By Mary Pearson
It is one of those unwritten rules of Catholic parish life: almost as sure as there will be the daily sacrifice of the Mass itself, there will be – more often than not– a group of parishioners who gather before Mass to pray the Rosary.
On any given day, they are the first into the church, clustered in and around the front pews with their prayer books and rosary beads. If you show up a few minutes early for daily Mass, you might make it in time to hear them praying the ‘Hail, Holy Queen.’ Often these groups are not advertised in the bulletin, nor are they necessarily listed as an official “ministry” of the parish. They are simply people who show up, united by a common devotion to the Holy Rosary.
At St. Catherine of Alexandria parish in Temecula there is a regular group of between 10 and 15 people who pray the Rosary before the daily morning Mass begins at 7:25 am. The BYTE caught up with a few of them after Mass last month to get an idea of what brings people to this particular devotion.
“On days when I don’t take my grandson to school, I come here,” said Carmen, a parishioner who told the BYTE she had only recently started coming to the daily rosary. Carmen says her attendance is “sporadic,” but she is happy to be able to come when she can.
Margaret “Peggy” George is 92 years old and has been praying as well as helping lead the Rosary at St. Catherine’s since the parish began in 1979. When asked about the origins of this particular daily rosary group, Peggy laughed and said her memory does not go back that far. But for Peggy, praying the Rosary in community with other parishioners was just the natural thing to do. “It’s the first thing we do when we come into the Church,” she said, adding, “Everyone knows the Rosary.”
Ellen Ender has been coming to the daily Rosary at St. Catherine’s for about a year. “I have been trying to pray the Rosary every day since probably 2008,” Ender explained, saying that it was a pilgrimage to Medjugorje that first inspired her to take up the practice. Asked why she chooses to come to church to pray with others as opposed to praying alone at home, Ender said that she appreciates that, “it gives you a sense of community with fellow parishioners.”
Everyone in the group the BYTE spoke with agreed that the practice of praying in community has a kind of positive peer pressure effect on their prayer life. Ender explained that, since Peggy usually leads the first decade, if she isn’t there, the others in the group notice. “So you feel a sense of responsibility to be there, it pushes you a little bit more,” she said. This responsibility has the added effect of building relationships among the group members. The people in the group–even if they do not connect regularly outside of the daily Rosary–have built a real relationship with one other through this practice of group devotional prayer. It’s a place where someone can belong, simply by showing up to pray.
Mary Pearson is a freelance writer and parishioner of St. Martha, Murrieta.