This article was originally shared with our email subscribers as part of the Marian Mondays Series, a weekly reflection on the mysteries of the rosary by Jonathan Conrad, owner and founder of The Catholic Woodworker.
If you’re new to the rosary, you might not know that every mystery has a virtue connected to it. These virtues are meant to guide us as we contemplate Jesus and Mary’s lives.
The virtue for the Presentation of Jesus, the fourth Joyful Mystery, is obedience. In Luke 2:22-38, Mary and Joseph present Jesus in the temple according to Jewish law.
It strikes me how there was no reason for Jesus to be presented in the temple at all; he was God. But Mary and Joseph obediently did it anyway — because it’s what God told them to do.
In my own prayer life, I find comfort in this simplicity of obedience. I’ve been praying the rosary every day for the last 10 years and there have been many days where my prayer has been far from ideal.
It’d be great if I could sit down in front of a crucifix and meditate on the mysteries every single day but that’s not always how it goes. Sometimes I pray the rosary when I’m running carpool with my boys. Some days I meet my online prayer group when they’re already halfway through the second mystery of the day. And some days I find myself thinking about work the entire time I recite the prayers.
While I’m always striving to be focused during prayer, it doesn’t mean my prayer has to be perfect to count. And it doesn’t mean that I should give up praying just because it doesn’t feel the way I want it to every time. In fact, when I’m feeling weak and start believing the lie that my prayer isn’t good enough, I can find refuge in simply being obedient and praying anyway.
So as we head into a new week of prayer, I’ll leave you with this quote from Venerable Lúcia dos Santos to take with you: “Even for those souls who pray without meditating, the simple act of taking the beads to pray is already a remembrance of God, of the supernatural.”
Read the next reflection in this series on The Finding in the Temple.
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