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  • Deacon Dan Wright serves the Diocese of Austin, Texas. His work outside the parish is as a special education teacher serving students with significant cognitive disabilities.

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  • Family activities, spirituality, liturgy, Christian apologetics, social justice topics, special education issues, and promoting the peace and unity of the human family.
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« Rosary Memories | Main | Life, Work, Vocation, and the Fullness of God »

April 17, 2007

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Gabrielle

dd, I've reread your rosary posts a number of times over the last few days, because there was much to absorb. I found them so moving I went in search of a book that I inherited from my family, called, "This is the Rosary", by Francis Beauchesne Thornton, with an introduction by Pope John XXIII. I remember reading parts of it as a child.

In the first chapter, the author talks about "beads for praying" having been in all the major religions, in Hinduism, in Buddhism in India, Japan, China and Tibet, and even in Islam in the first two centuries after Mohammed. He says, "It is interesting to note that the practice of repetitious prayer follows and grows with the emergence of meditative religions."

He talks about prayer beads being used in two ways: either as mere counters with some talismanic importance, or, as is the more important way, as an instrument of release into contemplation. And it just struck me that this tactile presence of the beads in our hands is something so historically universal, so sacred; something, for example, that Ahmad might have felt but couldn't quite place. With the Rosary, while the prayers themselves are important, it is the meditation on the Mysteries that is moreso, and it is the meditation, especially on the Sorrowful Mysteries, which most often leads people into contemplation. The Rosary is so powerful, as we know all prayers to Jesus through Mary are.

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