Читать книгу Why the Rosary, Why Now? - Gretchen Crowe Editor - Страница 8

Chapter one

To Break Through the Noise

I have a thing for audiobooks. Maybe it’s the accents of the narrators, or the way I can enter into a story while convincing myself I am productively multitasking, or how they seem to calm and focus my overactive and seemingly ever-swirling thoughts. Whatever the reason, I own dozens of them, and I love to listen, and re-listen, to the stories. The more engrossed I am in them, however, the more I find that I tune out the world around me. Today’s technology has made it possible to hop from activity to activity, all while being absorbed simultaneously by other things.

I’m not alone. For some of us, it’s the lure of the Face-book or Twitter feed; for others, it’s binge-watching television shows; for still more it’s the never-ending texting conversation or Snapchat messaging. The noise is all around us, and it seems to never, ever end.

According to a Nielson report issued in June 2016, Americans spend more than ten hours a day looking at some type of screen, with smartphone usage alone up 60 percent from just a year prior. We tell ourselves we are being productive. We’re using the tools at hand to stay connected with the world so we can better do our jobs or improve our knowledge. We’re staying connected with loved ones. And those things are all partially true. But here’s the real truth: When we are surrounded by constant noise, it becomes much more difficult to nurture relationships, including, and especially, our relationship with God.

This truth was expressed thoughtfully in a 1973 homily by Cardinal Albino Luciani, then archbishop of Venice, who would go on to be elected pontiff in 1978 and would take the name Pope John Paul I. The focus of Cardinal Luciani’s homily was the Rosary and how it increasingly was being considered outdated, arcane, boring, and repetitious—in short, a thing of the past. But before he expanded on that theme, the cardinal first identified what he called a “crisis of prayer in general” facing the Church. “People are completely caught up in material interests; they think very little about their souls,” he said. “And noise has invaded our existence.”

If “Papa Luciani” identified the invasion of noise as a threat in 1973 Italy, what would he think of early twenty-first-century America? Indeed, in the early twenty-first century, Pope John Paul II wrote in his apostolic letter on the Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, that “one drawback of a society dominated by technology and the mass media is the fact that silence becomes increasingly difficult to achieve.” And it’s this lack of silence that helps lead to an atmosphere in which prayer, including the Rosary, is discarded.

Praying the Rosary, however, can help reverse this trend, even as it is threatened by it. By their very meditative nature, the prayers of the Rosary naturally enable one to break through the noise of everyday life and find silence. As Pope John Paul II wrote in his apostolic letter: “After the announcement of the mystery and the proclamation of the word, it is fitting to pause and focus one’s attention for a suitable period of time on the mystery concerned, before moving into vocal prayer. A discovery of the importance of silence is one of the secrets of practicing contemplation and meditation” (31). In short, the Rosary not only benefits from silence, it helps foster it, and this is a lesson just as applicable today as it was 50 years ago.

When we speak of breaking through the noise, however, we must acknowledge the existence of internal noises that can be just as powerful as those that are external. These interior barriers to prayer often manifest themselves in the form of pride and self-centeredness. Here again we can look to the example of Cardinal Luciani and his episcopal motto: humility. On September 6, 1978, at one of the few General Audiences of his thirty-three-day pontificate, Pope John Paul I said: “I run the risk of making a blunder, but I will say it: The Lord loves humility so much that, sometimes, he permits serious sins. Why? In order that those who committed these sins may, after repenting, remain humble. One does not feel inclined to think oneself half a saint, half an angel, when one knows that one has committed serious faults. The Lord recommended it so much: be humble. Even if you have done great things, say: ‘We are useless servants.’ On the contrary, the tendency in all of us is rather the contrary: to show off. Lowly, lowly: this is the Christian virtue which concerns ourselves.”

It is this lowliness that Cardinal Luciani refers to which can combat the internal noise that afflicts us. Many may consider the Rosary repetitious, boring, or what he calls a “poor prayer.” But when we pray this simple prayer faithfully and with humility, the barriers of inner turmoil and distraction disappear. As we experience how the Rosary helps us break through the noise of our own pride and selfishness, we are better able to recognize how truly great the gift of the Rosary is and how it remains an essential tool to help us grow spiritually today.

