I have an active mind. My mind races with dizzying speed: from project to project; responsibility to responsibility; job to home; and from the secular to the profane. While I thank God for the gift of reason and the ability to think; my particular mind is not an altogether blessing. Anyone who has a mind prone to distraction, who lacks the discipline to stay focused on an important task long enough to give it its due will understand that an “active” mind is one that can often be difficult to manage and -- at other times -- downright maddening.
The problem for people like me is that we also live in a world that uniquely exacerbates the mental disorganization of the active mind. The modern world moves fast -- unnaturally fast. In the United States especially, everything needs be done with fast foot speed. We have invented whole new concepts to deal with the pressures and pacing of modernity. For parents, there is the concept of “quality time,” which is a way to describe compressing time spent with one’s children to make up for other time spent away. If we want something today, we buy it. Older concepts, like “deferred gratification” are distinctly out of vogue.
The way in which we live often accelerates an already breakneck pace. As a lawyer, my day is extremely busy with telephone calls, competing responsibilities, oddball legal situations (any lawyer will relate), and deadlines. For the professional, the days of a quasi-academic thoughtful consideration of a problem in a measured manner is over. Time is money and money is the small “g” god of our age. For the Catholic professional who is faithful to the magisterium, there are additional problems that can make his life even more harried. If he is a single breadwinner (because his wife stays home to take care of the large flock of children that he has “generously” welcomed into the world), he probably has to live farther from his employment due to the limited resources he has -- so he has something that was unknown for all of human history -- a long “commute.” When he arrives home from his busy day and long commute, he is greeted with children hanging off of the furniture and speaking in decibel ranges that immediately assaults his sensibilities because he has been otherwise in a cocoon of adults for the last twelve hours (eighteen if you count the prior night’s sleep). He is met by a wife that is absolutely worn out after a day of home-schooling six children, making dinner, cleaning up, doing laundry, and serving as the equivalent of all three branches of government to mediate the various difficulties that can arise in the human relationships of a large family.
This type of life -- harried and exhausting -- requires spiritual discipline. My active mind, however, which relentlessly turns over ideas and thoughts in a physically tiresome manner, is also prone to a far more deadlier form of distraction -- spiritual distraction. I am often so overwhelmed by the concerns of the temporal that I literally forget that I was not made for this world. The paradox, of course, is that I need God most when I am overwhelmed by the world, yet that is when I am most likely to forget to pray, forget to have a disposition of gratitude towards God, and forget to have sorrow for my many failings. I do what Americans do so well -- I compartmentalize my faith.
It is never a conscious decision on my part: if I am reminded of my faith, I am immediately refreshed (for example, if a special feast day obliges assisting at Holy Mass during the work week). But the reality is that most of the weeks during the year do not contain such a feast day. And therefore I am in a routine of modern normalcy -- Holy Mass on Sunday and temporality for the six remaining days.
There is one devotion that keeps me moored though. It has an accountability that can only be described as divine. That devotion is the Holy Rosary. Thanks be to God, I am now habituated to praying the Rosary every day and have done so for several years. I mostly pray it in my car (as part of my long commute), pray with my family on the weekends, or even pray it on a treadmill if I make it to the gym (another social invention of modernity). What amazes me about the Rosary, and believe me, consistent with the personal theme of this article, I have thought long and hard about it, is that it is always new, always full of new depths to be plumbed. At the precise moment that I have thought I have exhausted the extent of a given mystery, new and profound graces will be given to me and I will see, for example, the “Presentation” is an utterly new light. The Rosary, because it is based upon Gospel mysteries, is wholly inexhaustible.
When I revert to my “old” ways, when I return to the vomit of my selfishness or laziness (and it is a reversion to worldliness that takes a very short amount of time, e.g., hours), the Rosary serves as a bridge to my salvation. In the middle of worldliness (my own and my neighbor’s), I am reminded daily of our Lord’s life. I never am given that long to feel bad for myself (of which I have an uncanny ability) because I meditate on the Passion of our Lord at least twice a week. The accountability of the Rosary is exactly -- it literally prevents you from falling -- and remaining -- in sin. If I know that I have done something wrong, something for which deserves confession, praying the Rosary is like a weight on my soul that will only be lifted if I confess and amend. If I am habitually doing an act that is perhaps venially sinful, the Rosary gently whispers in my ear -- confess and amend. If I feel hopeless and that does happen, the Rosary shakes me out of it. If I develop a strong disliking for someone, the Rosary makes me offer prayers for that person and seek to be more charitable in my own walk. It is no exaggeration that for the layman the Rosary is a lifeline that helps us love our Lord more and cope with the worries and anxieties that crop up every day.
Stated as simply as possible, the Rosary makes me a better Christian. I am sure that many of you pray it regularly. I cannot recommend more fervently that everyone of you pray it, and pray it every single day. It is fifteen minute devotion that has a power and force that comes straight from Heaven. I often feel that I am in a cocoon of grace while I am praying it -- that in those short moments -- I cannot be touched by the evil one. As Saint Padre Pio famously commented, the rosary is my weapon. Before I prayed the Rosary regularly, I often found the divine promises attached to its devotion too fantastic, too medieval -- often to the point that I stayed away from it (intellectual conceit is also a problem for my mind). I understand now why those promises make sense: why regular devotion to the Rosary -- if persevered in -- inevitably must lead to Heaven because of the effect it has on souls.
If you do not pray the Rosary, begin and ignore the initial distractions that often afflict the neophyte. If you pray the Rosary irregularly, begin to pray it every day. In a matter of weeks and months, changes -- subtle and not-so-subtle -- will occur.
Our Lady of the Rosary, Pray for Us.
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