Kick Communism Out,Show it the exit door.
Destroy it with the Rosary
And it shall be no more!
Kick Communism out
Show it the exit door.
Destroy it with the Rosary
And it shall be no more!
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A method of meditating on the Rosary
August 7, 2009 — brendakarenThis article outlines one particular method of saying the Rosary. It is not necessarily the best one; however it may be a valuable aid to some people. The Rosary consists of two parts. The first part; is the actual prayers; The Our Father, The Hail Mary, The Gloria, etc. The second part is meditation upon the mysteries of the Rosary. At the Catholic secondary school that I attended; once a month, all the teachers and students would recite the Rosary in the church before Mass. I do not recall even one class lesson being given to us on how to say the Rosary. My family also recited the Rosary during the Christmas season. When I married, I learned from my husband that you had to meditate on the mysteries while saying the prayers of the Rosary. This came as a great surprise to me. Actually it was more like a shock. I kept asking myself why didn’t the Catholic schools that I attended tell me about this. To be fair they did teach me the catechism.
The business of meditation while saying the prayers of the Rosary; conjured up visions of something like juggling balls in one hand and playing the piano with the other hand. It was hard for me to imagine how you could do both of them at the same time. I also looked upon the business of meditation as something for mystics who lived in caves in the desert. Meditation didn’t seem to be anything remotely connected with me.
After the initial shock wore off, I started to learn how to meditate on the mysteries, while saying the vocal prayers. The first stage of this process was the use of books which contained ten scriptural verses for each decade of the Rosary. My eyes slowly scanned each scriptural verse, while I said the vocal prayers (Hail Marys) etc. This method felt somewhat artificial and mechanical, but at least I was combining both the meditation and the prayers at the same time. When the scriptural verses were partly memorised, I did not use the books anymore. The “walking stick” was thrown away. The verses went through my mind, while saying the prayers vocally. Pictures from books, depicting the decades were also utilised. The next stage was that as well as scriptural verses going through my mind; the pictures that I had seen in the books were also visualised. I closed my eyes and literally could see these scenes as though they were in the room. These scenes filled up the whole area that I was viewing. All of this was in colour.
The vocal prayers receded into the background, like background music that is played softly, while you are eating dinner and talking in the restaurant. The meditation came to the forefront. As well as visualising scenes from the actual decades (such as the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary), for variety I added at the beginning of each decade, a visual image of either the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or the Divine Mercy and at the end of each decade an image of Mary as she appeared to Saint Catherine Laboure in the Miraculous Medal vision, which depicts Mary distributing graces, as rays coming from her hands. Studying the pictures on holy cards was useful in helping me to visualise these images.
By the time that this stage was reached it was a great deal easier for me to say Rosaries even when I was very tired. A good way to keep up your motivation to say the Rosary is to make a 54 day rosary novena for a special intention. It is amazing how this will keep you going when your motivation to say the Rosary is running on low.
The method described above also can be employed when saying other chaplets: such as The Little Chaplet of the Holy Infant Jesus and the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy. In the Infant Jesus Chaplet, you can visualise a picture of the Infant Jesus of Prague. In the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy you can mediate on the Divine Mercy picture and also visualise Saint Faustina having a vision of the angel who is about to carry out God’s just punishment on a particular part of the world, and the angel becoming helpless in carrying this out as Saint Faustina prayed the words of the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy. There are many other appropriate scenes which you can visualise while saying the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy.
Some benefits of meditating on the Rosary.
Meditation on the Rosary puts before our minds, the true purpose of our lives and also keeps us focused on where we hope to spend our eternity (heaven). It counteracts the blatant messages in the media, which seek to corrupt our behaviour and get us interested in things like, money making, pleasure seeking and many immoral practices. The thoughts in our minds will greatly influence the choices that we make in how we live our lives. Saying the Rosary will tilt the balance heavily to the side of making good moral choices. It is well known that people sometimes act out criminal activities, even murders and robberies that they have seen in movies. It is because these things occupy their minds, because they had been viewing them and thinking about them. On the other end of the scale, if your mind is filled with images from Rosary meditations: such as Mary going to visit her elderly relative Elizabeth to help her, you will be more inclined to practice the virtue of charity. If you like the method that has been offered of saying the Rosary try it. When you are familiar with the method modify it to your own special needs. It is like learning any other skill. First you learn the basics and then you adapt it as your ability develops. Meditation on the Rosary prevents it from being a mechanical repetition of vocal prayers. If you learnt the art of meditation on the Rosary, and then attempted to just say the prayers again, without meditation, you would find it a very dry and tedious exercise.
Meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary helps lift our minds out of the bog of everyday things that we see and experience, to things eternal that we cannot see. We are reminded that the here and now is not all that there is. Meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary stops our mind from focusing too much on the unimportant.
