October, the Month of the Rosary

The Rosary is the prayer that Our Lady has constantly recommended to those to whom she has appeared in recent years. Despite the fact that this new means of prayer is not a sacrament, it can be called a sacramental, because it can do today what the first mysteries did for the early Christians for whom she was  a mother. 

That is why they are called the mysteries of the Rosary, because by saying them and meditating upon them they can generate the love in us that enables us to enter ever more deeply into the Mysterion,  God’s plan for us made flesh and blood in the glorified body of Our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

This prayer contains within it  the way to all prayer and that is why Our Lady calls upon us all to use it.  It may seem to begin with that it is purely devised to encourage vocal prayer, but that would only be a superficial understanding of this prayer. Practitioners who through the Hail Mary relentlessly call upon Our Lady to pray for them, will be led on by the same Holy Spirit who conceived Christ in her, into the meditation that leads to contemplation. 

Here they will experience the supreme prayer that was the daily prayer of Our Lady herself. This is the prayer that finally enabled her Sacred Heart to be united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, even in this life, as it can do for us, if we only follow her example.

For me, one of the wonders of the Rosary is that it can lead the simplest and humblest of souls to the heights of mystical union without them ever realising it.  This prayer was the prayer par excellence after the heresy of Quietism had deprived the vast majority of religious and  ordinary faithful, of the profound mystical contemplation that had always been the heart and soul of its inner prayer life from the very beginning.

The censors who were always  looking to  stamp down on and destroy any sort of prayer that had the slightest whiff of Quietism, considered the Rosary harmless and therefore commendable. But for the person who uses it as intended, it can be the most revolutionary of all prayers, because it can lead those committed to it, as Our Lady intended, into the sort of meditation that she both encouraged and made possible in the early Church. Thence from meditation to contemplation.

When I used to visit my mother at the end of her life, she lay in bed holding her Rosary and  she said that she could no longer use it as she once did. It was enough to hold it in her hands as  she said  the Holy Name, or some other simple prayer, before lapsing into moments of contemplative stillness. It was then that my mother joined Mary in the prayer that she said on earth, and still says in heaven.

I have written this book, Never too Late to Love with the hope that it unites the faithful by detailing Our Lady’s sublime teaching on prayer. It can only be fully understood and  appreciated by studying the meaning of, and the effects of her Immaculate Conception on her own spirituality and of the early Church.

I cannot but admit these messages are usually so simple and yet so profound at the same time. They are too simple and far too profound for theologians like me to put into such short, pure and uncomplicated language. Her message is that we ‘keep repenting’, ‘keep praying’, ‘keep making sacrifices’ and then ‘continue offering these sacrifices at Mass’.

No wonder the Church said that in this message there is nothing against her teaching, as it has been taught from the beginning down to the present day. And lest we do not know how to pray, Our Lady simply said, “Say the Rosary”.

“This book on Prayer, written by David Torkington, is a precious help for all who seriously desire to pray in a godly manner and to live a life of grace-filled supernatural union with God. This book does not whitewash the evidence of the real historical situation in which Catholics are currently living, and this is its merit and honest advantage.

“The core message of this book affirms that the true renewal, the true gift of Pentecost consists in the following: being God-centred, prayer-centred according to the model of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and possessing the richness of an interior life through prayer, sacrifice and love.I believe that this book will bring great spiritual good for the readers, for which we are grateful to David Torkington”. Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

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