devotions to Our Lady

[Catherineanne]

Are there other devotions to the BVM? I find the Rosary too long. Please direct me to a site where I can find other alternatives. I pray for the day where I can do the Rosary daily, but in the meantime I would love something shorter as there are those days when you simply cannot fit it into your day.

The Angelus is good, except I have not yet found a way to consistently remember the times. I need three alarms on my phone, and it only has one. However, the rosary itself does not have to be long. You don't have to say a whole decade at once; one Ave is enough.

I am very high, but I would say if you only have time for a brief prayer, then the Lord's prayer is better than the Ave. If you have time for more than the Lord's prayer, then that, then however many Ave's you can manage, then the Gloria. That is a good combination for any time of day, any place.

And if you really have no time whatever; you have woken up with 30 seconds to dress and 2 minutes to catch your train, then the shortest prayer that I know of is 'serviam', which means, 'I will serve (the Lord)'. It stands in contradistinction to the 'Non serviam' which is attributed to Lucifer at the point immediately before he fell from Grace, so it is a very powerful little prayer indeed; very good to begin the day with. Rather like raising a standard, I think.

An alternative is to get the rosary on CD and play it, either in the car or wherever. I have it in both Latin and English, and I tend not to pray aloud alongside it; I just let it wash over me and fill my home. Sometimes I meditate on the mysteries, but as often as not I wander into thinking of all sorts of other stuff; that can't really be helped, I think. (Not when you are as stressed as I tend to be, anyway.) But there is often time to have the rosary playing in the background when doing something else. My favourite is when sewing or painting.

I would have it playing when gardening as well, but that might be a bit too much for the poor neighbours, so I tend just to play music then. Quiet music. A futile attempt to calm the whirling vortex of stress and dysfunction which is my life. I have recently been told I have dissociative identity disorder, what used to be called split personality. Sometimes one of me posts tmi, and then another comes along, feels unsafe, and deletes it, as above.

Which reminds me, the rosary is very good at calming the effects of stress.

 

[Vyvyan]

This may sound like a stupid question..... but is it permissible to pray to the Virgin Mary and the saints if you're not a Roman Catholic? I'd always been told that doing so wasn't right (born and raised an Anglican and we were never encouraged to pray to anyone except God/Christ).

Any idea how I would go about doing this as I've never done it before.

 

[Eastern Drifter]

The Angelus is the most obvious, said traditionally at 6am, noon and 6pm:

Angelus

The Angelus - YouTube

Their angelic voices have stolen my heart.

 

[Eastern Drifter]

This may sound like a stupid question..... but is it permissible to pray to the Virgin Mary and the saints if you're not a Roman Catholic?

I do. I'm not a Roman Catholic, nor am I yet baptized as an Eastern Orthodox (that's my ultimate goal after catechumen classes).

 

[Catherineanne]

This may sound like a stupid question..... but is it permissible to pray to the Virgin Mary and the saints if you're not a Roman Catholic? I'd always been told that doing so wasn't right (born and raised an Anglican and we were never encouraged to pray to anyone except God/Christ).

Any idea how I would go about doing this as I've never done it before.

There is nothing to stop any Anglican praying the rosary. Although it is predominantly a Roman Catholic practice I know lots of Anglicans who regularly pray the rosary as well.

There are lots of online sites to help with this. Take a look around, and choose one.

Pray The Rosary Online

The Holy Rosary | How to Pray the Rosary | www.sancta.org

 

[Minty]

Thank you for those links, CA... very enlightening

 

[Catherineanne]

Thank you for those links, CA... very enlightening

No problem, M. Nice to see you again.

For anyone unfamiliar with the rosary, it is divided up into sections, called decades.

One decade comprises an Our Father (or Pater), then ten Hail Mary's (or Ave's), then the Gloria.

While the person is saying these prayers, they use the beads of a rosary, or failing that their fingers, to count the numbers.

For each decade there is a mystery to consider or meditate upon. The idea is to focus on that mystery during the prayer, in order to learn from it, and to gain Grace from that learning. The mysteries are divided into groups of five, and there are three traditional groups, and one additional one.

Each day of the week has set mysteries ascribed to it, to enable a person to pray through the whole cycle in a week. Alternatively, we can just go all the way through.

The rosary can be prayed in any language, but preferably only one that you already understand. I am very fortunate in having learned Latin at school, so with a bit of brushing up, I was able to use either Latin or English, which is lovely.

The mysteries are listed on the sites I linked to, but in brief they are:

Joyful mysteries
Annunciation
Visitation
Birth of the Lord
Presentation in the Temple
Finding in the Temple

Luminous mysteries (not traditional; introduced by JPII)
Baptism of the Lord
Wedding at Cana
Proclamation of the kingdom
Transfiguration
Institution of the Eucharist

Sorrowful mysteries
Gethsemane
Scourging
Crowning with thorns
Carrying the cross
Crucifixion

Glorious
Resurrection
Ascension
Holy Spirit
Assumption of Our Lady
Coronation of Our Lady

Some people prefer to only use one set of mysteries, very often the sorrowful ones. This really doesn't matter. The important thing is to focus on the events of the gospels, and to learn from them. One thing I found when I prayed all the way through is the proximity of the Last Supper to the events of the Passion; because we know what is coming the Passion overshadows the meditations on the Last Supper, and makes it more poignant. This in turn makes every Eucharist that we go to more meaningful, imo.

Very often these stories are so familiar to us that we forget to revisit them. The rosary brings us into daily contact with the gospel, and face to face with its realities. Prayed with devotion it is a really powerful prayer. People imagine it is about focussing on Our Lady, but it is far more than that. The focus on her only happens because we are participating directly in the gospel events and she is there, but the actual focus is on the Lord.

So, if any Anglican wants to try it, go ahead. And if you don't want to try it, then don't.