Five things I learnt from my first Rosary ADVENTure

During Advent I took part in the Rosary ADVENTure, praying the Rosary each day. The Rosary ADVENTure was devised by Fr Rick Morley, a priest from New Jersey and Fr Sam McNally-Cross, the Vicar of St Thomas Kensal Rise in London. They created a Twitter account to form a community of pilgrims from around the world committed to praying the rosary through Advent, with prayer intentions tweeted at the same time each day. Each tweet was ‘liked’ or ‘retweeted’ when prayers had been said.

The Rosary ADVENTure started in 2017, but I was travelling around South Africa with limited access to the internet, so it was hard to fully participate. I wanted to take part in 2018 to experience praying the Rosary each day and to discover how Twitter can be used to build a community of prayer. 

There are many stories of people whose lives have been transformed by praying the Rosary, some of which are told in this film. My reflections on the experience are rather more modest in comparison, but, even after just 25 days, I began to notice changes in my thoughts, prayers and my behaviour. 

1. I felt connected to others through our shared relationship with God alone; this awareness changed the power-balance in my prayers 

In the Rosary ADVENTure we were given the Christian names of five people who had signed up to join the prayer community; a different list of names was tweeted each day. 

In the churches I have attended, when we hear names read out during prayers, it is usually a list of those who are ill, near to death or the names of the faithful departed. I wondered if this influenced the balance in my private prayers, which can often seem more focussed on other people and my understanding of their needs, rather than on my relationship with God. Maybe I choose to place myself between other people and God, identifying problems and seeking God’s help to solve them - casting myself as some sort of prayer super-hero? A selfishness masquerading behind a facade of self-lessness?

During the Rosary ADVENTure I wasn’t able to direct specific prayers - because I didn’t know the personal situation of any of those named in the prayer intentions. Only their first names were listed in each tweet, not their Twitter handles - so there was no way of sneaking a peek at their timelines to try to find out anything about their lives (although from time to time I tried to work out who might be who by looking through the likes and retweets to to match names to faces!) Without the ability to control the nature of the prayers, I noticed that I seemed to be praying in a different way; that each of us may know the joy of God’s loving presence - of being with God and hearing His word - a prayer of listening rather than speaking. 

I do not think it is an overstatement to say I found this approach liberating. During Advent I grew to feel connected to a community of people linked by our shared relationship with God alone - and through prayer that was not prompted by some need or circumstance I had identified, but by being open to God’s love. I felt this gave me a new insight into the wisdom of Dorotheos of Gaza who said: 

“Imagine that the world is a circle, that God is the center, and that the radii are the different ways human beings live. When those who wish to come closer to God walk towards the center of the circle, they come closer to one another at the same time as to God. The closer they come to God, the closer they come to one another. And the closer they come to one another, the closer they come to God.” (Dorotheus of Gaza, Instructions VI.)

The Annunciation Fra Angelico 1437-46

2. I thought of other people - and spoke to my own Mother - more frequently!

Changing the power balance in my prayers - focusing on listening to God rather than speaking to Him - did not mean that I separated myself from the world around me and floated off alone on a cloud. My feet were still firmly rooted to the earth. Rather than turning away from other people and day-to-day concerns, my sense is that I thought about other people more often during the Rosary ADVENTure than I would otherwise have done.

I think these words of St. Therese of Lisieux help to explain this apparent contradiction;

"The Rosary is a long chain that links heaven and earth. One end of it is in our hands and the other end is in the hands of the Holy Virgin…The Rosary prayer rises like incense to the feet of the Almighty. Mary responds at once like a beneficial dew, bringing new life to human hearts.”

I experiment with different types of prayer and have prayed using a rosary in the past – but not on a regular, daily basis. I own two sets – one is an ‘Anglican’ or ‘protestant’ rosary (which has fewer beads) and one is a more traditional arrangement. During the Rosary ADVENTure I used the traditional Rosary with five decades and focused on one name as I prayed through each. Using the prayer intentions in this way meant dwelling on each name for some time (I tend to pray slowly!)

Perhaps because I knew nothing about the people I was praying for, I frequently brought to mind other people I know with the same name – often those I had not thought about or made contact with for a long time; I also found myself thinking about saints or biblical figures and passages from the Bible connected to some of the names. 

