THE ROSARY AS A GATEWAY TO PRAYER
Our Lady of Sorrows. Photo by Fr. James Bradley, via Flickr.
I decided that I was an atheist in middle school, which was, for better or worse, also the heyday of the “New Atheists.” From then on, I read everything about atheism I could get my hands on, including, naturally, the greatest hits from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Because the views of the New Atheists could often be described as not just atheist, but also anti-theist, my own views dipped in and out of that line of thought as well. Their promise that, by the power of simple logic, anyone could rid their lives of myth and superstition and then be empowered to do that for other people was tempting. It was especially tempting for someone who grew up outside of any religion and had no particularly strong attachment to it. What teenager wouldn’t be tempted by the ability to simply use logic to figure out things that even adults seemingly couldn’t?
Given that, it came as a surprise to my friends and family when I made the choice to attend the University of Portland, a small Roman Catholic university in Portland, Oregon. While adjusting to life at UP and navigating a relationship that probably should not have survived past high school, I found solace in two places on campus. The first was the chapel in my dorm, where I was part of the choir that sang for our weekly hall Mass. I didn’t initially really understand what was going on and was mostly just trying to do what everyone else was doing, but I missed being involved in a music program, and it didn’t require an audition, so it was an easy choice to participate. The second was the small Marian garden next to the main chapel on campus, with a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, the patron of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Like with Mass, it didn’t mean much to me other than being a nice, peaceful place to sit and think on campus.
Nine years later, in mid-2021, a lot had changed. Like the rest of the world, I was existing in the middle of a pandemic. I had gone to law school and become an attorney and was serving as a sort of hybrid attorney and social worker (which they definitely do not teach you about in law school) to low-income tenants facing eviction proceedings. I won’t turn this into a lecture on the finer points of landlord-tenant law in Arizona, but suffice to say, it’s not great for tenants. I was experiencing deep dissatisfaction with my job for many reasons, but a significant portion of that was wanting so desperately to mirror the belief of my clients that there was something for them beyond just their current, terrible situations. I was struck by clients who would end our phone calls, even in the midst of what was undoubtedly some of the worst times of their lives, by saying something along the lines of “thank God for people like you who do this work.” That tended to leave me confused, especially since a lot of the advice was just translating bad news they already knew from legalese into normal English. But it did start to nag at me.
At the same time, I was also in a much better relationship with someone who modeled Christianity in a way I had not really experienced before. Sure, I knew that she was Roman Catholic and we had talked about that early on, but what really stood out was the degree to which she did, and still does, embody St. Paul’s statement that, of faith, hope, and love, “the greatest of these is love.” She meets everything and everyone, from family and friends, to victims of our society’s long list of injustices, to anyone else that needs it, with love. Between what I was seeing as an attorney and that relationship, I finally started to drop my objections to religion.
The problem with dropping objections to something that you’ve spent one half of your life as ambivalent toward and the other half as relatively hostile toward is figuring out where exactly to start. Somewhat obviously, prayer seemed like the logical next step. But, even though I knew I would benefit from the structure of worship and regularly passed an Episcopal church that was just down the street from my apartment, going to a church felt too intimidating at that point. Since graduating from UP, I had often thought of singing in choir and how much fun it had been, but less so about the garden. So, after poking around the internet for a while and stumbling upon a picture of the new grotto that had been installed at the garden, I thought back to the time I spent there and the peace it brought. I prayed the Rosary a couple of times without actually having the beads and quickly realized why you should use them. I decided to buy Anglican prayer beads and a Rosary.
A joke (that is actually 100% true) that I have started making to people is that I have never, ever experienced a passing interest or question in my life. If I feel like I don’t know enough about something, I will eventually read about and research it until I do, regardless of the rabbit holes it takes me down–which meant that in addition to the peace it brought me, praying the Rosary was also a form of theological education. Although I had to take theology courses as part of UP’s core curriculum, I took it all in through the lens of someone who definitely didn’t believe in that stuff. Sure, I retained the basics, but those classes were always more of a curiosity. So, when it came to the mysteries of the Rosary, I knew the big ones. The Nativity, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection? Got it. But the Finding of Jesus in the Temple, the Wedding at Cana, and the Assumption of Mary? Less so. The Apostles’ Creed and the Salve Regina? Definitely not.
The Rosary was also a form of theological education I hadn’t experienced before. It was no longer just a class that I had to take to graduate and that I had a passing interest in, but something that I was actually wrestling with for the first time in my life. Praying the Rosary provided a structure that turned prayer, something very intimidating and unfamiliar, into something that was easy to do and brought me peace. This helped put me on the road to start attending an Episcopal church in November 2021 and getting baptized at Easter Vigil in 2022.
Having attended a church consistently for the better part of a year, my prayer life is now much more diverse. There is, of course, weekly Sunday Eucharist at the church. But privately, there’s the Daily Office, Compline, a Bible reading challenge, and a variety of things that fit well with Anglican prayer beads. There are also, to fulfill St. Paul’s directive to “pray without ceasing,” countless short, quiet moments throughout the day of contemporaneous prayer, even though I am not very good at it! However, like anything else that’s special because it was your introduction to something new, the Rosary holds an especially meaningful place in my heart.
After I pitched this piece, I read through some other articles that were published as part of the call regarding private devotionals. In Kristin Wheeler’s piece on writing an icon of St. Peter, she writes: “So friends, don't for one second doubt what you are called to do. Do not doubt that every moment of your life has meaning and it may not be revealed to you what that meaning is for a long time (like years or more) but it's there.” I don’t know what I am called to do and make no claims about an ability to correctly interpret every moment in my life, but I do admit that it is hard to not see a through line from my choice to attend UP to where I am now. That isn’t to say that there weren’t other things that influenced me in one way or another, of course. But, finding solace in Our Lady of Sorrows when I was not always in the best frame of mind at UP firmly influenced my decision to act on a pull to faith rather than push it away. That I acted on it by starting to pray the Rosary only strengthens that feeling.
Toward the end of praying the Rosary, you recite the Salve Regina. That ends with: “Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.” It is my earnest hope that praying the Rosary helped to put me on a path that allows me to constantly strive to be made worthy. For that, I will forever be grateful.