As Pope Benedict XVI said in a 2008 address following the recitation of the most holy Rosary at the Basilica of St. Mary Major: “Today, together we confirm that the holy Rosary is not a pious practice banished to the past, like prayers of other times thought of with nostalgia. Instead, the Rosary is experiencing a new springtime. Without a doubt, this is one of the most eloquent signs of love that the young generation nourish for Jesus and his mother, Mary. In the current world, so dispersive, this prayer helps to put Christ at the center, as the Virgin did, who meditated within all that was said about her Son, and also what he did and said.”

In the following homily, given against the backdrop of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and a changing Church, Cardinal Luciani gives a beautiful defense of the Rosary, one which we can still appreciate and take to heart today.

Is the Rosary Outdated?

Homily for the centenary of the feast of the Holy Rosary1

by Cardinal Albino Luciani (later Pope John Paul I)

October 7, 1973

What would happen during a meeting of Catholics if I were to invite the ladies and gentlemen to show what they had in their pockets or purses? I would certainly see a quantity of combs, pocket mirrors, tubes of lipstick, change purses, cigarette lighters, and other more or less useful little items. But how many rosaries? Years ago, I would have seen more of them.

In [Alessandro] Manzoni’s house in Milan today, you can see his rosary beads hanging at the head of his bed: he said the Rosary habitually, and in his novel The Betrothed, Lucia [the heroine] pulled out her beads and said the Rosary at the most dramatic moments.²

Windthorst, a German statesman, was once invited by some friends who were non-practicing Catholics to show his rosary. It was a trick: they had removed his rosary from his left pocket beforehand. When Windthorst did not find it in the left one, he put his hand into the right and ended up looking good: He always carried a spare rosary! Christophe von Gluck, a great musician, used to withdraw for a few minutes during receptions at the Court of Vienna to say his Rosary. Blessed Contardo Ferrini, a university professor in Pavia, would invite his friends to say the Rosary when he was a guest in their home. St. Bernadette assured us that when Our Lady appeared to her, she had a rosary over her arm, asked her if she also had one, and invited her to say it, while the Virgin recommended the reciting of the Rosary to the three little shepherds at Fátima.

Why have I begun with this series of examples?

Because the Rosary is contested by some. They say: it is an infantile and superstitious prayer, not worthy of adult Christians. Or: it is a prayer that becomes automatic, reduced to a hasty, monotonous, and boring repetition of Hail Marys. Or: it’s old-fashioned stuff; today there are better things: the reading of the Bible, for example, which is to the Rosary as the wheat is to the chaff!

On this subject, allow me to give a few impressions as a shepherd of souls.

A first impression: the crisis of the Rosary comes in second place. Today, in first place, there is a crisis of prayer in general. People are completely caught up in material interests; they think very little about their souls. And noise has invaded our existence. Macbeth would be able to repeat: “I have murdered sleep, I have murdered silence!”³

We have trouble finding a few little scraps of time for the inner life and the dulcis sermoncinatio or “sweet colloquy” with God. And it is a real loss. Donoso Cortes said, “Today the world is going badly because there are more battles than there are prayers.” Communal liturgies, which are certainly a great good, are being developed: they are not enough, however; personal conversation with God is also necessary.

A second impression: When people talk about “adult Christians” in prayer, sometimes they exaggerate. Personally, when I speak alone with God and Our Lady, I prefer to feel like a child rather than an adult. The miter, the skullcap, and the ring disappear; I send the adult on vacation and the bishop too, with the staid, serious, and dignified behavior that go along with them, in order to abandon myself to the spontaneous tenderness that a child has for Mama and Papa. To be, at least for half an hour or so, as I am in reality, with my misery and the best of myself, to feel surfacing from the depths of my being the child I once was, a child who wants to laugh, chatter, and to love the Lord, and who sometimes feels the need to weep so that mercy may be shown him, helps me to pray. The Rosary, a simple and easy prayer, in turn, helps me to be a child, and I am not ashamed of it at all.

A third impression: I should not and do not want to think badly of anyone, but I confess that I have several times been tempted to conclude that this or that person thinks he is an adult just because he is acting like a judge, criticizing from on high. I feel like saying to him: “What do you mean, mature? When it comes to prayer, you are an adolescent in crisis, a disappointed and rebellious person, who has not yet gotten rid of the aggressiveness of the difficult age!” May God forgive me for my rash judgment! And now I come to the other objections.

