Crowds flock to slice of toast with an image of Mary (Main Forum)

by Enda, Eastwood, Australia, Thursday, July 26, 2012, 14:44 (302 days ago) @ Helen

We said the rosary every night after tea. Being a working class family 'tea' meant 'the evening meal'. There were five of us, my parents then me, then my brother, then my sister and as we each became old enough we each led one decade. My father was a pious man and he gradually added the trimmings (Let us contemplate in this mystery...), the Legion of Mary prayers, and the Litany of Loreto. I always said the third decade, being the eldest child. I used try hard not to listen to what was going on. That way it all went more quickly. One night my father said, "Wake up you lot" and we all, Mum included answered, "Pray for us". We each had a set of rosary beads which we stored in the kitchen cabinet though my father always carried his in his pocket. When Mum's brother Joe dropped dead at work one day when I was eight I inherited his Irish horn beads. Mum's older sister demanded Joe's beads when she came for the funeral and Mum gave her another pair which she said were Joe's but they weren't. I had them. The solicitors say, "Where there's a will there's a relative." We had little to leave or inherit. Joe's rosary beads were all that might have caused a family rift but Aunty Kate went back to Sydney thinking she had Joe's beads and that was that.

I left home at fifteen and in the Brothers we said two rosaries a day (except Tuesdays and Thursdays when we trained our football teams). We even had special Brothers' beads with six decades and the order's crest instead of a miraculous medal where the cross bit joined the six decades (the extra decade was for 'the houses of formation'). Catholics pronounced it dec'd while everyone else called it decade. I had to change at university.

We were especially devoted to Mary the Mother of God. A Marist Brother said, "The Christian Brothers have a greater devotion to Mary than we Marist Brothers do." One of the other Marists replied, "Yes, but we are more Christian."

I do not believe in visions: Lourdes, Fatima, Garabandal, Knock, or that strange place in the Balkans leave me stone cold and some leave me nauseous. I find Fatima spooky. I do believe that Bernadette Subirous was a remarkable woman and she is a saint because of her later life, not becasue she saw the BVM. I also found Lourdes extraordinarily calm and prayerful the one afternoon I spent there in Autumn 1979. I found Knock slightly silly and I thought their international airport a corrupt waste of money.

When it comes to prayer my rule is, "If it works for you go for it." These days I do not say the rosary. I find the psalms better.