Praying

One thing, as a lifelong Protestant, that I’ve struggled with is “praying to the Saints”. But as I’ve been learning, is that Protestants and Catholics use the word “pray” somewhat differently.

For a Protestant, “prayer” is pretty synonymous with “worship”; for a Catholic, it’s more along the lines of “ask”. A better way, I think, for Catholics to phrase it, so as to avoid the lectures and cries of idolatry from Protestants, would be “invoking the intercession of the Saints.” (Trent Horn has a helpful video on this on his YouTube channel, The Counsel of Trent, which I highly recommend subscribing to.)

My own personal experience has been all over the place. As a child, I prayed all the time and styled myself a prayer warrior. Now, I still want to be that, and have more or less taken for myself St. Monica as patron saint. If you don’t know her story, please read it. A super short version is, she was the mother of St. Augustine, who lived an incredibly wild, unChristian life. St. Monica prayed for his conversion for 18 years before he converted. She died shortly after.

I’ve struggled a lot with prayer over the past couple years. At the end of last year, I was cleaning and came across my grandma’s Rosary. (She wasn’t Catholic, just had a Rosary). I decided to start using it to guide my prayers, but without the Hail, Mary’s. I used a guide to understand the Mysteries, what the beads were for, etc, and for each Mystery, I’d pray specific things regarding it. And it truly revitalized my prayer life. I started seeing prayers answered, and felt more desire to pray than I had in a long time.

Sometime after the New Year, I discovered the app Hallow (again, highly recommend) and one day, when one of my sons had made off with my Rosary, decided to use the app. Including the Hail Mary’s. I did that for a while, but since I wasn’t fully convinced it was “right” decided to stop for a while. And I noticed something interesting.

I went from loving to pray (not just the Rosary, but prayers written by saints of king ago, my own continual prayers, and with my kids), to having less desire to pray. So, I studied. And studied some more. I became convinced of the fact that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, as we’re told in the bible. Those witnesses are the Church Victorious, worshiping and lifting us in heaven. I still wasn’t convinced of the ability to ask their prayers, but I now knew they were watching and praying. I read several books about Mary (Catholic and Protestant) and started researching the history of invoking the Saints. I also realized I believed the Churches Dogmatic teaching about the Blessed Virgin Mary, and thought, if they’re right about so many things (Baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Marian Dogmas), why shouldn’t I trust them regarding “prayers” to the saints?

I decided to start praying the Rosary properly again, begging God to give me confirmation that this was good and proper. And I found that my heart softened so much toward my kids and husband. That I was, again, zealous for God’s glory. That I wanted to pray, read the bible, read the Fathers, learn the teachings of the Magisterium, even, to learn more about the Faith.

And now, as the capstone, I started praying a Novena a few days ago (I signed up praymorenovenas.com), a Novena to Mary the Undoer of Knots. Praying specifically for my heart to be more maternal and my kids relationships to be more peaceful and loving. And three days ago, my girls started getting along better. So much better they’ve been commenting on it.