Is the Rosary a repetitious prayer? Father [Charles] De Foucauld used to say, “Love is expressed in few words, always the same, and constantly repeated.”

A woman who was traveling by train had put her baby to sleep in the baggage carrier.⁴ When the little one awoke, he looked down from the carrier and saw his mother sitting in front of him watching over him. “Mama!” he said. And the other: “Darling!” And for a long while the dialogue between the two did not change: “Mama!” from above, “Darling!” from below. There was no need for other words.

Don’t we have the Bible? Certainly, and it is a quid summum, but not everyone is prepared to read it or has time to. For those who do read it, it will also be useful for them at times, while traveling, on the street, and in times of particular need, to talk with Our Lady, if they believe that she is our mother and sister. If the reading of the Bible is just beginning to be appreciated as mere study, the mysteries of the Rosary, when meditated on and savored, are the Bible studied in depth, and made spiritual flesh and blood.

A boring prayer? It depends. It can be, instead, a prayer full of joy and happiness. If you know how to say it, the Rosary becomes a lifting of the eyes to Mary, which increases in intensity as you go on. It can also turn out to be a refrain that springs from the heart and calms the soul like a song.

A poor prayer, the Rosary? And what kind of prayer, then, would be “rich”? The Rosary is a series of Our Fathers, a prayer taught by Jesus, of Hail Marys, God’s greeting of the Virgin through the Angel, of Glory Bes, the praise of the most Holy Trinity. Or would you like lofty theological ponderings instead? They wouldn’t be suitable for the poor, the old, the humble, and the simple. The Rosary expresses faith without invented complications, without evasions, and without many words, it helps us to abandon ourselves to God and to accept suffering generously. God also makes use of theologians, but in distributing his grace, he makes use above all of the littleness of the humble and those who abandon themselves to his will.

There is another thing to be considered: The family should be the first school of piety and religious spirituality for the children. Religious teaching that comes from the parents, [Pope] Paul VI has said recently, is difficult, authorized, and irreplaceable. Difficult because of the climate of permissiveness and secularism that surrounds us; authorized, because it is part of the mission entrusted by God to parents; and irreplaceable, because it is in the most tender age that we develop the inclination towards and the habit of religious piety. The recitation of the Rosary, although in a shortened and adapted form in the evening by the parents together with their children, is a kind of domestic liturgy. The writer Louis Veuillot used to confess that the beginning of his return to God was the sight of the Rosary that he saw being said with faith by a Roman family.

With these convictions in my heart, it has been a consolation for me to hear of the initiative of the celebrations of the past few days. The Dominican Fathers, already so worthy because of their spreading of the Rosary in our city, and the “Gesuati,” the parish of the Rosary par excellence, are planning the relaunching of this great and pious practice. Hoping that their work may be blessed by God, I have come to this liturgy as to a joyous religious festival.

Unfortunately, the joy is deeply disturbed by the rumblings of the ominous and senseless war that broke out yesterday in the Middle East. When, oh when, will men stop hating each other? When will they be willing to sacrifice their wretched dreams of an unstable national supremacy to the supreme and stable good of peace? When will we finally see an international body furnished with real powers for avoiding the outbreak of such disasters? We cannot help thinking at this moment with profound consternation of the impending harm to individuals, families, and entire nations; and of the anguish of so many of our brothers and sisters, who, for the most part, are helplessly suffering the consequences of decisions being taken at the top level of their nations. And the Middle East is also a tinderbox. We must pray to the Lord not only that the war, which has unfortunately broken out, may remain limited, but that it may be quickly put under control and extinguished. In the Rosary we are accustomed to invoke Our Lady by her title of “Queen of Peace.” Let us say to her fervently: Regina pacis, ora pro nobis!

Notes

¹ Opera onium 6:199-202 (title by translator).

² The Betrothed, chapters 20, 21.

³ Cf. Macbeth, II, ii, 37, 42.

⁴ On Italian trains, the baggage carrier is a bag or net hanging above and in front of the seat.