Comments on: How did you get started with the Rosary? CHNetwork Community Question https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/ A network of inquirers, converts, and reverts to the Catholic Church, as well as life-long Catholics, all on a journey of continual conversion to Jesus Christ. Sat, 07 Oct 2017 00:06:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 By: lorraine shelstad https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/#comment-29544 Sat, 07 Oct 2017 00:06:00 +0000 https://chnetwork.org/?p=47867#comment-29544 I had just returned from fourteen years of missionary work in Thailand with an evangelical organization and was studying at university. A Catholic in my classes, invited me to a Rosary Group that he and a student from Malaysia had just started. The Rosary was new to me but I soon learned to pray it. I grew to love the group of young people (all younger than I was) and their acceptance of me. I didn’t feel that it was wrong to pray the Rosary but it took some time for me to learn that Mary always leads us to Jesus. After a year, I began RCIA and came into full communion with the Catholic Church in 1991.
Lorraine Shelstad, author of “Betel Nut In My Roses’

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By: E-Truth https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/#comment-29540 Wed, 04 Oct 2017 20:49:00 +0000 https://chnetwork.org/?p=47867#comment-29540 When I was Muslim, we had a practice of prayer called dhikr, wherein one repeats and meditates on the 99 Most Beautiful Names/Attributes of God, using a string of beads that resembles something of an Eastern Orthodox/Catholic chotki (prayer rope) – it had beads and sometimes a tassel.

When I left Islam for Protestantism, the practice of rote/repetitive prayers was largely discouraged; instead, I strove to pray spontaneously, with anything else being thought of as “dead,” “vain repetitions,” etc.

By God’s grace, I was led *back* to the fullness of the Christian life – I was baptized Catholic as a baby – and it wasn’t long before I developed what seemed to be a very simultaneously natural and supernatural desire to draw closer to the Holy Trinity through my Blessed Mother. A good friend taught me how to pray it, and I followed along with audio and video helps.

I’m not very good at being consistent, but I can truly say that by grace, I have been praying the Rosary practically every single day since 2015, sometimes multiple times a day. I have seen miracles through the intercession of Mary in the life of a dear friend, who left communion with Rome, and is now returning with his whole family!

Never doubt the power of Mary! Whatever she has, she has from, in, with, and through our God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!

Dustin Quick aka E-Truth

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By: Eric Sammons https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/#comment-29524 Tue, 03 Oct 2017 13:45:00 +0000 https://chnetwork.org/?p=47867#comment-29524 In college, I was an Evangelical Protestant with a Catholic roommate. Through a lot of arguing and debates, I had intellectually accepted much of Catholicism, but had no desire to convert.

Then one Sunday, I decided to pray the Rosary each day for a week, “to see what happens.” So I grabbed one of my roommate’s cheap plastic rosaries he kept around, along with a “How to Pray the Rosary” booklet he conspicuously kept out on his desk. I pray the Rosary on Sunday, on Monday, on Tuesday…and then decided to convert to Catholicism!

I tell my roommate that he had three years of trying to convert me without success, but it only took Our Blessed Mother three days!

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By: Danny Collier https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/#comment-29522 Tue, 03 Oct 2017 02:09:00 +0000 https://chnetwork.org/?p=47867#comment-29522 I was received into the Catholic Church on September 10, 2017. Spending most of my life in Baptist then Presbyterian churches, authority was one of the keys the Lord used to open my eyes. Once I saw the truth of the Church, even before my Confirmation, I dove in headlong. That included learning to pray the Rosary. Since August 21, 2017, I have been praying it daily.

It is nothing like I would have imagined.  There is no burden or drudgery or mindless repetition.  I have found it to be refreshing and intense and insightful.  I have my ordinary prayers, and then incorporate or fold them into the petitions and meditations of the Rosary.  

I am not inclined to stop. As a deep-rooted former Protestant, I can say there is no “Mary worship” in it at all.  I recall many, many years ago checking out the Church, then turning back because of some Marian difficulty. It is all quite amazing. Now, coming to the Mother of my Lord, I find that I have drawn nearer to Him. Jesus, whom I have known as so real for so long, has become more real, more present, more beautiful.

The Lord used authority to lead me into the Church. There was so much good evidence. Then, diving right in, the Rosary became more proof, but in a personal way. This is evidence one could never know by merely looking in through the windows, so to speak.

