Hello all,
I have some questions about the Rosary.
I heard that saying the Rosary for someone who has passed away will help them?
I’m not Catholic, so I’m afraid I can not give any advice in regards to any “official doctrines” on the matter. I don’t know the “Rosary Prayer” (or is it prayers? sorry, I’m not sure.) I’m not sure I would entirely understand them even if I did know them (I have Autism, so I don’t always understand things “properly”.) I not only did not grow up Catholic, but I was raised in a religion that forbade wearing a cross. I’m not sure how much help I can be, but I’ll tell you some thing from my life and maybe it’ll help you in some way? (I hope?)
I am not a Catholic and yet I wear a rosary. This confuses people and leads to lots of questions. I will tell you the story behind why I do it.
When people see me with a rosary, their first thought it that I must be Catholic. When they learn that I am not, they become puzzled over the fact that, why would a non-Catholic have a rosary?
Well, my wearing a rosary started many years ago, and actually, at the time, I did not know what a rosary was. I simply saw it as a very fancy necklace, and thus I wore it as such. Than one day, a former Catholic man walked up to me and said quite out of the blue: “You’re sacrilegious”.
I was puzzled by this, because I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew this guy, so I knew he was raised Catholic but had joined a different church later on. Anyways, I asked him why he had said that, and he pointed to the crucifix necklace that I wear (I own several and am almost always wearing one) and he said, “It’s sacrilegious to wear that”.
Still puzzled I asked why, and he said “Because it’s a rosary not a piece of jewelry! It’s disrespectful!” A rosary? This was new. I had never heard of a rosary before so I had no idea what he was talking about. It was the first time I was made aware that this was anything other than a fancy necklace.
Well, now I’ll explain how I got started wearing them: You see, I was raised a Mormon. I’ve been a Mormon for 34 years. As a child, while I knew no one ever mentioned the cross, crucifixion, or resurrection, I didn’t know why. No one had ever bothered to tell me that crosses, crucifixes, and the resurrection were taboo topics in our church. I didn’t know that it was taboo to mention such things. So it never occurred to me that it was also forbidden to wear a cross in church, and thus what happened when I was a teenager, took me quite by surprise.
When I was going through what adults called my “Jesus Freak” phase, I bought a big cross necklace – big like 5 inches tall and made of pewter – and started wearing it everywhere. Later that week, I wore it to church. I was 14 years old, and our Young Women’s group was going to have our class pictures taken that afternoon. We all got ready, and were waiting for the camera flash, when our teacher said: “Wendy take that thing off!”
“What thing?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. She was using the word ‘thing’ which could have been anything. She was going to have to be more specific if she wanted me to take the ‘thing’ off, I would have to know what ‘thing’ she was referring to.
“That disgraceful thing around your neck”.
“What, the cross?” I asked.
“Yes, get that horrible thing out of here and never wear it to church again.”
“But it’s a cross? Jesus died on the cross.”
Every body went dead silent. I had said something wrong. I knew it. I just wasn’t sure what it was that I had said to cause every one to suddenly become as silent as a grave. The teacher flew into hysterics and went out the door, than came back a few moments later with the Bishop. The teacher, was still all hysterical screaming and yelling and pointing, as she told the Bishop, “She keeps saying that word!”
I do? What word? I was looking around hoping someone would give me a clue as to what I had said and why whatever I had said was causing our teacher to become so upset. No one was answering me though. They were all too shocked by the fact that I had dared say “that word” to tell me, what word it was.
I was baffled, as I was dragged off to the Bishop’s office where I spent the next hour being lectured on how “we don’t say cross” and “we don’t wear crosses” and “we can’t talk about the crucifixion because it’s a sad memory in Jesus life” and “we must remember his life not his death” and “we don’t talk about death” and “we don’t remember death” and “to wear a cross is to disrespect Jesus”. I was told, that under no conditions was I ever to wear a cross to church again. I was sent back to class, but because I refused to remove the cross, I was not allowed to be in that class picture nor any other class picture in the many years since than either.
