I have long suspected that the most important people in the great scheme things might be those women who say the Rosary prior to Mass.
Thought For The Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The fondest memory of my grandmother is of her waking up at the crack of dawn to pray the Rosary.
She could not read or write a word in her mother tongue. Yet she would never miss a day without praying the Rosary, sometimes twice a day. She would borrow my Rosary beads which my parents bought me from Lebanon when I was 8yo from Our Lady of Harissa in Beirut. She passed away after she fell into coma following a long battle with dementia and paralysis from a stroke. She was surrounded by her grandkids and she took her final breath moments after we finished praying the Rosary. She was Blessed with a good death.
I like your sentiment Don about the power of the Rosary.
Amen, Ezabelle. This is one of the reasons why, amidst all the theological errors, blasphemies, and unjust actions of our kidney stone of a Pope, his treatment of women religious is the thing that upsets me the most.
Masculine men pray the rosary.
The other types wave rainbow flags and hold hissy-fits about the traditional Catholic Church.
Don’t get caught up in the latter type.
They know not what they do.
Soon after his election, Francis gave an audience to representatives of CLAR (the Latin American Confederation of Religious) and among other things he spoke about being presented with a Spiritual Bouquet from a group of laymen and women from back in Argentina:
”There are some restorationist groups. I know some…. when I was elected, I received a letter from one of these groups and they said ‘Your Holiness, we offer you this spiritual treasure: 3,525 rosaries’. Why don’t they say ‘we pray for you, we ask…’? But this thing of counting…. And these people return to practices and to disciplines that I lived through— not you, because you are not old— to disciplines, to things that in that time took place, but not now, they do not exist today…’”
It says a great deal about Francis’ attitude towards those thousands of laypeople who pledged to say those rosaries for him, and how much he does/doesn’t value their offering. Basically, he disdains their prayers because the form in which they are offered is, in his eyes, hopelessly old fashioned. That is, of course, his very great loss.