Happy Easter from the McBrides!
Tag: devotionals
Wake Up Your Rosary This Lent With Meggie K. Daly’s New Devotional
This winter has been BIZ ZEEE, my friends, and I’m afraid I’ve just been going through the motions of the seasons: Mardi Gras, ashes, fast, fish, grumpy ’cause I’m missing extra coffee. But I found a remedy for this lackluster Lent in my stack of beach reads! Maggie K. Daly’s Bead by Bead: the Scriptural Rosary (I got the gorgeous full color version) was just what I needed. 
I took my copy down to the beach about 3 PM Friday to say my Rosary while my oldest tried out her new boogie board. No sooner had I made the sign of the cross and read this line: “I renounce all distractions that may come to me while I am saying this Rosary…” (p 57 *) a laughing gull landed right in front of me and began laughing.
Soon after, the “Mom, look at me!” comments began, followed shortly by the congregation of the rest of the family with various wants, needs, and comments.
Lord, I need this book.
Somehow, I got through the Sorrowful Mysteries. And I made some very important observations along the way. My prayer life is sub-par. I can no longer hear the silence through all this chatter going on around me, both outside and inside my head. For example, Daly provides a short, one-liner bible verse after each Hail Mary, like this:
Hail Mary… Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. (LK 22:43, NRSV)
to be read with each bead. As I was moving to the next bead and began saying that Hail Mary, I caught myself looking ahead as my noisy mind “recited” the Hail Mary. Yes, I was “saying” a Hail Mary in my head at the same time I was reading ahead to the verse that Daly had so carefully chosen. Busted.
I turned my beach chair and pushed my sunglasses up onto the top of my head. Now I was forced to close my eyes from time to time, and I used those moments to say the Hail Marys. My eyes could open against the bright sun only long enough to read the brief reflections. And what beautiful reflections! I was transformed back to the early days of my “re-version” (you know, like what you call a fallen-away Catholic who comes home: not a convert, but a revert) when tears would pour down my face every Tuesday and Friday as I said the Sorrowful Mysteries.
Every now and again, we need a little something to get us back on track. Bead by Bead: A Scriptural Rosary is the something I need right now, and I will be keeping it handy not only this Lent, but all year long. I highly recommend this devotional as an aide to rejuvenate your daily Rosary.
What are your favorite daily devotionals?
*Daly cites prayers from St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s The Secret of the Rosary throughout Bead by Bead.
You can follow Meggie K. Daly on FB here.
Her publisher’s website is here.
What are you reading? You can share your favorite books by tagging your social media posts with #OpenBook and linking up with us at Carolyn Astfalk’s “My Scribbler’s Heart” blog as well as CatholicMom.