[Pokey78]

Pinging the Peggy Noonan list.

[glock rocks]

Peggy ping.

[Slyfox]

Meditating on these mysteries is a powerful way to come to know Jesus intimately. I began years ago thinking of Our Lady and how she would look at Jesus as a baby and a young boy in the Joyful mysteries. I would look at Jesus through a mother's eyes when He suffered and I would look at Jesus as if I were Mary watching her son leave the earth when He ascended into heaven. It was a gradual thing but I came to know Jesus as if He were in the same room with me. And He has never left.

[hey papa]

Peggy's awesome.

[pistola]

No other current writer in any genre consistently moves me like the lovely Mrs. Noonan.

God bless Peggy Noonan.

Can you please add me to the ping list?

[sockmonkey]

Pinging Catholic List. Good Read.

[txzman]

What truly amazes me is that the Pope adds a "mystery" to the rosary, which chants 50 hail mary's, for something even the Catholic Church cannot tell you where this ultimately came from, formalized by Pope Pius V in 1569.

As a former Catholic, all I ask - as I did at 16 (and got no answer) is where is this in the Bible? And why is the focus of my faith not firmly, 100%, always on the One who the whole book is about? And where dows it say anything about Mary being sinless? Or not dying? Or having ANYTHING to do with my fate? And why if anything were we not asked to pray to Christ 50 times?

Some of the same reasons I am no longer a Catholic - I can read the Bible for myself, and belong to a church that meets and governs by the rules I can also read and understand for myself.

[AZLiberty]

One drawback of a society dominated by technology and the mass media is the fact that silence becomes increasingly difficult to achieve.

Ms. Noonan, technology can solve the problem. Check out these noise reduction headphones from Bose. They actually cancel out the sound that's coming from outside the headphones.

[AFPhys]

It was odd to contemplate the joyfuls one day and jump to the sorrowfuls the next; something was missing. That would be what he said and did as an adult. That is what the pope added this week.

I pray the Rosary nearly daily (for Peace, as Mary suggested) and about once a week or so I pray the full 15 mysteries. It has often seemed "odd" to me to make that "jump" as Peggy points out. I am going to enjoy this enhancement fully.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

bump

[FairWitness]

Very interesting. As a non-Catholic I have never really known what the Rosary and all the Hail Mary's were about. Addition of the ministry and teaching of Christ to the contemplation/meditation seems, as Peggy says, like not a new idea but one that should have been there all along and "was lost to time".

[Catholicguy]

The third joyful mystery is the birth of Christ in a manger. It's not hard to imagine this. It's hard to control one's imaginings. I imagine the trek to the manger, the disheartened young husband, the sound of the eating area of the inn as they trudge on, hungry and alone. And then a car alarm goes off. And suddenly I'm wondering: Did she have a hard labor? <> Nope. Pain during labor is a consequence of original sin.Mary was preserved from the consequences fo Orioginal sin, ergo....<>Did God want her to know from the beginning that her joy would be ever accompanied by pain? Did she weep him into the world? Maybe it was an easy birth. <> He passed through Mary as He passed through the locked doors of the Upper Room<> God knew she was barely more than a child, with a young husband and no help, just the two of them in the cold in a hut on a hill.

[Catholicguy]

That reminded me of something. In the unofficial but ever-interesting prophecies of St. Malachy, mystic of the Middle Ages, each coming pope is named with a phrase that seems to denote his work.

<> I have that book at home. If I recall correctly, after JPII, there are only two more to follow - including Peter the Second, the Last Pope.<>

[1rudeboy]

bttt

[Eala]

Beautiful. Thank you for posting this.

[ladyinred]

Peggy is wonderful, just plain and simple. I am not Catholic, but I will read anything this woman writes. It was really interesting, because I had no idea what the stations of the Rosery were about. Learn something everyday.

[Siobhan]

A good read, a little blessing for the week ahead.

[NYer]

He began by asserting that the rosary is "Christocentric," a way of thinking about Jesus through and with the mother who gave him and witnessed his life. This was a not-at-all-subtle invitation to all Christians to take a new look at an old devotion, one Protestants, for instance, have found unhappily Mary-centered in the past.

An absolutely beautiful assessment of the rosary!