Rosary beads
Rosary beads help you to keep track of where you are up to in the Rosary and give a soothing feeling as you move the beads through your fingers. It is best to have one pair of Rosary beads for use at home and one pair to keep in your handbag or pocket. Seeing your Rosary beads will remind you to say the Rosary. If you do not have a pair of Rosary beads with you, remember that you have ten fingers to pray the Rosary with. There are occasions when a one-decade set of Rosary beads comes in handy. One decade Rosaries are sometimes made into rings and bracelets. (On my First Holy Communion day, I was given a bracelet made with pearls that had the beads for five decades. It has a small silver coloured crucifix. I don’t think that they are available anymore.) Remember to get a priest to bless your Rosary beads.
This article outlines one particular method of saying the Rosary. It is not necessarily the best one; however it may be a valuable aid to some people. The Rosary consists of two parts. The first part; is the actual prayers; The Our Father, The Hail Mary, The Gloria, etc. The second part is meditation upon the mysteries of the Rosary. At the Catholic secondary school that I attended; once a month, all the teachers and students would recite the Rosary in the church before Mass. I do not recall even one class lesson being given to us on how to say the Rosary. My family also recited the Rosary during the Christmas season. When I married, I learned from my husband that you had to meditate on the mysteries while saying the prayers of the Rosary. This came as a great surprise to me. Actually it was more like a shock. I kept asking myself why didn’t the Catholic schools that I attended tell me about this. To be fair they did teach me the catechism.
The business of meditation while saying the prayers of the Rosary; conjured up visions of something like juggling balls in one hand and playing the piano with the other hand. It was hard for me to imagine how you could do both of them at the same time. I also looked upon the business of meditation as something for mystics who lived in caves in the desert. Meditation didn’t seem to be anything remotely connected with me.
After the initial shock wore off, I started to learn how to meditate on the mysteries, while saying the vocal prayers. The first stage of this process was the use of books which contained ten scriptural verses for each decade of the Rosary. My eyes slowly scanned each scriptural verse, while I said the vocal prayers (Hail Marys) etc. This method felt somewhat artificial and mechanical, but at least I was combining both the meditation and the prayers at the same time. When the scriptural verses were partly memorised, I did not use the books anymore. The “walking stick” was thrown away. The verses went through my mind, while saying the prayers vocally. Pictures from books, depicting the decades were also utilised. The next stage was that as well as scriptural verses going through my mind; the pictures that I had seen in the books were also visualised. I closed my eyes and literally could see these scenes as though they were in the room. These scenes filled up the whole area that I was viewing. All of this was in colour.
The vocal prayers receded into the background, like background music that is played softly, while you are eating dinner and talking in the restaurant. The meditation came to the forefront. As well as visualising scenes from the actual decades (such as the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary), for variety I added at the beginning of each decade, a visual image of either the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or the Divine Mercy and at the end of each decade an image of Mary as she appeared to Saint Catherine Laboure in the Miraculous Medal vision, which depicts Mary distributing graces, as rays coming from her hands. Studying the pictures on holy cards was useful in helping me to visualise these images.
By the time that this stage was reached it was a great deal easier for me to say Rosaries even when I was very tired. A good way to keep up your motivation to say the Rosary is to make a 54 day rosary novena for a special intention. It is amazing how this will keep you going when your motivation to say the Rosary is running on low.
The method described above also can be employed when saying other chaplets: such as The Little Chaplet of the Holy Infant Jesus and the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy. In the Infant Jesus Chaplet, you can visualise a picture of the Infant Jesus of Prague. In the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy you can mediate on the Divine Mercy picture and also visualise Saint Faustina having a vision of the angel who is about to carry out God’s just punishment on a particular part of the world, and the angel becoming helpless in carrying this out as Saint Faustina prayed the words of the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy. There are many other appropriate scenes which you can visualise while saying the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy.
Some benefits of meditating on the Rosary.
Meditation on the Rosary puts before our minds, the true purpose of our lives and also keeps us focused on where we hope to spend our eternity (heaven). It counteracts the blatant messages in the media, which seek to corrupt our behaviour and get us interested in things like, money making, pleasure seeking and many immoral practices. The thoughts in our minds will greatly influence the choices that we make in how we live our lives. Saying the Rosary will tilt the balance heavily to the side of making good moral choices. It is well known that people sometimes act out criminal activities, even murders and robberies that they have seen in movies. It is because these things occupy their minds, because they had been viewing them and thinking about them. On the other end of the scale, if your mind is filled with images from Rosary meditations: such as Mary going to visit her elderly relative Elizabeth to help her, you will be more inclined to practice the virtue of charity. If you like the method that has been offered of saying the Rosary try it. When you are familiar with the method modify it to your own special needs. It is like learning any other skill. First you learn the basics and then you adapt it as your ability develops. Meditation on the Rosary prevents it from being a mechanical repetition of vocal prayers. If you learnt the art of meditation on the Rosary, and then attempted to just say the prayers again, without meditation, you would find it a very dry and tedious exercise.
Meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary helps lift our minds out of the bog of everyday things that we see and experience, to things eternal that we cannot see. We are reminded that the here and now is not all that there is. Meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary stops our mind from focusing too much on the unimportant.
