Our Lady of the Rosary

October is a wonderful month to start saying the rosary or to renew a practice of saying the rosary. As I was looking around the internet for some new ways to spark enthusiasm in my children for the practice I came upon these very interesting sites!

Rosary links on Diigo
Follow Elena LaVictoire’s board rosary on Pinterest.

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About 20 years ago my mother gave me a huge wall rosary. At the time Mr. Pete and I were very blase about our Catholic Faith, but my mom kept praying for us and giving me stuff like this. I would politely accept it and then put it away somewhere. I am so grateful that I never threw any of it out! Anyway, now I treasure my wall rosary. It’s beautiful. Its large beads make it very interesting for smaller children and easy for them to follow along.

 

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When people ask me for guidance in saying the rosary I have a few favorite sources.

I also have a Rosary App on my phone.

My favorite rosary book is Amy Welborn’s Praying the Rosary

This includes all of the prayers and also special medications on each of the mysteries.

The Rosary Shop has lots of rosaries for sale as well as free tutorials such as getting started on the Liturgy of the Hours. They also provide special custom rosaries. A service I recommend all of the time to new brides, for anniversaries or funerals is the Rosary Shop’s commemorative rosary. From their site:

If you have flowers from a special event in your or a loved one’s life — wedding, birth, funeral, etc. — we will be happy to create from them beads that can be incorporated into a rosary. This is sometimes referred to as a memorial, keepsake, legacy, remembrance or heirloom rose petal rosary.

There are many different processes for making rose petal rosary beads, most of which involve boiling a large number of petals and mixing them with various organic ingredients. We do it a little differently because we not
only wish to preserve the flowers, but want to make sure that the finished bead is going to last as long as possible. We chop and then grind the dried petals down with a mortar and pestle, gently knead the rose powder into ceramic clay, hand-roll the beads to 8mm each and fire them (unglazed) in a kiln. This creates strong, ceramic beads that contain the essence and elements of the original
petals, thereby preserving the memory for a lifetime. Alternatively, we can use polymer clay.

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As I was looking around for further inspiration, I found some of the writings that I would like to share from Pope Pius XII, who served from 1939 to 1958.

But the rosary, beloved sons and daughters, also signifies that the mysteries of your future will not always be uniquely b e made  up of joys. They will also be made up of providential sorrows. It is the law of all human life, just as it is for every rose branch that thorns be intermingled with flowers

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Rosary of children, rosary of the little ones who holding the rosary
beads between their tiny, clumsy fingers, repeat slowly, with application and effort, but already with love, the Our Father and the Hail Mary which their mother has patiently taught them. They make mistakes, it is true. At times, they hesitate, they get confused, but there is such confident candor in the gaze they fix on the image of Mary, on her whom they already recognize as their heavenly mother. Next, it will be the rosary of their First Holy Communion which has a place all its own among the memories of the great day. It will be a beautiful memory, provided that it remains what it should be, not an empty article of luxury, but rather an instrument which helps them to pray and which
conjures up the thought of Mary.

Rosary of the mother of a family. Chaplet of the working woman, or of the humble and strong farm wife worn out with age, which she perhaps cannot take up until the evening when, exhausted from her day’s work she will still finding her faith and in her love the strength to say it, fighting against sleep, for all her loved ones especially for those who are most exposed to dangers of body or soul, for those who are tempted or are grieved or whom she sorrowfully sees shun God. Rosary of the woman of the world, perhaps more rich, but often burdened with worries and still more with heavier sorrows.

Rosary of the father of a family, of the working and energetic man, who never forgets to carry his rosary with him along with his fountain pen,
and notebook, who great professor, famous engineer, renowned doctor, eloquent lawyer, artistic genius, expert agronomist is not ashamed to say the rosary with devout simplicity during the brief moments of respite taken from the tyranny of professional work, in order to strengthen his Christian soul in the peace of a church at the foot of the tabernacle.

And lastly, the rosary of the entire family, recited by all young and old, in
common, which, come evening gathers at the feet of Mary those whom the day’s work had separated and scattered; which unites them with the absent and with the dead in fervent prayer; which in this manner consecrates the bond which joins them all under the maternal protection of the Immaculate Virgin Queen of the Most Holy Rosary