Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing
Hi everyone!
Today is the feast day for Our Lady of the Rosary. I came across this article at Catholic Online and wanted to share it with you.
Pray the Rosary every day!
God bless you all!!! -Wysteria
Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing
By Fr. Dwight Longenecker
9/29/2009
Source: Catholic Online"The rosary marks the rhythm of human life, bringing it into harmony with the rhythm of God’s own life." -Pope John Paul II
'At every step of the Rosary journey we encounter another human joy or sorrow. Through the rosary Jesus Christ takes us by the hand and leads us through every part of life, fulfilling his promises that he will never leave us and forsake us, and that we should cast all our burdens on Him, for He cares for us.' (Fr. Dwight Longenecker)
GREENVILLE (Catholic Online) - As a young Anglican priest, from an Evangelical background, I had had no experience in praying the rosary. In fact, I was prejudiced against devotion to Mary of any sort. However, wishing to be open and positive rather than closed and negative, I accepted the gift of a rosary from a woman in the parish who had just returned from Walsingham. The next week I went to Quarr Abbey on retreat, and discovering the rosary in my luggage decided to give it a try. I went to the bookshop and got a booklet on praying the rosary and got started. Suddenly a whole new dimension of prayer began to open up.
A month later my life started to unravel. I had been seeing an older priest for spiritual direction, and my neatly organized, self righteous world began to fall apart. I was supported by friends and received some counseling. A few months later, after I had received real healing and forgiveness, the older priest said kindly, “Our Lady’s prayers for you have been so powerful haven’t they?” Then the penny dropped. Things fell apart so that God could put me back together in a better way, and it all started when I began to pray the rosary.
This led me to think more and more about how God uses the rosary for our inner healing. Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Rosarium Virginis Mariae writes, “The rosary marks the rhythm of human life, bringing it into harmony with the rhythm of God’s own life.” When we pray the rosary our life hooks up to the perfect life of Jesus and Mary and their perfection radiates healing into the wounded areas of our own lives. For example, if we have experienced a difficult childhood, when we pray the fourth joyful mystery of Jesus being presented in the temple we offer our childhood to be taken up into his and for his perfect childhood to heal and complete what was lacking in our own.
From conception, through the time of our gestation, birth, childhood and adolescence God was with us. Praying the rosary helps us to put our life into Christ’s at every step of the way. This healing really does work. Most often the healing is deep and quiet and long term. Sometimes the healing is sudden and dramatic. I knew a man who was having real problems making any kind of commitment in life. He couldn’t keep a job, couldn’t commit to his girlfriends, couldn’t commit to a move that would have forwarded his career…. It turned out that his birth was very difficult. The labor was very long and traumatic. It was like he was not committed to his own life. By focusing on the mystery of the Nativity in praying the rosary, the bad memories of his difficult birth were healed and he was eventually able to enter into a fuller and more abundant life.
Praying the rosary for inner healing has real effects in many ways, but most of all it brings an inner peace. In a mysterious way Christ’s perfect life and the perfect love he shared with his mother, flow into the wounded places in our lives. This grace empowers us to return to the confessional with a clearer vision. It helps us to be open to the healing Christ brings through the Eucharist, and it gives us the strength to continue the daily hard work of being transformed into Christ’s image.
In his encyclical, Pope John Paul says, “It becomes natural [through the Rosary] to bring all the problems, anxieties, labours and endeavors which got to make up our lives...to pray the Rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and his mother.” At every step of the Rosary journey we encounter another human joy or sorrow. Through the rosary Jesus Christ takes us by the hand and leads us through every part of life, fulfilling his promises that he will never leave us and forsake us, and that we should cast all our burdens on Him, for He cares for us.
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Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s latest book is "Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing". It is available through Catholic bookstores, and at www.dwightlongenecker.com. Fr. Longenecker is Chaplain to St Joseph's Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina. You can check out his many articles and books on his website, and from there you can also visit his popular blog, "Standing on My Head" where he comments daily and posts his weekly homilies as podcasts.
Many great miracles have been associated with
the Rosary throughout history. The tremendous power of the Rosary can
overcome any problem, be it small or large, personal or worldwide.
Miracles continue to the present day.
The Rosary is a powerful prayer!
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Learn to pray the Rosary--The Joyful Mysteries
Learn to pray the Rosary--The Sorrowful Mysteries
Learn to pray the Rosary--The Glorious Mysteries
Learn to pray the Rosary--The Luminous Mysteries
If you are a victim of domestic or sexual violence, please know that my husband and I pray for you every single night.
If you need immediate assistance, dial 911.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline:
1-800-799-SAFE OR (1-800-799-7233)
SIGNS OF AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP
Do you:
feel afraid of your partner much of the time?
avoid certain topics fear of angering your partner?
feel that you can’t do anything right for your partner?
believe that you deserve to be hurt or mistreated?
wonder if you’re the one who is crazy?
feel emotionally numb or helpless?
Does your partner:
- humiliate, criticize, or yell at you?
- treat you so badly that you’re embarrassed for your friends or family to see?
- ignore or put down your opinions or accomplishments?
- blame you for his own abusive behavior?
- see you as property or a sex object, rather than as a person?
Does your partner:
have a bad and unpredictable temper?
hurt you, or threaten to hurt or kill you?
threaten to take your children away or harm them?
threaten to commit suicide if you leave?
force you to have sex?
destroy your belongings?
Does your partner:
- act excessively jealous and possessive?
- control where you go or what you do?
- keep you from seeing your friends or family?
- limit your access to money, the phone, or the car?
- constantly check up on you?