Well, none of that sat well with me, so I made sure to never take that cross off. I wore it every day, and I made sure to wear it every Sunday to church. My young mind told me that they were the ones who were disrespecting Jesus, not me. I was just a kid, but I knew that I was not ashamed of Jesus and I wasn’t going to hide my faith in him.
I started collecting cross necklaces after that. I had every shape, color, and size you could think of. There were metal ones, plastic ones, gemstone, and wooden. You see, just a short distance from my house was this tiny little shop that is run by a monk and two nuns, and they sold mostly prayer cards, bibles, and crosses of various types. So, I access to a wide range of cross necklaces and I just started buying lots of them. Well, my favorite ones were the long colorful stings of beads that had a crucifix on them, and so I started collecting those, and wearing them. I did not know that only Catholics were supposed to own them. I did not know they were rosaries and even if I had, I would not have known you were not supposed to wear them like necklaces.
After that, I was dragged off to the Bishop’s office to be lectured, almost every Sunday. I rarely ever made it through an entire Sunday School Lesson before the Bishop would come in, find me wearing yet another cross, and drag me out to tell me all over again all the reason why crosses were forbidden. Often I did not even get the chance to enter the classroom!
When I was 14, the Bishop said he was deeply troubled over the fact that I was so young and already so far down the road to apostasy. I was 16 when he officially announced to the congregation that I was an apostate and had to be shunned. I was shunned for the next several years. No one would say a word to me, no one would look at me, no one would shake hands with me, and when I walked down the hallway every one stepped to the side to avoid me. All this because I wore a cross?
I remained in that church until I was 27. I stopped going, because of the depression the shunning has caused me. I am still be shunned today, all these years late, so they are now nearing 25 years of shunning me. It was after I was 27 that I had my encounter with the former Catholic man. So I was wearing rosaries for necklaces a good 15 years before I found out what a rosary was. Though I admit I still don’t fully understand the rosary, and while in his mind wearing one as jewelry is a sin, in my mind, wearing it is an outward sign that I stand for Jesus and am not willing to hide my faith in Jesus.
And so, today, I wear both crosses and crucifixes equally. That some of my necklaces are actually rosaries and not necklaces, well, that’s just the way it is.
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Now, I know none of that may seem to be of any help to you, but I’ll try to explain why I told you this. You see, while I don’t know the correct usage or prayers and such of the rosary, but I do feel drawn to it. It seems to me, that the symbol of it alone is very powerful spiritually. I can’t explain it, but holding or wearing a rosary, I can feel it’s power, I know to some that may sound strange, but that’s just the way it is.
Likewise, I believe in prayer, and the power of prayer. Again, I don’t know the prayer(s) of the rosary or how they are done, but I do believe that the power of prayer, combined with the power of the rosary, is a very powerful thing.
Anyway, I think this person went to the wrong place, if I prayed the rosary for him and ask Mother Mary to pray for him, will it help him? and get him out of that place? and into the right place?
Please let me know.
I’m not sure about the whole idea of Heaven and Hell. I do believe that we go some place after death, but where, I don’t know. I know some people say that you go to Heaven if you are good and you go to Hell if you are bad, and that once you are there, that’s the end of it, you are stuck there forever. But to me, that just seems contrary to the theory of a Loving God/Father. What about the Prodigal Son, does that story mean nothing? Maybe bad people do go to a place of punishment, but does that mean that they stay there? Would a Loving God, condemn a person to Hell forever? I don’t think so.
Personally, I believe that there is much more than just Heaven and Hell. What about the mention of “many mansions”? The way I look at it as, not so much many mansions, but many classrooms. Now, I’m sorry, if I go off on a deep end here, but give me a minute to try to explain what it is I mean. Hopefully it’ll make sense.