Psychologists might describe it as frequency illusion brought about by the repetition of the word mother rather than a result of prayer, but I noticed from looking at the number of calls and WhatsApp messages on my phone that during Advent I have been in contact with my Mum more than I normally do. Most of the messages or conversations were not deep or ground breaking (usually asking for help finding people’s addresses to send Christmas cards!) It is possible that at that time of year I always do the same - but my sense is that this more frequent contact was a result of praying the Rosary. 

In prayer, inspired by the words of the Ave Maria and the Salve Regina, I was more conscious of my relationship with my mother and the lives of other mothers I know; my sisters and their families, mothers at work, as well as those known to me who are struggling to have children and those who are unable to do so. 

Thinking about the Holy Family led me to think more about my own. My grandfather, who died when I was very young, was from a Catholic family. He was an altar boy at St Georges’s Cathedral in Southwark. As I prayed I thought of him and wondered if he had been taught to pray the Rosary. I spent time looking at photographs and information I had collected when researching my family tree.

Christ with the believer 

3. I felt closer to the mystery of the Incarnation

In 2017 I spent most of Advent and Christmas in South Africa - my first Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere. With no snow or dark nights or sleigh bells and holly to distract my senses, I felt closer to the mystery of the Incarnation there than ever before.

Praying the Rosary each day during Advent, reading and reflecting on twenty different events in the life of Christ through the different mysteries, certainly helped to have the same effect - but I think it was the sense of touching the Rosary beads which brought the mystery of the Incarnation closer. 

My partner Henry has his own Rosary – quite a delicate set. I have used it before but am scared of snapping the chain, so I found my own which can withstand being carried about in my pocket or bag and being manhandled by my fat fingers! They came from an American company called Rugged Rosaries– I bought them after seeing a tweet from Fr Sam a few years ago. They have lived up to their name! Nothing has snapped!

I am not sure if it is the case with every set of rosary beads (or pair of hands!) but my Rosary seemed to retain the heat from my hands. If I became distracted or had to stop praying for a moment for some reason, I could find my place again by feeling the warmth of the beads, even if the Rosary was in my pocket and out of sight.  Perhaps this sounds a bit trite, but the sense of touch - feeling this warmth - as much as reading the mysteries themselves - helped me to feel feel closer to the mystery of the Incarnation. 

4. I reduced speed 

I am not the only person who spends a great deal of time rushing around the city. Fitting in time to pray the Rosary daily meant I often prayed while on the move. This in itself was not unusual - since moving to Central London and walking virtually everywhere, I have grown used to praying while walking, often using the Jesus Prayer or the Lord’s Prayer.

As I prayed the Rosary, focussing on a different name through each decade, I noticed that my breathing often settled to a rhythm based on the syllables of each name - a form of Centering Prayer. This was a restful experience when it happened and caused me to slow my walking speed, to stop and notice my surroundings and other people more. 

I remembered these words of Kosuke Koyama:

“God walks slowly because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed....It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.”

 5. I stopped worrying about praying the “right way”  

I had never received any instruction on how to pray the Rosary and was a little nervous at the start about “doing it right.” This video by Fr Matthew Cashmore (who you may recognise from the TV series A Vicar’s Life) proved very helpful. I also found an app with an ‘interactive’ rosary, which automatically selected the appropriate ‘mystery’ for each day and the appropriate prayers and readings to recite. I do not have a very good memory so found the app invaluable. On other websites I found out about the ‘fruits’ of the mysteries which I also used as an aid to prayer. 

After a software update the Interactive Rosary app on my phone stopped working for a few days! I had no idea which mystery I should be praying in which day and had even less clue about the text of each mystery. Amidst the confusion I realised that I did, in fact, remember the order of prayers and the events in the life of Christ that were associated with each mystery - so I set about praying without the aid of the app! Improvising within the structure of praying the Rosary was a surprise and also a delight. When I went back to using the app I no longer worried about praying the “right” way. 

I managed to take part in the Rosary ADVENTure every day of Advent (apart from two days when I was ill and spent most of the time lying down in bed!) I am glad I was disciplined enough to take part. I am thankful to Fr Sam and Fr Rick for organising the Rosary ADVENTure. I was grateful for the support and the experiences it has provided