Confraternity of the Holy Rosary

A few weeks ago I gathered with other young adults at St. Dominic's during the Marian month of May, in order to join the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, which sounds like a secret society.

I first heard of the Confraternity when reading St. Louis Marie de Montfort's Secrets of the Rosary. This is a strange book, I have to say - he is a wonderful saint and a major patron of the Legion, but it consists mostly of hearsay type stories about the Blessed Virgin visiting people personally and giving them information about souls and damnation, and contains many records of unlikely things happening (like someone prays the rosary and actual roses come out of their mouth. Eh.).

The book was written in the late 1600s or early 1700s (he died in 1716), so I just assumed that the Confraternity no longer existed, particularly coming from that source. Wrong! It is alive and well and kept up by the Dominicans. Here is an official website about it.

I don't mean to disparage St. de Montfort, but rather to draw attention to what an old and mysterious thing the Confraternity appears to be. I am not an expert on lay or religious associations, but I imagine many do not last over 100 years, let alone several hundred. There are whole religious orders that have risen and fallen in that time. I think this justifies St. Louis Marie de Montfort's fervor.

The obligation of being a member consists solely of praying 15 decades of the rosary per week, for each of the original mysteries. That is to say, pray your full rosary three times a week on three of the now four existing sets of mysteries. And in doing so, always keep your fellow confraternity members in your prayers. That's it! 

You can see all the benefits here, but those which impress me most are the idea of being united with the prayers and good works of all other Confraternity members and those of the Dominicans, and of course the intercession and special protection of Our Lady. One can never have too much intercession and special protection from our Blessed Mother, and goodness knows I could use your prayers.

But back to the enrollment: it was a sweet ceremony, with each person making a vocal pledge to remain faithful to the Confraternity. We knelt, shoulder to shoulder, holding little white candles, which Father Hyacinth blessed, along with our rosaries. 

At the end, he showed us a book. "Many, many years ago," he told us, "There was a Confraternity at St. Dominic's." The book was thick, the size of an encyclopedia, with a grayish cover and frail looking pages. "The names of all those enrolled are in this book. And tonight," he held up a newer book, "we will add our names to this one, and revive the Confraternity at St. Dominic's." After the ceremony, we each signed our name, nearly 100 years after those original parishioners.

Afterwards, I looked through the old book. There were lots of old-fashioned names, Millies and Betsys in their slanting, proper handwriting. Men and women both who had gone through the same ceremony, with the same prayers, kneeling in the same way and promising to pray for each other. What were their lives like? Where did they end up, and how many stuck with it? Not just the Confraternity, but their faith? What did they do when they doubted? Did they let themselves doubt?

I am always fascinated by this connectedness that rises from our faith, as old as it is. Our prayers and ceremonies do not often change, but even when they do, you still know countless others are participating with you, all over the world, and across the ages. In my prayers, now, I keep those from the old book in mind, along with those I joined with that night. 

Ascension Spirituality

During Mass at the jail this week, Father talked about a concept called "ascension spirituality," which sounds very new age (and google results do indeed indicate there are new agers with their own thoughts on what it means).

We discussed this concept in the context of Ascension Sunday (which was May 8), when Jesus ascends to Heaven. He focused on one key moment: when the angels who appear beside Jesus as he ascends say to the awe-struck apostles, "Move along! He has charged you with your mission, now get to it," in so many words. The angels are encouraging the apostles to let go of what was, to embrace what will be, and truly live the lives Jesus meant for them to live. And Jesus, of course, has already reassured them that He is with them always, "until the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

We are faced with our own ascension moments throughout life. As Father described it, sometimes we have to allow something - a relationship, a job, a sense of failure, a sense of injustice, a wounded ego - ascend, so that what God really has in mind for us can take its place.

Another part of this is that allowing an issue to ascend means you are able to recognize your life for what it really is and acknowledge it, feeling gratitude and finding meaning in it rather than dismissing it for not being what you want. Perhaps you mourn over the one who got away, or feel your mother treated you unfairly in childhood, or that you were unjustly denied a raise at some point. But what DO you have? And what does holding on to that grief accomplish? Let is ascend, instead, for the Lord to dissolve, to be replaced by love and gratitude.

The Pentacost Novena

Our friends over at Pray More Novenas are gearing up for the next nine days of prayer, this time in the form of the Pentacost Novena, starting tomorrow, Friday May 6. You can sign up here to join the thousands of faithful bringing their hearts and intentions before the Holy Spirit.

I am especially interested in this one, because the Holy Spirit has played an important part in my life, and particularly my faith formation and return to the Church. At that moment in Confirmation, when the Holy Spirit descended, I was changed. Truthfully, I had signed up for RCIA as a sort of "Let's go ahead and make all this official, shall we?" gesture, not knowing the affect it would have on me. I went from living a more or less completely secular lifestyle, to becoming weekly involved in a variety of ministries (others' or those I've started myself), evangelizing, listening to the Mass readings every morning, going to Confession regularly and daily Mass at least once a week, deepening my knowledge of the Church and scripture, thirsting deeply for the knowledge of Christ, and finding true love and joy in all of this. The Holy Spirit descended, and I'd like to think, never left (and, I pray to God, He never will).

How has the Holy Spirit moved in your life? One of my favorite ways to see the Holy Spirit in action is how we often find the right people in our lives at exactly the right moment, due to no genius of our own. Or perhaps the apartment you needed became available to rent at the right moment; the compassionate words you needed to share with a suffering friend somehow found their way out of your mouth; you took a different way home for no particular reason and avoided an accident. It goes on and on. This is the Holy Spirit. And how nice to think it is the same Spirit that worked through St. Paul and the original apostles as they preached and converted, building the early Church and bringing Christ to the world for the first time. The Holy Spirit has become no weaker or diluted over the ages, which means that if you pray to Him, he will assist you in the same way He did the early Christians, if you allow Him. Take heart in that! 

I think in praying this novena I will ask the Holy Spirit to put me in the right time and place, and to be able to say the right things, to better serve God and others. In a way, that is a prayer to be more accepting of God's will, isn't it?  To be accepting, to be open, to take what God gives you with love.