We are spirit beings, but we are young spirit beings. Being spirit beings, means that when we are born we came from somewhere and when we die we go to somewhere. The question is, where? Think about it. It’s a BIG universe out there. It doesn’t make good sense for all of the deep space and only one planet have life on it. But what if we ourselves live many lives, and each life we live, we live on a different planet? And as we progress from one life to the next, we grow spiritually, until we advance to becoming the teachers or spirit guides of those who have not yet advanced? Logic tells us that this is true, and tells us that we after many millennia will eventually become the guardians who come to Earth to protect and watch over us. And that Heaven literally is the Heavens aka the Universe.
There are a lot of us out there. Over six billion people alive on Earth at this very moment. That’s a lot of people. Every one of them has a job. Not a job, as in a place to work, but a job as in a thing that they are meant to do, more like a homework assignment. An assignment that they must successfully finish before moving on to the next assignment. Earth is a school and life is its classroom. As young spirits we are given an assignment to complete and we take a trip to school, to be born, so that we can live a physical life here on Earth in order to complete our assignment. Once each person has completed their job, there is no more reason for them to live on this Earth and their spirit leaves their physical body and moves on to it’s next assignment.
I think some of us return here to this Earth multiple times, as different people so that we can learn from different experiences and opportunities that we missed out on in other life times, and we keep coming back until we have learned all there is we can learn here. I think this explains “past life memories” that some people have. (I have reoccurring dreams where I have 5 children – and they are like memories, but I have no children, and some times I wonder if I’m remembering a past life.)
I also believe in the concept of “soul mates”, not just soul mates as in couples, but soul mates as in family groups. In other words, every time we come back to live a new life, we sort of gravitate to people whom we knew in a past life, and that’s why some times we well instantly “hit it off” with people, because it’s our souls recognizing each other from a past life. So we stay friends with the same people through out our life times.
The physical body dies, but the spirit body lives on. Over six billion people are alive on Earth at this very moment, and over a million of them will die before you finish reading this sentence. By the time you finish reading this sentence a million more will have been born. The spirit world is a busy place, what with all those millions of spirits coming and going each day. And Earth is just a school house, not the only school, but rather one school out of many schools. If one school, has that many students coming and going on a daily basis, can you even begin to imagine how many spirits there are out there, who are NOT in school, not to mention how many other school there must be besides the Earth?
Here’s one more tidbit to chew on: Did you ever notice how Angels look vaguely Human? If they were beings of a different race, you’d think they would look . . . well . . . a lot less Human. There is only one possible answer as to why or how these non-Humans could look so very Human, and that is, that they ARE Human. We are them, they were us, we will become them, and they are our future. What all of this tells us is that, Humans, Angels, Fey, and Extraterrestrials are all in fact once big constantly evolving race and that we look out for each other. Once we understand this, we also understand that we have within us the power to do ANYTHING. All we have to do is learn how to unlock that power so that we can advance to the next level of our existence. And that is where our guardian angels come in. They are our teachers. They have already been on the path that we are now on. They have already done the things we are now doing. They have already advanced to the point that they are at. They have overcome the need for a physical body. They have reached the point of enlightenment and saintly transfiguration. And now, they have come back as teachers. They are here, to teach us how to become as they are. And some day that’ll be us. Some day we will have progressed spiritually to the point that we well be teaching younger spirits.
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I’m sorry, I’m getting long winded and rambling. It’s the Autism. I don’t talk much, but I can type for hours. Sorry. Anyways, getting back to my point and answering your question. Well, if you got past reading all of my long windedness to reach this point, congratulations! I’m sorry if any of that came off as preachy.
Anyway, I think this person went to the wrong place, if I prayed the rosary for him and ask Mother Mary to pray for him, will it help him? and get him out of that place? and into the right place?
Please let me know.
Well, now that you know my personal beliefs on the matter, now you might be able to better understand my answer. (I hope). You see, I believe that we can progress onward even after death, and even if we get sent back a grade (or to Hell). I also believe that just as Angels help us in this life, so too can our prayers help others in their life after they die. I also believe that the rosary helps one to focus their prayers, and that a more focused prayer is a more powerful prayer.
All that said, I believe that yes, praying and using a rosary, will help your friend whom has passed on, no matter where it is he went.