My Rosary

In times of stress, worry or fear, we all have something that brings us peace and comfort.  For small children, it can be a teddy bear or a nightlight.  As we get older, it can take the form of a well-worn quilt, a cup of our favorite tea, a cozy chair in a sunny corner or it can be a Bible with favorite scripture verses and prayers.

For me, it has always been the rosary.  I developed this love for the rosary as a young girl.  My mother as well as my grandmother and aunts had always felt that nothing could give one greater peace than the feeling of the beads moving across the fingers while silent prayers were spoken.  Many a time, my mother would begin a novena whenever she felt someone in the family was in need of extra help and not a night would go by that she would not pray the rosary before bed.  In the last weeks of her life, when the pain would get to be too much, she would always ask for her rosary.  Just holding it in her hand brought a sense of peace that was so very apparent on her face. 

I myself have a number of rosaries.  A pink one I received for my First Communion at the age of 7, one with irish green beads given to me by my husband as a reminder of my irish roots and one with beads carved into the shape of roses blessed by the Pope given to me by a priest friend after his trip to Rome.  However, the one which comforts me the most is a rosary made of blue glass.  It was my grandmother's and upon her death, it was given to my mother.  She never used that rosary.  She kept it in a small box in her jewelry case.  10 years ago, my mother gave it to me.  It goes with me everywhere.  It gives me great comfort just to hold it in my hand, feeling each bead just as my mother and grandmother had done in years past.  However, holding the rosary in my hand is really secondary to the prayers which are said with it.  Each prayer is another movement closer to our Lady.  Each prayer is a whisper for help, a call for understanding, a hope for clarity, a plea for intercedence.  It is the love in your mother's eyes as you confide in her, it is the soft touch of her hand when you feel so alone and it is the warmth of her arms hugging you when you are afraid.   It is a reminder that no matter what my life is throwing at me, my heavenly mother Mary will hear, understand and comfort me.

“The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families…that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.” -Sister Lucia dos Santos of Fatima