When I was six or seven years old, Gran announced to us all that we would be soon praying the rosary all together as a family. This entailed kneeling down and reciting the same prayers over and over until it was finished. I felt a small pang of dread in my stomach at this news. Even at that young age, fanaticism of any kind made me very uneasy. I did not see why we needed to do this. I did not want to do this. Perhaps I have always been rebellious in regard to religion, but truthfully, sitting in the church every single Sunday, with the greasy bacon and eggs weighing heavily on my stomach, seemed to be more than enough as far as I was concerned. I never enjoyed church the way Gran seemed to. I did not see why anyone really went to church. I didn't get it. It seemed a very dreary place to be, and I never wanted to go. As a small child though, I realized I had no choice in the matter, and just simply went because I had to.
Now, though, we'd have to do even more. After supper was over, we all knelt down to say the rosary. Naturally, we did not know the prayers yet, "by heart" and with Gran, there was never a learning curve. She berated us for not knowing, saying that we should know all of this by now, we heard it at church, so there was no reason to not know.
In a standard rosary, there are 5 "decades".
Within each decade, there is the Lord's prayer (Our Father) ten Hail Mary's, and the glory be. This is repeated 5 times, and is reportedly the way to appeal to the Virgin Mary for whatever you want. It never worked for me. I, in my childish way, asked for many things over the years, most often asked for my parents to come back and take us to that farm they promised us so many times. It never happened. I fervently prayed to the virgin Mary for Gran to love us like her own kids. It never happened. I prayed for them to stop being mean to us. Yeah, dream on, kid. I felt as if Mary mocked me. I much preferred Jesus. I read about how Jesus lost his temper in the temple, when the high priests were turning it into a market place. There was a hero I could relate to, and look up to!! Mary was entirely too perfect, too pure, virginal, etc. Jesus was HUMAN! He got MAD!!! I could so totally relate! I started talking to Jesus in my own words, at night.
While the rosary got longer and longer, as Gran would tack on new prayers at the end, so it seemed it would NEVER end, I grew to resent it more and more. I dreaded supper time, as it meant kneeling on the hard floor reciting prayers for nothing. I hated it. I hated everything about it. At least at church we could look around and observe the people, and watch the candles flicker, and sing, stand, sit, and kneel. It wasn't as much of a crushing bore as the stupid rosary was. No one else in my class had to do it. I think their parents recognized that catholic school and Sunday church was enough. Not Gran. She was relentless. Then, on Good Fridays, she made us say 3 rosaries in a row. Another reason to hate good Friday, and I could never understand why it was called Good Friday anyway. Seemed kind of sacrilegious to me... I tried to explain this to Gran one day and was slapped across the face for my impudence.
My faith, such as it was, was shaken at a very young age.
Another reason to despise Good Friday, was that we had fishcakes for dinner EVERY YEAR on good Friday. I despised fish cakes with every fiber in my being. I did not vomit, ever as a rule, since I was very little, but fish cakes made me gag instantly. I despised the texture, the taste, everything about them. She served them with dry, mealy mashed potatoes (no butter), and corn. UGH. And exactly 1/2 cup of milk (yes, folks, she measured) with which to wash it down. I begged her to let me forgo the fishcakes, and my brothers piped up, "I'll have hers!!" I joyfully started to give them the horrid puke inducing things, but Gran said no, I'd have to eat them.
After about twenty minutes of my eyes watering from gagging so hard, I finally convinced Gran to PLEASE pour me more milk so I could wash them down. She relented, more so that she could finish up dinner so we could say the rosary. Good Friday after-dinner-rosaries were the worst, my poor stomach leaping about in protest...
The Easter basket I looked forward to getting was not at all worth the torture of choking down those fish cakes.
Just a side note on how to pray the rosary:
Make the Sign of the Cross and say the "Apostles' Creed."
The Apostles' Creed
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.
Say the "Our Father."
Say three "Hail Marys."
Say the "Glory be to the Father."
Announce the First Mystery; then say the "Our Father."
Say ten "Hail Marys," while meditating on the Mystery.
Say the "Glory be to the Father."
After the Rosary:
HAIL, HOLY QUEEN, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
Let us pray. O GOD, whose only begotten Son, by His life, death, and resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech Thee, that meditating upon these mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
After each decade say the following prayer requested by the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima: "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy."
See why I hated it? The entire process took well over an hour! And then Gran added on countless random other prayers at the end, then endless "blessings" for this and that, mainly for God to exorcise the devil out of us kids... Yeah, it never actually worked, lol.
8 comments:
I must say, I have only been to a few Catholic masses and one Catholic wedding, but I was struck by the repetition and constant kneeling. It was all somewhat strange to me. Then again, when Baptists kneel to pray in church we have no kneelers to pad our knees. I was grateful for those, at least. I can certainly understand why you would have hated all of that so much. A constant repeating of someone else's prayer day after day would feel more like a pointless exercise in futility than a conversation with a living God, or at least to me it would.
You are right. I always "talked" to Jesus on my own at night, and still do. The repetition of it tended to send my sister and I into a weird lull, and at times, we "forgot" what we were doing, and forgot how to say the prayers, even though we had been saying them thousands of times. This tended to happen more as teens. Gran finally got scared, and sent us to a neurologist, who performed an EEG on us both, but came up with the prognosis that we were perfectly "normal". Gran then concluded that we were faking it and messing with her, so any time it happened after that, we were punished for faking.
I do beleive she was happy just to have a new and exciting reason to punish us. LOL.
I've known people who went to mass all their life, and yet had never memorized any of the prayers. I couldn't imagine how this was possible, to have said the same thing over and over for years and still not remember it. These days, though, I think I understand.
Hello. Do you know why the young people pray the holy rosary?
See it: http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=YxjjyXhO9EA
Santiago (Granada, Spain)
http://opinionciudadano.blogspot.com/
Thank you Santiago. Your blog is very impressive. I wish I were bilingual, it looks very interesting.
One year, my Dad (who we called Pope Dick - his name was Richard - and he was virulently Catholic) decided that for the entire month of May (Mary's month), all 6 of us kids and he and my mom would all kneel down in the living room and recite the rosary (before or after dinner? I can't remember) - the long version. It took forever. We had a funny parakeet who, if locked in his cage would squawk loudly, so my Dad reluctantly let the bird be part of the prayer time. That bird would hop on our heads, sit on the edges of our glasses and peck at our foreheads, run along the couch and get his claws stuck in the fabric and topple over. He saved us kids from hell with all his shenanigans. We muffled our laughter as we recited the prayers. My Dad would get furious, but my mother loved that bird and she would have killed him if he had done anything to it. hehe If there is a god, that bird was it.
Oh, my god. What a darling story!! I wish we would have had a bird for Rosary time.
What a laugh that May is Mary's month. May is a pagan month. Most of catholicism is paganism just transferred over. I do not know how I missed this comment for so long, I am sorry! Thanks for it though, as always, very entertaining!
we were raised catholic. i was furious as jesus/god for years because for five years we lived in a haunted house and this jesus, this GOD who was supposed to protect us from evil, where the hell was he?
i've moved on, but learned that you'd better be pretty darn careful about peddling religion as the answer to anything. or everything.
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