a knotted cord that a truly kind and generous reader made for me. I never lose it and I cannot break it.
17 May, 2008 at 3:31 am
A fine photo.
The rosary’s a fallback prayer for me if I’m poorly or too tired or distracted to properly pray a form of the office. All can, some should, none must.
In the Eastern rites it doesn’t belong in church (I know ASimpleSinner doesn’t exactly agree) but at home prayer is prayer.
My favourite beads are a handsomely designed little but masculine-looking set with silver-coloured metal, tiny black coco beads and a Host-and-chalice design for the pendant, obviously intended as a little boy’s First Communion gift. Perfect for carrying in my pocket, using while driving or lying in bed. Got it new at a Slovak-American church’s jumble sale only for a donation.
Wearing a rosary as a necklace is like naming someone Jesús (heh-SOOS), a form of devotion almost unique to some Hispanic cultures that’s sometimes mistaken for irreverence (for example Madonna in her rosary-wearing phase) by outsiders.
17 May, 2008 at 5:03 am
“In the Eastern rites it doesn’t belong in church (I know ASimpleSinner doesn’t exactly agree) but at home prayer is prayer.”
I don’t know why you think that - I have never advocated pre-Liturgy rosary. That being said, if some true enthusiasts wanted to gather at 8:10 to recite it before Divine Praises, I would have trouble telling them not to pray that way. If they are really intent on rising at 6am on Sunday to be to church - which is a 30 min+ drive for most of them! - than I think I would think twice about stifling their desire to gather so early to say prayers. Picking battles is not only wise, but useful - that is one that, if it ever actually came up, I would be remiss to fight, even if I don’t promote it myself.
Maybe a pastor would feel it wise on the grounds that some others might find it disruptive to their preparation… That being said, the church is empty that far in advance of the begining of the Matins we celebrate before DL…
As to the wearing around the neck… That is something I picked up from the stories my grandmother told me of a priest from the African missions who gave a mission at her parish decades ago. At the end he passed out the simplest twine rosaries that were commonly used by the souls with whom he worked in sub-saharan Africa who, usually not wearing garb with pockets, would keep the rosary around their neck like a necklace. I wear mine in this fashion underneath my t-shirt, next to my skin for the simple fact it means that it is always on me and I do not lose it. I have never worn and probably never would wear one like jewelry. I liken it to being similar to wearing chotki on one’s wrist.
17 May, 2008 at 7:14 am
That being said, if some true enthusiasts wanted to gather at 8:10 to recite it before Divine Praises, I would have trouble telling them not to pray that way. If they are really intent on rising at 6am on Sunday to be to church - which is a 30 min+ drive for most of them! - than I think I would think twice about stifling their desire to gather so early to say prayers.
That’s why.
17 May, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Of all the battles to pick and choose you would be bothered by the laity coming almost two hours before DL and an hour before matins to say these prayers as a private group?
18 May, 2008 at 1:13 am
The answer of course is to be pastoral and part of that is not only being tactful but to teach.
‘I’d like half a pound of lean ground beef, please.’
‘Er, this is a car-repair shop.’
‘You’re so mean!’
Saying the rosary in an Eastern church is the same kind of thing.
Rite controls what goes on in church: the arrangement of the furniture, the prayers said, the saints commemorated. (Which is not necesarily a negative comment on other people’s saints.)
A Byzantine Rite place offers the Liturgy, the hours, pannichidi, akathists and molebny. Teach and do those things.
Besides that Father’s answer should be: ‘Like all-natural meat with only 8 per cent fat the rosary is wonderful. Pray it in at home, even in groups there if you like.
‘But not here.’
18 May, 2008 at 6:46 am
The World According To Fogey
All well and good and well and rightly reasoned… But ultimately somewhat arbitrary and/or proprietary to your personal vision of the ecclesial lay of land and “how things out to do.”
Simpler still - works well on paper… (or in pixels)…
In this hypothetical situation (which is a far cry from the realities I have dealt with, my fellow hunkies and I usually piously saunter in a minute or two after the royal doors are opened), I am not able to bring myself to say that these folks who make an effort and want to pray that way well before the liturgican prayers begin in an empty church should be turned away or discouraged. In a house of prayer, I can’t quite subscribe to your mechanic-shop analogy as analagous.
Of course as mentioned, this is strictly an “angels on the head of a pin” question in my mind and in my experience… It isn’t happening at any of the three parishes I called home and they have altogether all shed their institutionalized latinizations. As a matter of fact, where I am now represents one of the BCC parishes that is “outside the homeland” (ie. the Pyrohy Belt from Pittsburgh to Cleveland) and established by second & third gen BCC that migrated to this corner of the magnificent state of Ohio in the late 60s early 70s. When we were built, it was by a forward thinking priest who did things by the book - unless you were examining every single icon to notice the smallest icon of Saint Francis on the back wall which is part of a set of 3 dozen (the rest Biblical and Eastern) just to see the place you would not know it was not OCA, ROCOR or anotherSlavic Orthodox Jurisdiction. Though even Our Seraphic Father Among the Saints might not be the biggest giveaway.
The same was true of my parish back home which was a suburban re-rebuild after “our good people” left “Hunky Hill” - the priest who built it was a stickler for details. The Infant of Prague got donated to the Latin Rite parish in the old neighborhood and the old church was sold to the Black Baptist congregation which kept all the stained-glass windows… Perhaps the only Baptist church in America with stainglass windows of Our Lady of Lourdes and Saint Stephen of Hungary. I am guessing it is at least.
But as vostochnik as my parochial situations have been, and as true to native tradition as we tried to be, I am still loathe to get on board with a world-view that goes to the opposite end of the old Ruthenian “First communion and monsignori spectrum which draws lines in the sand and makes us into a museum. This Greek Catholic will leave that to the self-appointed Orthodox police in the various and sundry jurisdictions that are shaking their head and “tsk-tsking” those pesky pews and stained glass windows.
In other words if some especially pious folks realized the doors were unlocked every sunday by 8am (some probably aren’t even aware that there is an 8am on weekends!) and came to quietly, without disturbing, disrupting or displacing anyone or anything, a rosary for 15 minutes by themselves, on their own, with no institutional encouragement… I just don’t have it in me to poo-poo the idea on idealogical grounds of how they are supposed to think now.
Maybe it was my Latin-rite parochial school upbringing with too many pants-suit wearing short haired religous sisters going out of their way to make sure we “thought correctly” about “how we think now”.
18 May, 2008 at 7:10 am
Post-post correction: At my parish we do have another non-Byzantine accoutrament now that I think about it… down the back wall from Saint Francis we have a lovely Coptic icon gifted to one of our former priests by Coptic Pope Shenouda III. Not very Byzantine, I grant, but we are fiercely proud of it!
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