Holy Rosary

Azzano San Paolo, Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy - procession on the Feast of the Holy Rosary by Luigi Chiesa via Wikipedia

The Holy Rosary is a Catholic devotion usually prayed on a circle of beads, with a short row of five beads and crucifix attached at the bottom.

One prays the rosary to the Blessed Virgin Mary, not only to venerate her and glorify the Lord, but also to implore the saint to pray to God on one’s behalf. This request for intercession can be for oneself, others, the whole world, and for all souls who ever existed and will exist.

A distinction can be made between the instrument itself (the loop of beads), and the type of prayer performed with them. For instance, Catholics often pray a special prayer called the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, apparently given to St. Faustina, using rosary beads.

Before 2002, the full rosary consisted of 15 decades (ten beads per decade). A Hail Mary Prayer is said on each bead, with two extra prayers at the end of each decade. The first prayer is The Our Father, which is repeated on each large bead dividing the decades.

A sterling silver Catholic rosary via Wikipedia

Each decade celebrates a holy “mystery.” A mystery is a particular event in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The first group of mysteries involves the Joyful Mysteries (5 decades), dealing with the events leading to Jesus’ birth and growth to maturity.

The next group of mysteries are the Sorrowful Mysteries (5 decades), focussing on the period from Jesus’ arrest to crucifixion.

The third group is the Glorious Mysteries (5 decades), dealing with Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, as well as Mary’s assumption into heaven.

To these three mysteries, Pope John-Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries in October 2002. So the former group of three mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious) officially became four.

No one really knows for sure how the Holy Rosary came into existence. Some believe that it was adapted from earlier Muslim prayer beads, introduced through the Crusades.

Sandro Botticelli, Magnificat, 1480-81, tempera on panel, Uffizi Gallery, Florence via Wikipedia

Others believe that the Catholic rosary existed prior to the Crusades.

Catholic tradition, itself, says the Holy Rosary originated with St. Dominic (1170-1221 CE).

Not a few non-Catholics liken different goddesses to the Virgin Mary, and in a similar way, not a few people say that different types of prayer beads found around the world – such as Tibetan and Islamic forms – are equivalent to the Holy Rosary.

But this claim seems superficial because world religions are so different from one another.

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Rosary

Crucifijos de los Rosarios: Nathan Gibbs

The term ‘rosary’ refers to any planned prayer recited on a string of beads. Rosaries in this general sense have been prayed all over the world in various religious traditions for centuries.

Before the introduction of beads, prayers were counted on pebbles or fingers.

Some believe that the Catholic Holy Rosary was adapted from earlier Muslim prayer beads, introduced through the Crusades. Others say the Holy Rosary existed prior to the Crusades.

In actual fact no one really knows just how or when the Catholic rosary came into being.

According to Catholic legend, the Blessed Virgin Mary mystically appeared to St. Dominic in 1214. And many devotional Catholics believe she gave him the Holy Rosary and said “One day through the Rosary and the Scapular I will save the world.”¹

Apparently many other Catholic saints have had subsequent visions, from the Middle Ages to modern times, concerning the urgency of spreading devotion through the Rosary.

And in October 2002 Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries to the usual Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries. All of the Catholic mysteries are based on key moments in the life, death and afterlife of both Jesus and Mary as found in the New Testament.

—

¹ The History of the Rosary http://www.prayrosary.com/rosaryscapular/history.php3

» Goddess vs. goddess, Hail Mary Prayer, Virgin Mary

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Hail Mary Prayer

Madonna and Child (Galleria Borghese, Rome) via Wikipedia

The Hail Mary Prayer (Latin = Ava Maria) is a Catholic prayer directed to the Blessed Virgin Mary and central to the Holy Rosary. It’s essentially a prayer of praise and a request for intercession.

The first part of the prayer is based on a visitation of an angel to Mary, as told in Luke 1:28. The second part relates to Mary’s subsequent visit to Elizabeth while carrying Jesus in her womb (Luke 1:42).

The prayer’s unofficial form existed as early as the eleventh century. The closing supplication arose in the 14^th to 15^th centuries. And the entire prayer was incorporated into Roman Catholicism by Pope Pius V in 1568, and still undergoes minor modifications, keeping step with contemporary idioms. A recent form is:

Hail Mary Full of Grace, The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women. And Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Some Anglican churches use a variation of the Hail Mary, and the classical composers Franz Schubert and Johan Sebastian Bach, among others, have featured the prayer within their work.