Rosary beads
Rosary beads help you to keep track of where you are up to in the Rosary and give a soothing feeling as you move the beads through your fingers. It is best to have one pair of Rosary beads for use at home and one pair to keep in your handbag or pocket. Seeing your Rosary beads will remind you to say the Rosary. If you do not have a pair of Rosary beads with you, remember that you have ten fingers to pray the Rosary with. There are occasions when a one-decade set of Rosary beads comes in handy. One decade Rosaries are sometimes made into rings and bracelets. (On my First Holy Communion day, I was given a bracelet made with pearls that had the beads for five decades. It has a small silver coloured crucifix. I don’t think that they are available anymore.) Remember to get a priest to bless your Rosary beads.
Audio tapes, Video Tapes and CD’s
Audio tapes, video tapes and CD’s on the Rosary might be useful aids in some cases to assist with meditation on the Mysteries.
If you would like to join a Living Rosary, click here for more information
Would you like to join a Living Rosary? Information here.
August 6, 2009 — brendakarenDear Friends,
Once again I am in the process of filling up a Living Rosary Circle (group). This is the way that it works: Each Living Rosary Circle consists of twenty people, because there are twenty decades in the Rosary.
Each person in the Circle says one decade of the Rosary each day. The twenty decades of the Rosary are divided up among them.
The most important thing to know: is that when each of the twenty people says their assigned decade each day, a Living Rosary is created: which means that the five Joyful, the five Sorrowful, the five Luminous, and the five Glorious Mysteries are said every day by the members of the circle.
Each of the twenty people although saying only one decade a day, gains the whole twenty decades of the Rosary each day to their spiritual credit. That is because they are united with the other people in the Living Rosary Circle. That is a good deal!
(I make up each person an individual chart so that they have a different decade to say each month. Each Living Rosary Circle runs for a period of twenty months).
If you would like to join, please email me your name and snail mail address, so that I can post you the card and other Catholic information that might be of interest to you.
If you live outside Australia, I can speed things up by emailing you your chart before the snail mail reaches you.
Greetings and prayers for all your intentions,
Mary Ann
(Sydney, Australia)
P.S. Each of the Living Rosary Circles is allocated a special name (the name of a saint).
Email me at:
Please put the words: The Living Rosary in the subject line of the e-mail.
Unrelated but useful information.
The powerful intercession of the Holy Souls in Purgatory for their benefactors and ways to help them
The web page has accounts of the intercession of The Holy Souls in Purgatory, for their benefactors in cases of illness, addictions, cars that won’t start, infertility problems, protection in accidents, conversion, chronic insomnia, their help for people who are experiencing major trouble with city councils, success with projects, employment, real estate, finding lost property and trouble with relations, etc. and prayers and ideas on how to help The Holy Souls in Purgatory.
Read my book: Help from heaven (Answers to prayer) free on-line
Please let others know about the book, so that they can benefit from it also.
The Rosary (Poem)
May 20, 2009 — brendakarenIn the Rosary
There is great power.
Miracles on earth,
It can shower.
Miracles of healing
And every kind of grace,
The Rosary can bestow,
Upon the human race.
Take up the Rosary,
And say it well,
It’s a weapon against,
All the powers of hell.
Loretta Young
April 18, 2009 — brendakarenThe following story was told by the late Father Aeden McGrath an Irish missionary priest at a talk which he gave in Sydney, Australia. Father McGrath was in China during World War II when the Japanese Army were in the country. The Japanese were advancing toward the area where his parish was located. The local women were terrified of what was going to happen when the Japanese soldiers arrived. They begged Father McGrath who was a very short man to protect them. There was very little that he could do. He prayed to Our Lady for help. The Japanese soldiers arrived. The Japanese sergeant had a big crush on Loretta Young the Hollywood actress, who he had seen in movies. He was keen to find out if Father McGrath had ever met Loretta Young. As a matter of fact Father McGrath had met her, probably through association with Father Patrick Peyton (the founder of the Family Rosary Crusade). The sergeant ordered his soldiers to leave the people in peace, because Father McGrath knew Loretta Young!
This is one of the stories in my book: Help from heaven (Answers to prayers). The book can be read free on-line by pressing here.
Healing of autism (Mary Help of Christians)
December 2, 2008 — brendakarenIn the 1980’s an outdoor shrine of Mary Help of Christians was built and blessed in Sydney. Our daughter was three years of age at the time. She had severe autism and could not talk. The man who was in charge of the shrine was a friend of our family. He told us that he had a plan to hold regular gatherings at the shrine, where people would pray for specially chosen intentions. e.g. a person with cancer. He selected our daughter as the first person who would be prayed for. We willingly agreed. It was his hope that our daughter would receive a miracle healing. On the appointed day, a group of people gathered at the shrine. A Jesuit priest brought our daughter up to the microphone and introduced her to the people and explained to them that she had autism. He asked them to join with him in saying the Rosary for her healing. At the end of the Rosary the priest asked the people to keep this intention in their prayers. There was no instant miracle that day, but in the years to come our daughter made spectacular progress.
Useful information
The powerful intercession of the Holy Souls in Purgatory for their benefactors and ways to help them
Novena to St Philomena the Wonder Worker for the healing of autism
Brendakaren's Weblog 