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By: John Sposato https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/#comment-29521 Mon, 02 Oct 2017 23:05:00 +0000 https://chnetwork.org/?p=47867#comment-29521 The incident that turned things around for me was re-encountering a narrative of one of the Blessed Mother’s apparitions — it might have been Fatima, but I don’t recall — that put her request to pray the Rosary in a way that spoke to my heart. I suddenly realized that my heavenly Mother was directly asking me and all of us to pray this prayer, and I wondered to myself, “How do I turn down a request from my mother?

The answer that came back to me was short and simple: I can’t.

As a cradle Catholic, I also knew that devotion to Mary is always directed ultimately toward Jesus. Mary’s “job,” if you will, is to lead all her children — you and me — to a more intimate relationship with her son, Jesus. I began to understand that Mary’s request to pray the Rosary would draw me to her, and she in turn would point me to her divine Son. The mysteries that I would contemplate were sort of a repeating lesson on Scripture and on keys incidents in the life of my Redeemer. In short, this prayer is exactly what I needed if I wanted to grow in holiness and in knowledge of my Lord.

The discipline necessary to start saying the Rosay everyday didn’t happen overnight, and there are still days when I miss. But the second thing that helped me get started and has kept me largely faithful to this devotion was the realization that I don’t have to say the entire Rosary in one sitting. I am a person who is not good with repetition, so sitting through 50+ Hail Mary’s, a handful of Our Fathers, and assorted other prayers said over and over in one session was extraordinarily difficult for me to accept and to do. So, in the beginning I hesitated. But when I realized I could say a portion of the Rosary at various points throughout the day, the obstacle to praying it didn’t seem nearly so great. So I started saying it in “shifts.”

I also encountered some very strong Catholics who said the Rosary in the car. Some reported that it made them more gentle drivers, and that they often prayed for other drivers who irritated them rather than having the urge to roll down the window and yell. Having a half-hour commute to work each way gave me plenty of opportunity to get through several decades before I got home at the end of day. Typically, this left me with one or two decades, which I would try to finish at night, typically an hour or so before I went to bed.

Books and various websites gave me material on which to base my meditations as I prayed the various mysteries. This helped me to keep my mind focused on praying and not on the problems of that particular day, or reasons why my favorite team lost another baseball game, or what I was going to make for dinner that night. My mind still wandered, but I managed to keep it on point much more regularly when I had a “bullet list” of meditation material I could pull up from memory as I prayed in the car or wherever.

The old Nike slogan is helpful here. If you want to get serious about saying the Rosary, you have to make up your mind to “just do it.” If you’re not up to an entire Rosary, get in the habit of saying one or two decades each day. As you warm-up to the beauty of this prayer, you might begin to discover that you want to say more decades or even the complete Rosary.

My advice: Just go for it and do it. Do it now. The graces waiting for you are too good to pass up.

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By: sharon w https://chnetwork.org/2017/10/02/get-started-rosary-chnetwork-community-question/#comment-29520 Mon, 02 Oct 2017 18:45:00 +0000 https://chnetwork.org/?p=47867#comment-29520 For years I was an avid Catholic reader: Nouwen, Merton, etc., and although I was Protestant, I spent many days at a Catholic retreat center in silence, solitude, and prayer. Eventually, there developed a sincere desire to become Catholic. For my birthday one year, I received a Rosary from a Catholic neighbor who knew of my interest in the Catholic church.

I looked up instructions online on how to use it. I also watched Mother Angelica’s broadcast on EWTN and prayed along with her and the sisters. Even though I learned “how” I couldn’t really understand “why” and felt very uncomfortable doing it. I was Protestant and it was very Catholic!

Finally, after years of indecision, I was confirmed on my 69th birthday. After becoming Catholic, I sincerely wanted to do Catholic things, so I took up my beads and began. At first I got kind of bored and sleepy. Eventually, as it became more natural, I began to add an intention to center on. While doing so, Our Lady has given me mental pictures which I cherish and call to mind when I need encouragement. For example, one day as I was praying for my grandson who has wandered from the church and lost his faith, I asked her to bring him home. I began to picture him standing next to her with her left arm around him. It was so clearly visible in my mind’s eye that all I could do was express praise and thanksgiving. Then suddenly, without any effort on my part, Jesus moved into the picture and she put her right arm around Him. There she stood holding my grandson on one side and Jesus on the other. She said to me, “Your grandson will be reunited with my Son.” Oh, the comfort and encouragement this gave me. Now every time I see my grandson, or even think of him, that mental image comes to me and I can only smile because I know, in my “knower,” that it will be. I could give many more examples, but let it suffice to say that I have received many graces from praying the Rosary and it is a very sweet, special devotion.

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