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Islam

Image via Wikipedia

Islam [Arabic: surrender] is the religion of Muslims, based on the text of the Koran (or Qur’an).

The Koran was written in Arabic, and for orthodox believers it’s the uncreated word of God, dictated to the prophet Mohammed (ca. 570-632 CE) by the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel).

Islam contains 5 pillars of fundamental belief and practice:

1. Ash-Shahada – the belief in only one God.
2. Salat – daily prayer, with body facing Mecca, taking place at sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and nighttime.
3. Sawm – fasting that is obligatory at puberty and also during the 9th month of the Islamic year (Ramadan), believed to be the period when the Koran was written. Eating and drinking is prohibited from dawn to sunset during Ramadan.
4. Zakat -  giving alms to the less fortunate, the amount being 2.5% of one’s total income.
5. Hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Moslems are obliged to take at least once in a lifetime. Hajj ideally is taken on the eighth day of the twelfth month of the Islamic year.

The Sunni branch of Islam is comprised of about 85% of contemporary Muslims and is often regarded as orthodox form of this religion.

The Shi’ite branch, mostly in Iran, Persia and partly in Iraq, represent about 10% of today’s Muslims.

Historically speaking, the Shi’ites and Sunnis split over a disagreement about the legitimacy of Mohammad’s successors (Caliphs)—not entirely unlike the Protestant refusal to recognize the authority of the Catholic Papacy.

The mystically based, unorthodox branch of Sufism arose partly as a reaction to the beliefs and standardized practices of orthodox Islam. In response, aspects of orthodox Islam have been critical of Sufism, especially in regard to the Sufi belief that a person can be  “one” with God.

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Prayer

The lone prayer: Autumnsonata

Prayer is a way of petitioning or communicating with a deity, spiritual being or power, to include deceased ancestors (as in ancestor worship).

Prayers are usually offered in a state of humility. They are highly structured or, alternately, unscripted and spontaneous.

Many pray within the liturgy of a faith assembly or in private. Moreover, devotees pray through spoken word, thought, writing and song. Prayer is also expressed in the arts, broadcast media or merely involves an act of the will.

Bodily posture may or may not be important to prayer. Some pray, for instance, kneeling while others dance (e.g. the whirling dervishes of Sufism). And others pray while lying down.

Christians believe that the Our Father prayer is unique because it is the prayer that Jesus, God’s only Son, gave to the world (Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4).

» AUM, Brown (Michael), Contemplation, Faith and Action, Fasting, Hail Mary Prayer, Holy Rosary, Intercession, Meditation, Mental Prayer, Michael (St.), Mysticism, Rosary, Serenity Prayer, Vocal Prayer

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Saint

Calling all Saints... by CHILDREN AT RISK FOUNDATION - CARF

Saint

(Latin sanctus = sacred ) The word saint has several meanings.

In everyday usage, saints are unusually kind, ethical people who perform good works on a local or grand scale which most everyone can appreciate.

The term also denotes the faithful Jews of the Bible and the body of Christian believers.

Moreover, saints may be Buddhist arhats (monks having achieved Nirvana) and bodhisattvas (monks forgoing entry into Nirvana in order to help others reach that threshold).

Saints also refer to Taoist, Confucian and Hindu sages and gurus (Skt. guru = teacher), African and Amerindian elders, as well as the Shamans of Central and Southeast Asia, Oceania, North America and the Arctic.

In Islam the righteous departed are said to mediate between heaven and Earth.

Robert Ellsberg regards great figures like Galileo Galilei, Leo Tolstoy, Stephen Biko and Dante Alighieri as saints in his book, All Saints.

Some believe that all public figures called “saints” are equally holy but this view arguably is more of a human hope than God’s assessment of individual holiness.

In Catholicism, the canonized saint leads an exceedingly holy and humble life serving God, is often persecuted, may be martyred and performs by the power of God at least two verified miracles.

Catholic sainthood often involves the idea of intercession. Intercession is the belief that God’s divine power and grace may be mediated by one soul to other souls on Earth, purgatory and hell.

Catholics also believe in the communion of saints, the idea that all souls, except for the damned, are united in a “mystical body” with Christ as head. From this we can see that the idea of interconnected souls is not necessarily something of the occult (unless one views Catholicism as a Satanic cult, which some do).

