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.”
". . . 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.'"
ReplyDeletePray 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!
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.
ReplyDeletePope 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
ReplyDeleteThe 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.
ReplyDeleteThe 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.
ReplyDelete". . . ever since he learned JPII prayed the rosary daily."
ReplyDeleteA 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!
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.
ReplyDeletehttp://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.