Catholic during the Great Apostasy

“God has made prayer the condition for granting us His graces.”
– Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fragment 513

The Rosary prayer is perhaps the simplest Catholic prayer. In its simplicity lies the beauty of the entire Catholic faith, which is simple, logical, and whose rejection is, in fact, the rejection of reason, and thus of common sense. The truth and logic contained in the faith are so evident that only a blind man cannot see them. Unfortunately, people are blind, and as we know – only God opens the eyes of sinners. Of course, it is about the eyes of the soul, which can point us to the Truth.

Coming back to the Holy Rosary – today I will not write theological reflections on it, but I will point out a simple, human view of this most effective Catholic prayer. Maybe it will be useful to someone, maybe it will help someone. I apologize in advance to all scrupulous people, because I will not write about what they expect.
The effectiveness of turning for help to the Mother of God through the Rosary prayer has been proven many times. Man in his folly created something unimaginably evil – the atomic bomb. A weapon of mass destruction, before which one might think that nothing could stand. And yet there is – because everything that man has created is but dust, a worthless object, most often tainted with evil. The Holy Rosary defeated this terrible bomb – it saved the priests who were in the epicenter of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima, it saved the monastery founded by Father Maximilian Kolbe.

Therefore, those who seek help from the Mother of God should fear nothing, but in peace and with quiet prayer live, without worrying about the future.

A small remark: someone who considers the apparition from Medjugorje to be the Mother of God is a blind man and a blasphemer. We have written about this many times, and I will not repeat why this is so. After all, it is God who opens the eyes of the blind, not ordinary people like us. To sum up: if you pray to the apparition, you commit blasphemy.

“Since vocal prayer is prayer, reflection must accompany it. A prayer in which a person is not aware of to whom he speaks, what he asks for, who asks, and from whom, I do not call prayer – no matter how much the lips move.”
– St. Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection (Camino de Perfección), chapter 24

Now that everything is clear, I can show how this wonderful prayer can be woven into our daily life. The simplest way will be to show it by my own example.

How did the Rosary become an inseparable part of my life? How did it happen that this simple prayer is responsible for all the decisions I make?

It all began with a lack of time. After my conversion we created the website niewolnikmaryi.com. Working professionally from morning till evening, I had to use every free moment for writing and developing the website. Currently we already run two, because for two years now there has also been the English-language site timeofapostasy.blog.

Writing at night took its toll – during the day I was often distracted. I do not write this to complain, but to show how the Rosary prayer became a part of me, my soul, my life. Often my rosary would break, get lost in unexplained circumstances. From my first rosary only the cross remained, which I still wear around my neck today. I often heard that this was the work of Satan, who hates this prayer and tries to prevent its recitation. Perhaps, though I think it was rather my fatigue and distraction that were the cause.

Desperate, I once read that in the old days not everyone had a rosary and people prayed on their fingers. This was an ideal solution for me, especially after I introduced prayer intentions on the website, in which for three days we recite the entire Rosary. It turned out that I was not able to do this otherwise than by praying all day long – at work, while driving, in every free moment. Then I realized that this is the most spiritual prayer I know. Why? Because it opens the door to the spiritual world. It is difficult to explain, but it builds in us something like defensive walls. All the evil that attacks us breaks against them. We feel the attacks, sometimes very strongly, but they are not able to destroy the peace of our soul. I try every day to recite the entire Rosary. It does not always succeed, but even the awareness that I fall asleep saying “Hail Mary” is a great consolation for my soul.

“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple glance directed toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and love, embracing both trial and joy.”
– St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Story of a Soul (Histoire d’une âme)

The lack of time also meant that I had no opportunity to calmly reflect on the texts I was to write, nor on many everyday matters. Therefore, all of this began to connect with reciting the Rosary. There is nothing more beautiful than meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary during ordinary daily activities. “Hail Mary” became an inseparable part of my life – constantly recited in my soul, it accompanies me in all matters.
The lack of time, which for many people is an insurmountable obstacle, led to life itself becoming a spiritual prayer. The most surprising thing is that now – the less time I have, the more things I manage to do.

Of course, this does not mean that problems disappear. They strengthen us, they are part of earthly life. But they become easier to accept. Our soul then sails onto the calm waters of surrender to the Lord Jesus through Mary. This allows us to look at everything around us, at all the garbage of this world, from another perspective. It is easier for the helmsman to make decisions in the silence of spiritual prayer than in noise and storms.

I realize that not always such prayer can be called a Rosary, but with time it becomes an inseparable part of our life. No one knows about it, no one hears it – only You and God. It is an unceasing conversation of the soul with God. Perhaps more of a monologue, but it is impossible that by turning unceasingly to the Mother of God, you will not receive help. Often it is not the help we expect, but prayer is not a concert of wishes, but a humble request. And God knows better what we need than we ourselves – frail human beings.

A grave mistake is setting conditions for God in prayer.
“Thy will be done!” – these words we should accept always, whether we like the solutions or not. This applies to every prayer!

We should pray as our Beloved Savior did in the Garden of Gethsemane:
Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.

It is also advisable to add, after the Mother of God:

Behold the handmaid (servant) of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy word!

Personally I believe these are some of the most important words. Spoken at the beginning and at the end of our Lord Jesus Christ’s stay on this world. Should not every Catholic be aware of this?

Apparently not, seeing that since I started writing about this and pointing out that, for example, a Prayer for healing may mean that God takes away suffering through death and we must accept this with humility – the number of prayer intentions has dropped sharply.

“Prayer has become my life” – this expression sounds as if I had come close to the saints. No, of course not. I am only a frail man and unfortunately very often it turns into mindless repetition of words, which is a sign of decline. Then one must rise and start all over again. Life is falls and rises, but without prayer it is only falls, and then we do not even realize how low we have fallen.

I work physically and very quickly realized that delving into prayer can sometimes be dangerous for me and for the people working with me. That is why I quickly learned to control being in the real world and the spiritual world. I write about these two worlds here:

Let us then remember that our life can become prayer not because we have become saints but because we want to be closer to God and in this human frail way we realize it through prayer.

It helps us in all aspects of our earthly life. The fact that I claim that prayer is responsible for all my life decisions does not mean at all that they are made under inspiration, but simply that I make them while praying, and thus in the peace and silence of the soul – and that is really a lot.

Sometimes I just do not allow anything to be changed in what I write, even though it is incomprehensible to readers.

Is that inspiration?

I would rather attribute it to my stubbornness. In any case, everything I write, say and do is marked by the Rosary prayer. A completely different matter is whether the decisions are made according to God’s will or according to my own opinions. Looking at the surrounding reality, people care the least about God’s will – unless it is about that idol they created in the likeness of their own sins. But let us remember that we know the tree by its fruit, and we can always eventually see how we have acted.

Let us hold on to this as we immerse ourselves in this beautiful and so very simple prayer which is the Rosary.

Prayer is the greatest treasure we possess. For no money in the world can you buy what it gives you, that is why we want once again to thank all who prayed for my wife’s health. Your help worked wonders. In prayer we achieve a spiritual Unity which hell cannot overcome and God will never abandon.

Arkadiusz Niewolski