Another essential element of the Catholic faith is the belief that individuals cooperate with God’s Plan of Salvation through vocal and mental prayer (i.e. interior contemplation).

Prayerful saints cooperate with the Divine Plan but do not effect salvation through their own power.

Some Protestants object by saying that the Catholic saint is just a manmade god or goddess. Catholics reply to this charge that saints are friends and servants of God, not a god nor God.

Many Protestant Christians pray for other people yet object to the Catholic idea of interceding saints. To this Catholicism replies: If someone on Earth can pray for another on Earth, why can’t someone in heaven pray for another person on Earth?

According to Catholic teaching there are many unrecognized saints. These unsung heroes of the spirit are said to achieve a great degree of spiritual purity without ever having set foot in a monastery or abbey.

This is good to remember. Otherwise we might misunderstand some individuals in contemporary society not primarily concerned with sex, wealth or raising a family.

Considering the great diversity of individuals and spiritual paths throughout the world, to insist on rigid criteria for sainthood seems both arbitrary and, considering the world today, unwise.

» Brahman, Clairaudience, Confucianism, Faith and Action, Fasting, George (St.), God, Goddess vs. goddess, Great Mother, Guru, Heaven, Hinduism, Holy Rosary, Icon, Intercession, James (William), Jewish Mysticism, Karma Transfer, Koran, Meditation, More (St. Thomas), Mysticism, Numinous, Social Darwinism, Solitude, Targ,  Taoism, Russell, Vivekananda (Swami), Wisdom, Yogi, Yogini

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Leary, Timothy

Seattle activist Vivian McPeak and countercultural icon Timothy Leary at PeaceWorks Park vigil via Wikipedia

Timothy Leary (1920-1996) was an American psychologist who believed that mind-altering substances such as THC and LSD facilitated self-discovery.

Leary’s ideas remain controversial, not only because he advocated what in many countries is illegal, but also because an increasing body of scientific research suggests that street drugs can be deleterious to users’ physical, psychological and spiritual health.

The Christian scholar J.N.D. Anderson questions whether the experiential quality, orientation and commitment of drug induced mysticism are equal to those of the sincere seeker who aims to know and serve God, and in so doing, encounters grace without chemical intervention or, for that matter, direct personal effort.¹

Some minority groups claim that drugs like THC, if taken ‘responsibly,’ are liberating and therapeutic. But the vast majority of people see illegal drugs as debilitating and enslaving.

Another perspective deconstructs the issue by noting that alcohol was once prohibited but is now legal.

Meanwhile, medical watchdog groups and organizations critical of allopathic medicine say that some legal medications have serious long-term side effects that can be harmful to patients’ health. Tom Cruise, representing the views of the Church of Scientology, has taken an extreme position in this controversy with regard to psychiatric medications, one not necessarily reflecting the varying needs of different individuals over the course of a lifetime.

These contemporary issues about the safety and efficacy of so-called ‘drugs’ and ‘medications’ aside, Leary’s popularity among the hippies of the late 1960′s is attested in the Moody Blues song “Legend of a Mind” (1968):

He’ll fly his astral plane.
He’ll take you trips around the bay.
He’ll bring you back the same day.
Timothy Leary…

—

¹ See J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity and Comparative Religion, The Tyndale Press: 1970, pp. 20-26. Of course, one could argue that praying the Rosary, for instance, is a technique and therefore an “effort” to attract graces. And other Christians, especially fundamentalists, ask God to “cover them” with Jesus’ “precious blood” in order to be washed of their sins, just as most Christians invoke the “Holy Spirit” to come and shower them with grace. So although many uphold Christianity as a religion where grace comes without any special effort, this might seem a bit misleading. However, the Christian asks, whereas some conjurers may command spirits to protect or assist them–spirits which they believe are essentially under their personal control. Moreover, some meditators say that once they achieve a certain level of awareness, their meditative technique – be it a mantra, the development of inner silence or assuming bodily postures – will undoubtedly lead to mystical experience. By way of contrast, Christians hope for assistance but never command nor expect with certainty, for this kind of attitude is anathema to having a humble relationship with God who created them. In a nutshell, a sincere Christian would never claim to be able to control or have mastery over God’s supernatural graces. And that’s why it’s so distasteful to them when some New Age enthusiasts use the term “Christ Consciousness” as if to imply that, by perhaps listening to a mediation CD or through some other store-bought technique, one can definitively turn on God’s grace like water from a tap.

