I reached home the other day, only to discover that my rosary had broke at one of the joints. And promptly, my mood took a dip. It actually took me a while to put a finger on what exactly made me unhappy - after all, isn’t it just a rosary that could be bought at any church?
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The rosary has always held a special place in the heart of many Catholics.
I still remember my first rosary - a baby blue rosary with plastic beads, strung together by coarse thread. It followed me through my baptism days in early Primary school, before ceding its position to its crystal counterpart during my confirmation days - a gift from my Godfather. I even used to own its pocket-sized cousin which followed me around in my wallet!
I remember my weekly family trips to the Novena, where the people sitting around held a rosary in their hands, murmuring the familiar words of the rosary. I remember the routine rosary sessions held before every weekend evening mass; and the handful of devotees gathering around the grotto of my church where the statue of Mother Mary stands, beads in hands, prayers in heart.
I must confess that I wasn’t one of those particularly pious types who prayed the rosary every day - well, only when I was really young and my mom made the whole family recite the rosary before bedtime every night. But with schoolwork piling up as I grew older, family rosary prayers became a luxury. Instead, I started praying the rosary to sleep instead. Well, it isn’t very hard to guess then, that more often than not, I fell asleep barely halfway into all 5 decades.
Oops.
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Coming back to my broken rosary, this one’s a gift from my mom who bought it from the Vatican on a trip there. So yeah, you can say that I was pretty upset. Upset since it was a gift from my mom; upset since I couldn’t exactly just buy a replacement for this from my local parish; and mostly, upset since I couldn’t remember when the last time I recited the full rosary was.
When was the last time you said the full rosary? Maybe it’s time?
I’m off to fix mine! ~ By Alvin
Dr’s Blog is a feature of the CMG web site that aims to encourage interaction between Guild members. We hope to foster a spirit of community through the sharing of thoughts and personal experirences. The opinions expressed in these blogs are entirely those of the contributors and not of the Catholic Medical Guild of Singapore.