Friday, December 20, 2013

Did you get that? Pope Francis now promoting the Rosary

Although Pope Francis is on record as having raised questions about "counting rosaries" as something outmoded, on November 17th of this year, he added his own support for the practice of praying the Rosary by distributed 20,000 Rosaries (in little prescription-medicine-size boxes) to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, urging them to pray the Rosary daily and to think of it as a spiritual prescription that is “good for your heart, for your soul, for your whole life.”

7 comments:

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

". . . pray the Rosary daily and . . . think of it as a spiritual prescription that is 'good for your heart, for your soul, for your whole life.'"

Pray the rosary because it makes you feel good -- you know, like a placebo can do -- and nothing makes you feel better than feeling good.

Look! We've even put them in imitation OTC drug boxes! How tongue-in-cheek of us!

But listen to Papa, folks: don't pray the rosary because you believe doing so is in any way efficacious. Don't pray the rosary because God may answer your prayers, respect your intentions, or love you for your fidelity. That's just silly. God snickers at your puny bean-counting efforts, which only expose your selfishness and stunted, unnatural conception of the faith. You look so pathetic, kneeling there rattling your beads like a sclerotic! But God is merciful, and besides, He enjoys a good laugh, just like I do.

Well, that's done. Now for my favorite act of piety: time to wash my socks!

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

Interestingly, as far as I have read, the little medicine packet included a (truncated?) version of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, not the traditional Rosary. Nothing old does well in this papacy. New, new, new--and a savvy build-up to the canonizations in the spring.

Dcn Dan said...

Pope Francis is great for promoting the rosary … what a powerful prayer, uniting ours with Our Lady. His comments about not counting rosaries, I think, is to be taken as not viewing prayer as quantitative, as Christ said, "In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Mt. 6:7-8) So Francis does well in still promoting the rosary. He is merely warning against a wrongful attitude towards prayer as Christ did. Thanks, Dcn Dan

Terry Nelson said...

The Holy Father is on record saying he prays the rosary daily - ever since he learned JPII prayed the rosary daily. In his prayer vigil for Syria, the rosary and Eucharist were the central focus.

Elizabeth said...

The last I heard/read was that what he distributed was a box with a rosary inside along with an instruction sheet of how to use the Rosary to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet, not the Rosary, using the Rosary beads.

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

". . . ever since he learned JPII prayed the rosary daily."

A recent discovery? Was Francis circumnavigating the globe in a balloon during all the hullabaloo about JP2's remake of the rosary? Hay Caramba! He not only said it daily -- he made it LONGER!

Anonymous said...

It wasn't a truncated rosary; it was a regular 59 bead rosary on which one can pray either the traditional Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/angelus/2013/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20131117_en.html

He also prays the Rosary with pilgrims:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/speeches/2013/may/documents/papa-francesco_20130531_conclusione-mese-mariano_en.html

Any of this can be confirmed by a simple search of the Vatican website.