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Virgin Mary, The Blessed

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Originally uploaded by Lawrence OP

The Blessed Virgin Mary

The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ, wife of St. Joseph.

According to Catholic teaching, Mary was conceived immaculately and born without the taint of original sin.

The Greek Orthodox Church accepts devotion through Mary but not the idea of her immaculate conception.

Catholics believe that Mary always was and will be a virgin. That is, Mary and her elderly husband Joseph remained perfectly chaste.

The virgin birth refers to Mary’s conceiving Jesus after she freely chose to accept God’s miraculous intervention. This took place before her marriage to Joseph and Mary most likely suffered from the misunderstandings of Joseph and others who initially saw only scandal.

From reading the New Testament and Apocrypha, many believe that Joseph and Mary had sex and four other boys and two girls after Jesus.

But the Catechism of the Catholic Church says Mary bore only Jesus.

For believing Catholics, the “other Mary” mentioned in the New Testament bore James and Joseph, the so-called “brothers” of Jesus.

Catholics say the term “brother” (Greek: adelphos) is in keeping with Old Testament usage, meaning “close relation” (i.e. kith and kin) and designates spiritual instead of physical brotherhood.

Catholics believe that Mary is a mediator between Christ and mankind, not a goddess. The idea that Mary is a mediator between mankind and God has been traced to the 3rd century CE.

When praying to Mary through the Holy Rosary, Catholics do not worship her but rather request that she intercedes for them–as the Hail Mary Prayer says, “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Some Protestants and Fundamentalists complain that Catholics have got it all wrong because, so they say, Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and Man. But these very same people freely ask their friends and associates to “pray for them” which to any thinking person is clearly a request for intercession.

The Catholic reply to this contradictory Protestant and Fundamentalist charge is that if you can ask souls on Earth to pray for you, why not souls in heaven?

In the New Testament Mary instructs Jesus to perform his first miracle at a wedding ceremony at Cana (John 2: 1-11).

Jesus hesitates – “it is not my time” – but performs the miracle of turning water into wine at Mary’s insistence.

Mary is depicted musically in Stabat Mater, the “standing mother” (at the foot of the cross of her crucified son). The composers Palestrina, Pergolesi, Rossini, Haydn, Verdi and Dvorak have written unique works, each called Stabat Mater. While Pergolesi’s work is the most popular, all compositions are based on the same New Testament account of Mary’s grief while witnessing Jesus’ execution at the hands of the Romans.

Since 1727 the devotional poem Stabat Mater Dolorosa (“A mother standing, grief-stricken”) has been set to a plainchant melody in the Catholic Mass.

Mary became widely venerated throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The devotion of monks and religious during this period was enthusiastic to the point of their sometimes being taken as madpersons.

In 431 the Council of Ephesus defined Mary as Theotokos, a Greek term meaning “The Mother of God.”

The doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption (i.e. her rising at death) into heaven was formed around the 6th century CE by orthodox theologians. It became sanctioned by the Catholic Church in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

The idea of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception was hotly disputed in the Middle Ages but generally accepted by the 16th century. The doctrine was defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854, stipulating that Mary was born free from “all stain of original sin.”

Many lay and religious persons around the world claim to have witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the most publicized being those at Fatima, Lourdes and Medjugorge. For a good summary of Marian apparitions, see http://www.apparitions.org/.

Some religious scholars and lay people, alike, equate Mary with the Egyptian Isis, the Roman Demeter, the Hindu Kali or the Chinese Kwan Yin, among a host of other goddesses.

Likewise, C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell somewhat dubiously equate Mary with various goddesses, envisioning all as archetypal images of an underlying and some say sexist “feminine principle.”

But even a casual study of these various female deities reveals striking differences. And to equate them as if they were all the same, as so many New Agers and pop psychologists do, seems facile.

» Adam, Anima, Assumption, Brahman, Fatima, Goddess vs. goddess, Great Mother, Greek Orthodox Church, Hail Mary Prayer, Heaven, Icon, Infallibility, Knight, Koran, Madonna, Nicene Creed, Sister

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