Link to the Word

The rosary hung from the wooden post of a shed behind our house. The sacramental had translucent red beads, but its crucifix was missing, hence, I surmised, its outdoor repose. I was just a boy, who didn’t know what the beads were for. But looking back, they did gleam with a rather otherworldly light.

Father and mother taught me the staple rosary prayers: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. One afternoon when I was about 7 and my sister 6, the family sat in what is now Cebu City’s Archdiocesan Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, and father and mother asked us to say these prayers.

Praying the entire Holy Rosary, however, must have become  second nature to me—as I assume it becomes to most Catholic Cebuano children—after kin and neighbors swept me into the pre-dawn auroras. Those streams of candlelight, ancient hymns and whispered prayers carried the image of Mama Mary from house to house.

Each October—Rosary Month—mother encouraged my sister and I to pray the rosary nightly. (We weren’t always faithful; there were nights when we railroaded the prayers so we could make it back to the living room where the TV reigned, churning out shows like The Uncanny X-Men or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.)

I used cream-colored beads and a prayer book titled “Our Keepsakes” that listed which mysteries from the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and Mama Mary to contemplate—joyful, sorrowful or glorious—before each of five sets of an Our Father, 10 Hail Marys, a Glory Be and an O My Jesus.

Having no inkling of the meaning of each grandiose-sounding, Latinized-English mystery (Annunciation, Visitation, etc.), I turned to book illustrations for clues. Anyhow, I prayed the rosary because I understood that Mary was my Mama and it felt good to hear the Name “Jesus” every time I prayed, “and blessed is the fruit of your womb: Jesus.”

Playing bahaw-bahaw, pulis-dunggab, tubig-tubig, buwan-buwan and what-not with friends was a huge part of my boyhood, but rosary assemblies were as ubiquitous as playtime trysts. I prayed the rosary and the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary each weekday afternoon with Little Angels Montessori schoolmates for four straight Octobers. By grade 4 when I moved to Colegio del Santo Niño, I knew the litany and all the mysteries by heart.

As years passed, the Verbum Dei Catholic Missionary Family of which I became a part, Blessed John Paul II (who introduced the luminous mysteries in 2002) in writing the letter “Rosarium Virginis Mariae” and countless authors deepened my understanding of the rosary.

Verbum Dei holds a “Rosary of the Word” in a member’s house in barangay Tisa on Friday nights. By tradition we listen to a passage from Scripture and a testimony about the effect of God’s Word on daily life between rosary decades. We also offer to God through Mama Mary “communitarian prayers” for various intentions after the reading of the Word.

This way of praying the rosary harkens to a proposal from Blessed John Paul II.

“In order to supply a Biblical foundation and greater depth to our meditation, it is helpful to follow the announcement of the mystery with the proclamation of a related Biblical passage,” the pope said.

“If received in this way, the Word of God can become part of the Rosary’s methodology of repetition without giving rise to the ennui derived from the simple recollection of something already well known. It is not a matter of recalling information but of allowing God to speak… this Word can be appropriately illustrated by a brief commentary.”

In solitude, the rosary helps me lean on the God who I know loves me, and his mother who I know cares for me. It’s a powerful way to stay in the presence of Jesus while walking, commuting or sitting in silence.

I recall Saint Gabriel the Archangel’s “Nothing is impossible with God” whenever I ponder the first joyful mystery, the Annunciation. I think deep about Saint Simeon’s “My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people” as I contemplate the fourth joyful mystery, the Presentation. I listen to our Lord Jesus asking, “Why did you look for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” in the fifth joyful mystery, the Losing and Finding of Jesus in the Temple.

What do I get from all this contemplation? Whether or not I have grown in virtue, only God can tell. Concurrently, the space in this corner would not do justice to a listing of the spiritual and temporal favors God gave me through Mama Mary’s intercession. Suffice it to say when you grow in love with someone, you don’t ask what you can get thinking about him or her. The thought of your beloved makes you live. That’s what happens when you pray the rosary. The thought of the God your heart pines for and the heavenly mother your soul yearns for makes you live.