cms@dragon.uucp (08/08/90)
At any rate, has anyone ever read "Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy: A Consideration of the Rosary" by J. Neville Ward? Ward is a Methodist minister serving an ecumenical parish in Canterbury (according to the back cover), and is principally concerned with seeking a contemporary understanding of Christian prayer. In this book, Ward describes the value of experiencing a prayer tradition different from his own. He finds tremendous enrichment in the discipline of prayer in the Rosary. Briefly, the Rosary is a series of meditations on events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. These events are called Mysteries. They are divided into Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries (whence the title, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy). They are: JOYFUL: 1. Anunciation 2. Visitation 3. Nativity 4. Circumcision 5. Finding in the Temple; SORROWFUL: 1. Prayers and Agony in the Garden of Gethsemene 2. Whipping at the Pillar 3. Crowning with Thorns 4. Way of His Cross 5. Crucifixion and Death; GLORIOUS: 1. Resurrection 2. Ascension 3. Descent of the Holy Spirit 4. Assumption of Mary 5. Coronation of Mary and Coronation of All the Saints There's another popular Rosary, known as the Franciscan Rosary, whose Mysteries are somewhat different. I'll post them if anyone expresses an interest. The author makes this interesting comment: "....imaginative involvement in the material of prayer is one of the characteristic forms of Christian praying. In eastern religion the aim of prayer seems to be that the believer should progressively feel pain less, and ultimately transcend it, but in this type of Christian prayer the pain of life is set within the purpose of God as revealed in Christ precisely in order to feel it more deeply and to do something creatively with it, to see it not as a soul-hindrance to be surmounted nor a problem to be solved but as a mystery to be lived through in faith. "Pain is certainly a problem for the philosopher and theologian in that they wrestle with it on the intellectual plane and then may come to us with some theoretical pattern in which suffering seems to cohere with the rest of experience, or they offer the judgement that no such softening of the irrationality of pain is possible. It is a 'mystery' for the person who prays, and of course for the philosopher as one who prays, in that he lives through it in faith, hope and love, desiring to know what God wants him to do with it and about it. While he does this he may inded come to think he undersands it a little more but it is more likely that he will simply come to know more surely that there is no question of not trusting God though the worst comes to the worst. This 'knowledge' is the kind that comes from living through the mystery, it can never come from wrestling with the problem. "So the five forms of suffering at the heart of the Rosary do no require a theoretical meditation, they are meant to be held in a more universal and more personally involved consciousness. It is this idea that is behind the artifice of considering all the mysteries of the Rosary at first as through the eyes of the mother of Jesus. In the mind of the one who prays she is a presence and an attitude. She is by turns the recalled love, fear, confusion, joy of hismother; she is the representative human sympathy of motherhood, happy, hurt, perplexed, angry; she is also, with all-inclusive significance, the original and type of anyone who deeply loves Christ. Because she is all this she is implicitly and in depth the presence of the Church. To meditate the sorrowful mysteries with her means to set oneself to enter the world of pain existentially and also to see it with the faith and thankfulness of the Church. It is of the essence of Christian prayer that what is prayed about is brought into the light of Christian faith and gratitude. In the Rosary this radiance is poured over each mystery in the repeated words of the Our Father, the greeting of the Anunciation, the request for her prayers as the God-bearer, and the Gloria. Certainly the five central mysteries look very different with all that light round them." That last sentence is certainly true! I've found that praying the Rosary while trying to look at Jesus through the eyes of Mary is a very painful yet illuminating experience. I have also tried to pray the Rosary while attempting to look at Jesus through the eyes of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and his other disciples. It's difficult to watch a friend arrested, whipped, humiliated, and hung on an execution stake like a picture on the wall of Jerusalem. My Grandmother taught me, "The deeper you steep yourself in the Passion of Christ, the sweeter the Resurrection tastes." I've found that, after praying the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery, I want to begin praying the Glorious Mysteries immediately. I've also found that waiting 24 hours deepens the mystery, and, yes, the First Glorious Mystery tastes all the sweeter. Has anyone else had that experience? Sincerely, Cindy Smith emory!dragon!cms