The rosary played a major role in my own spiritual awakening (i.e. conversion). I came to learn the rosary prayer, which was not a part of my Catholic upbringing, not through the regular channels of family and church, but through a Chinese-Canadian woman, a former Buddhist, and who had moved to Saskatoon to study religious studies. She was not Catholic, but she knew infinitely more than the average Catholic about the faith and kept referencing this saint and that pope and the other liturgical prayer. I had no idea what she was talking about.
She approached me when I was working at the front desk of the library at St. Thomas More College, where I was studying at the time, and asked if I knew how to pray the rosary (I shook my head) and would I like to learn? I was intrigued. When things “came my way” like this, I was curious about their purpose. What was this all about? What did this prayer have to do with me?
We met later that day in the soft afternoon light of the STM chapel, a simple chapel with a monastic feel. Silence was built into the vaulted, wood-beam ceiling, into the irregularly-cut stones that puzzled together for the floor, into the undecorated, white stucco walls. We went through the mechanics of the prayer and the meaning behind the repetition, and then prayed one rosary together. At the end of our meeting, I thanked my friend, my teacher really, for introducing this prayer to me, and we parted. I was still not sure what this was all about.
It was only later (that night? a week later?) when I ventured to pray the rosary alone in my bedroom in my downtown apartment that my experience was entirely different from that initial effort. Recalling your talks, the aspect of beauty was very much a part of this new experience that I can only describe as mystical.
I was reading Homer’s Odyssey at the time (trans. Robert Fagles)–I had never heard such music! I had fallen in love with Odysseus—his intelligence, his royal manners, his super-human fortitude were deeply attractive—and had come to love all things ancient Greek. With this orange and gold volume visible on my bedside table, I began to pray the rosary. I could not have guessed what was about to happen next.
As I prayed, it was as if the seas of ancient Greece, the intelligence of Odysseus, and the music of Homer started surging into my mind through the centre of the rosary that had become almost like a portal between my mind and a higher intelligence. This was, foremost, an intellectual experience, a rush of intense intellectual wind. Images and ideas coursed through my mind, one after another, but at such a speed that my memory could not hold onto even a single image or idea. After a while, I stopped praying, not because this kind of mystical happening stopped, but because I had class the next day and I thought that I “should get some rest.” An unfortunate, too-pragmatic decision, in hindsight.
Still, this kind of mystical-intellectual experience with the rosary persisted for some time (a year?), although less intensely than that first mystical event. Beauty and ideas characterized this first year of rosary prayer. Need an idea for an essay? Pray the rosary. Need an image for a poem? Pray the rosary. It was my go-to source for creative insight. Given enough time, some kind of idea or image would eventually “fall” into my mind. I am thankful to Mary? the angels? the Holy Spirit?—whoever it was who was always ready to meet me there in that particular prayer for their wisdom and love. I was amazed, holding the rosary, that I could physically hold and touch something that had such spiritual and intellectual power.
My relationship with the rosary has changed over time, and the intellectual stimulation is not as “immediate” nor as intense as it once was. I am relearning this prayer now, but know that the rosary is an incredibly powerful prayer with great spiritual value.
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