The Triumphant Mysteries
PREPARING TO GO DEEPER
The Rosary is not a series of words. It is not merely a string of physical beads. It is not a single place or a time. It is more than an action, and it is certainly not a deed or a prayer that we ever make alone.
Are You ready to Pray?
These preparations for prayer are provided to assist each soul with attaining the proper frame of mind and spirit with which the prayers said will have the greatest effect. It is through the purification of our intentions and the realization of our community in Christ that our prayers can truly shake the foundations of this world to bring about the victory of the just.
O, God, Prepare My Soul...
Holy Trinity, one God in three Persons, I love you with all of my heart, with all of my mind, and with all of my soul. I love my neighbor as myself. Forgive my sins and remit my temporal punishments. Purify my heart and my intentions. Teach me to pray.
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I ask the Holy Spirit and command my Guardian Angel to go, now, to all those people whom I have ever met and may every meet in any possible future. Go to all those who have ever influenced me, no matter how slightly. Go to all those who I may ever have influenced, or who I may ever have the possibility of influencing.
Go to them now, and at every moment in their pasts, and at every moment in their futures. Stir their hearts, and greet their Guardian Angels.
Ask them to join us in prayer.
Dear Holy Spirit and loving Guardian Angel, I believe that you have the power to connect all souls – across time, across space, and across all else that divides us. Unite our hearts in prayer, together, outside of time, outside of place, in your Spirit, and in your Heart. Purify our hearts, our motives, and our intentions. Conform them to your Holy Will. Translate our words into one language and one united offering to you. Take our prayer out of this place and this time. Knit it together into one, synchronous, symphony of joy.
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When you have done all that, please deliver our prayer at the foot of God’s altar in Heaven.
I know that the Rosary is not a series of words. It is not a string of physical beads. It is not a place or a time. It is more than an action, and it is certainly not something that we ever perform alone. The Rosary is the carrier wave that transports the message of a billion billion hearts to you. It is a pattern of prayer, repeated again and again across all space and time, traveling far and wide until it is woven into a fabric of love from which you will clothe the universal community that we call Communion of Saints.
We ask you to do all this, in confident boldness, because of what you have written in Holy Scripture.
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AMEN
SCRIPTURE
Romans 8:14-17, New American Bible, USCCB.org
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For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
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Revelation 1:9-14, New American Bible, USCCB.org
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I, John, your brother, who share with you the distress, the kingdom, and the endurance we have in Jesus, found myself on the island called Patmos because I proclaimed God’s word and gave testimony to Jesus. I was caught up in spirit on the Lord’s day and heard behind me a voice as loud as a trumpet, which said, “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”
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Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and when I turned, I saw seven gold lampstands and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, wearing an ankle-length robe, with a gold sash around his chest. The hair of his head was as white as white wool or as snow, and his eyes were like a fiery flame.
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Revelation 1:17-19, New American Bible, USCCB.org
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When I caught sight of him, I fell down at his feet as though dead. He touched me with his right hand and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld. Write down, therefore, what you have seen, and what is happening, and what will happen afterwards.”
MEDITATION
(Using your imagination, try to put yourself in the scene…)
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There we are, you and I, walking casually along the beach on the isle of Patmos as we "now and again divert ourselves with a prettier shell or a smoother pebble than the ordinary." Then at once, in the distance, we see our brother in Christ, John.
Suddenly, a flash! It is brighter than the brightest sun. At once, we see Our Lord.
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John falls to the ground. And so do you, and I.
The sight of Christ in his full majesty is too much to bear. We shut our eyes, turn inward, and contemplate our sin. How many times did we fail him? How many times did we forget our duty to him? This surely is our judgement.
But then we hear the words Our Lord speaks to John. “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches,” he says. He speaks, this time to us as well: “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, the one who lives.”
And at once, all fear leaves our hearts.