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I agree...I wonder if the purpose of 'meditating on the mysteries' was initially intended to educate and focus the faithful, kind of like the purpose which church iconography plays in the worship experience in the East. I have prayed the rosary, but I could never meditate on the mysteries at the same time.

Regards,
Alice

asianpilgrim,


I don't think anyone advocated the abolition of anything from the private devotion of the faithful. What was advocated was the restoration of authentic Eastern liturgical prayer in place of Latin devotions that displaced them. Public recitation of the Rosary in place of the Akathist or Paraclis and Stations of the Cross in place of Liturgy of the Presanctified had become the rule rather than the exception.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Forming mental images during the Rosary is pretty much an exaggeration. Sometimes you might get a few words on the particular mystery and then it's right into the Our Father and Hail Mary's. You might be told or read that you should consider the joy of Mary and Joseph at finding Jesus in the Temple, or contemplate the suffering of Jesus as he was scourged at the pillar, but I've never heard anyone suggest we should attempt to visualize these mysteries.

Dear Friends,

Certainly, there is no requirement to visualize anything in our minds during the Rosary. St Louis de Montfort had 15 banners with pictures of the mysteries that he had people bring forward at parish retreats while people were saying the rosary.

The Russian version of the Rule of the Theotokos also has 15 mysteries, different from the RC ones and each is introduced at the beginning of the decades with a special troparion from the liturgy.

The Nuns of Diveyevo say the Rosary/Rule daily while walking around their monastery three times daily (and sing it on feastdays). There is no question but that this private devotion is just that and not meant to affect our commitment to liturgical prayer.

Alex

"This idea of meditating on mysteries is a bit foreign to the eastern mindset, or so it seems to me."
Isn't that just a terminology thing? The point of the Mysteries is to reflect on the event and its various depths of significance. Is there no similar thing in Eastern spirituality?

Dear John,

You raise a very good point.

In fact, the entire daily Byzantine Horologion is celebrated around a meditation on Christ's Passion, for the most part. We are invited to consider Christ before Pilate at the prayer of the Third Hour (and also the Descent of the Holy Spirit), the Crucifixion of Christ at the Sixth Hour and the death of Christ at the Ninth.

The many Canons and Akathists lead us into a reflection on the historical lives and virtues of the Feasts and Saints we honour. The Octoechos liturgical propers do the same.

The same issue that our Mother in Christ, Alice, raised has been something the great Western Saints have grappled with in promoting the Rosary.

As you know, St Louis de Montfort includes no fewer than a dozen methods of saying the Psalter of the Theotokos (which is how he called it, including adding some words to the Hail Mary.

This last method is the simplest and helps keep one's mind on the mysteries. It was St Louis' most favourite one and he mentioned it just before he reposed.

Alex

But this is exactly the problem. Often Rosary devotees do exactly that, impinge on Liturgical prayer like Orthros, Third Hour, or the Akathist being taken before Liturgy by insisitng they be aloud to say the Rosary publically at this time or complain it would interfere with them saying it privately. Now not all Roasry devotees are like this but many are. For them it is the Rosary or nothing at all absolutely refusing to give any Eastern form of devotion to the Mother of God a chance. It is very frustrating.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Exactly, Fr. Deacon Lance. It is frustrating. The rosary devotees tend to think devotions begin and end with the rosary. They don't. I have also considered St. Louis de Montfort to be really over-the-top since I first read him years ago. I have to ask why eastern Christians would look to him for guidance. We have unequaled Marian devotions in the east. What does the west have to offer us that is superior?

What is your parish?

I think that this is a Catholic Church-wide problem, not just a problem for some Byzantine Catholics.

The Rosary is of undeniable beauty and usefulness, but I agree that it has been disproportionately exalted in the past 150 years. Even St. Louis de Montfort promoted a variety of devotions, not just the Rosary (for example, the "Little Chaplet of the Blessed Virgin")

Since 1854 (Lourdes), there has been a stream of apparitions and private revelations in the Catholic Church that, more or less, focus on the Rosary as THE devotion and THE weapon. Since 1917 (Fatima) this has been coupled with an intense emphasis on devotion to the Immaculate Heart. Combined with the intense promotion of Lourdes, Fatima and the Rosary under Popes Pius XII and John Paul II, and we have the present situation in Catholic piety where these devotions are seen as sine qua non for a Catholic spiritual life, to the practical exclusion of nearly everything else.

In my country, devotion to the Rosary has become so strong that it has supplanted and driven out so many other beautiful traditional devotions.

I doubt that the Mother of God is pleased.

Theologians, of course, know how to keep private revelations in their proper place, but most simple believers do not have that sophistication, and only know what books of piety and private revelations tell them.

You might be interested to know that the late Sister Lucia of Fatima actually called for the Rosary to be declared as part of the Catholic liturgy.

Incidentally, it seems that Fatimism is very strong in some Byzantine - Rite circles (perhaps because of of Fatima's call for the "conversion of Russia"). And the latest Fatima Crusade congress even attracted some Byzantine-Rite bishops. I think that accounts for some of your problems. (The Fatima Crusade is very extreme in its belief in Fatima, which it considers as being an extension of public revelation.)

Asianpilgrim

To alot of Ukrainian Catholics, the Fatima devotions were a bastion of hope in a world that appeared to be falling to the forces of Soviet Communism. It's now part of there heritage.

As for Rosary devotions being too popular, I have quite a hard time believing that, as I know of numerous Roman Catholic parishes, including the 2 closest to me, that have no Rosary groups whatsoever. I've heard RC priests on radio and TV lament the fact that so few Catholics even say the Rosary anymore. Pope John Paul II to his credit was a well known advocate of the Holy Rosary.

The cinema, radio and television killed off Sunday-night religion in most places.

And the people got the idea that the Office was something only the Clergy 'did'.

Dear Friends,

Up here, the rosary is not said in Church as a public devotion, either before the Liturgy or otherwise. Abuses and over the top expressions are certainly things to be dealt with on the pastoral level and with pastoral care.

St Louis de Montfort came into the picture because of his importance to the Marian spirituality of Pope John Paul II. Montfort is a reference for Western Marian spirituality but not the only reference to be sure. He does not teach Eastern Christians anything in their Marian devotion - in fact, many of his references come directly from the Eastern Fathers and some from Eastern liturgical sources. For example, there is nothing offensive to Eastern Christian ears in Montfort's idea of "slave" since the Eastern Octoechos uses this term as well (i.e. "we your slaves, O Theotokos"). And Montfort's reference to the wearing of symbolic chains to indicate one's discipleship to Christ through the Theotokos is also not foreign to the Christian East and its chain-bearing saints.

And in the 2003 Encyclopedia of Orthodoxy there is the reference to the life of St Seraphim of Sarov who indicates that one of his visions of the Mother of God taught him that the personal recital of 150 Hail Mary's daily is of "greater value than any other prayer, Canon or Akathist." It is there and in other sources for any to inspect.

That does not, however, mean that liturgical prayer takes second place to anything - the rosary is a private devotion, first and last.

Perhaps rather than try to "fight" paraliturgical devotions in a parish where they are established, one could perhaps work around them. I've seen it happen here to great pastoral effect. The more one tries to extract something from the people's hands, such as a rosary, the more they hang onto it.

Alex