Where Do I Go When I Need to Feel Closer to Jesus?

About two weeks ago when I just felt like I needed to get closer to Jesus. I instinctively started praying the rosary. That answer might surprise people who don't know about the rosary. I know it surprised me when I first started learning about it.

The first time I ever prayed the rosary was about five years ago when Hannah had woken us in the night with extreme stomach pains and Tom wound up taking her to the emergency room to see if it was appendicitis. I didn't know the first thing about the rosary except that it was supposed to be a great way to pray ... and, truth to tell, I was in quite a panic and wanted someone who would relate to me ... another mother ... Mary. Of course, I did it all wrong. I managed to dig up the actual prayers, I counted off the prayers as I said them aloud and ... I prayed to Mary for Hannah to be well. It was like a textbook case of what critics of the rosary would point to. Hannah was fine and I know that God understood my total confusion. But with that panic filled night arose my determination to find out what the story was with Mary and that rosary.

I went to Amazon (where else?) and got the easiest book I could find to fill me in, Christ's Mother and Ours by Oscar Lukefahr. I already knew the rosary beads are simply a set of counting beads to help you keep track of your prayers. As you say each prayer you go on to the next bead. However, what I learned was that the vocal prayers are intended to be aids in meditating on various events in Jesus' and his mother's life. When you pray, you mentally concentrate on either the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, or Glorious mysteries. You put yourself "in the scene" for each of the mysteries. I have heard it said that praying the rosary is praying the Gospels. As Pope John Paul II said in his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae we are contemplating Christ with Mary.

Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word: "She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). The memories of Jesus, impressed upon her heart, were always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her Son's side. In a way those memories were to be the "rosary" which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life.

When I found out all that then the rosary started to mean something to me. It didn't change my life. I am not devoted to it. I go through fits and spurts and usually wind up saying it while driving to work (long ago having memorized the prayers and mysteries). However, if I really stay focused and meditate on the mysteries it is a rare occasion when I do not come away enlightened ... sometimes by something in an event, sometimes by God reaching through the prayers to touch me. And, if nothing else, I have been spending about 20 minutes contemplating events from the Gospels ... and that can't hurt!

I'm in the mood to talk about the rosary so there'll be more later about the prayers themselves and what those mysteries actually are.