A listener named Amy asks Father Dave about praying the Rosary. She explains that she started praying a Rosary at Church before Mass began, but did not have time to finish. “[Later] I went to Communion, and I said my prayer back at the pew, then I decided to finish the two decades of the Rosary and the closing prayers while everyone was finishing going to Communion,” she says. “I started to wonder if this is what I should be doing, or am I not participating and being present for the other people still receiving Communion and for the Eucharist that was still present on the altar?”
“You might want to suggest that I just get to Mass earlier, but knowing myself, it hardly ever happens. If I do get there a bit early, I like to pray the Rosary before Mass starts, but I know I won’t finish — so should I just not start?” Amy asks.
WATCH: The Rosary in Two Minutes
Father Dave first asks Krista to guess what the correct answer is. Krista offers, “If the question is ‘Should I just not start?,’ I’d say that any prayer is good prayer, and we don’t need to let perfect get in the way of good. If trying to pray perfectly is making you say, ‘I guess I’m not going to bother’,’ then no, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Father Dave responds, “While I would agree with that, I didn’t hear her saying, ‘Should I just not bother?’ I heard her saying, ‘Should I do this whole thing at some other time?’ — which is my number one recommendation.”
“The prayer of the Mass is the highest form of prayer that we have. The Rosary is a wonderful devotion, but it’s a devotion. It’s not a sacrament and many people, for centuries, did what Amy was doing, and were even encouraged by the Church to do that. Those were the days that most people did not understand what was happening at the Mass because it was in Latin,” he continues, noting that while Latin was once widely spoken in the early Church, it gradually became less common.
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“We didn’t have sound systems, and the posture of the priest was to be essentially facing away, or more properly, in the same direction that all the people are facing. If you think about that, even if you did understand Latin fluently, you can’t really hear or pay attention to what’s going on,” he continues. “At the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Church said, no, the goal is for everyone in the congregation to be able to participate in the Mass. Let’s turn the priest around and put it in a language that people understand, so that people may be present to this prayer, and not have to do lots of other prayers just because they’re in Church and they think they should be praying.”
He lauds Mary for praying the Rosary, but affirms in her that it should not distract her from participating in Mass. “I like the way you described it: I’m not present to the other people receiving Communion. This is something that we’re doing together. So even though that you have individually received, it’s about us receiving. So being present to them is important,” Father Dave says. “We only get one hour per week of Mass; you have all those other hours of the week to pray the Rosary. So finding some other time to pray it would be great, but if you do want to pray it before Mass, then there’s nothing wrong with starting a little bit before and winding it up after.”
