Former Protestant Pastor talks about the Rosary

[Music] number six on my list of ten unexpected awesome things about being Catholic okay so this is a big one today I'm going to talk about the rosary and I know that for many of us converts coming into the church there's so many different devotional things that go into being Catholic and when you get when you come into the church you can get overwhelmed really quickly with all of the different devotions that there are and I don't know about other people but for me I was pretty like lost when it came to what I should do because everybody's got a different opinion you know there are people that say you need to do this you need to pray that or you need to do this consecration or that chaplet or this particular thing or that particular thing and it all gets really overwhelming sometimes because when you walk into the church they don't just hand you like here's step one of prayers that you pray but the Rosary always seems to be one that everybody has some relationship to well when I could became a Catholic I had prayed a rosary here and there and I always struggled with it to be honest with you when I was getting ready to convert because I guess in my Protestant upbringing in my Protestant universe that lived in there's this real hesitancy toward anything that's too repetitive because of course we all know you know Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount when he says don't be like the Pharisees and with their vain repetitions and what is the rosary it's a lot of repetition and that's something that I guess I had a little bit of you know sensitivity toward was I didn't just want to be locked into this robotic prayer where it was just like you know hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou and and to be honest with you sometimes when I would go to churches before Mass whatever people be praying rosary and it was like they got into this this like robotic hypnotic place with the rosary and that sort of at times freaked me out well I just decided I wasn't gonna let it be a stumbling block to me and I just to move forward with my conversion and I and as I was doing that I began to you know just try it and but I didn't really understand exactly what was going on and one day I was going for a motorcycle ride which I love to do when it's nice out here and I always when I'm riding I'm always listening to something in my earbuds I wear a helmet with earbuds in so I could listen to music but I was listening to a lot of talks as I like to do sermons and and different talks and for some reason I decided to take a break from some of the apologetic stuff I was I was listening to at the time and I put on this talk by a father Don Calloway called it was about the sort of our spirit our spiritual weapon and it was about the Rosary I thought well I'll give this a try so took off on my bike listen to this talk and he was sharing about his book that he wrote about the rosary and this talk that he gave was going over the history of and where it came from and how it's the spiritual weapon and I was mesmerized by the things that he was teaching me in this talk about how the rosary had been used over the centuries in different ways and and it was a weapon and of course at the same time I was learning about things like Our Lady of Fatima and how she called the the visionaries to pray the rosary every day and more and more I was becoming convinced that I hadn't quite tapped into the full power of what this thing could be so I decided then and there that I would start praying a rosary whether it felt weird to me or not whether it seemed like it was uncomfortable or not I was going to do it and in order to get around what I was afraid of with this vain repetition I just decided simply I wasn't gonna pray in vain because really I don't think that Jesus problem with the Rosary was the repetition part because I mean if we look in the Book of Psalms we see repetitive prayer if we if we if we repeat the Our Father and the Protestant church we call the Lord's Prayer we repeat that nobody struggles with that but I think there is something about these Hail Mary prayers that people say well if it's vain so I just decided I don't know about everybody else I'm gonna make sure it's not in vain and I'm really gonna mean it well as I started to do that you know I'm like well how do I do that there's these mysteries I don't know what they're all about so I just did what you know a lot of people in our culture and generation do I downloaded an app to my cell phone and it's kind of goofy sometimes but there's like this female voice and this I don't know she sounds like she's like maybe 15 years old and she's prey in the beginning and then you hear like seven people in the background with the responses and I was like oh man am I really gonna do this it just sounded kind of goofy but I just decided you know what I don't want any of my stuff to be hang-ups I'm just gonna go for it so I started doing that and I'll tell you what it has been life changing and I know that might say oh you're being dramatic but it really has changed my life because for me a lot of my life and my prayer time has been a lot about like praying for things I want or other people things I need God to do but what I'm learning is it as a new Catholic especially through the Rosary is this powerful prayer that doesn't depend on what I'm going through or what I need or what I want it's a prayer that's about Jesus and the mysteries walk us through the life of Jesus and the things that took place in the gospel our pastor Father Crispin asked me this morning in Mass he said that you could almost survive just on the rosary in terms of becoming a saint that there's so many powerful things associated with the rosary and the mysteries that that's all you had you could practically become a saint and I've been thinking about that I'm like you know I've just sensed this divine word in my life through that and it's really changed me now my prayer is so much more focused and I've begun the practice of a praying the rosary every single day as we've been called to do and I know a lot of us right now are worked up about so many things in the culture and the church and our own lives and you know what we've become accustomed to when bad things happen in our lives or we know tragedies we say well our thoughts and prayers are with so-and-so about this and about that and I'm gonna be like really frank with you guys there's been a lot of times in my life when I've said to people oh I'll pray for you about that and then I've just never thought about it again well now that I'm praying a rosary it held to me to be focused in my prayer to say okay when someone says to me Keith will you pray for me and I said I will pray for you I know that in my heart I will have an opportunity later on to pray a rosary and oftentimes I'll offer that up and I'll say this rosary is for this person or that person or whatever's going on it's really helped me and and I didn't expect it to be that way so for me something that I expected to be sort of you know I put up with it and maybe dabble with it a little bit unexpectedly I'm I'm telling you it's been amazing I love to pray the rosary it's made me so much closer my relationship to Jesus and in my faith it's drastically improved my prayer life and it's made me so much more cognizant of what a weapon we had in that you know there's been a lot of instances in history where people have referred to the Rosary as a weapon against evil and I just want to tell you from my own experience I have felt that and seen the power of that so let's join together and let's continue to pray the rosary let's take advantage of every opportunity we have yeah I know there are so many other devotional things and I'm gonna get into more of those later and I'll learn about more of those later and so will you but for now wherever we are the rosary is so amazing so I encourage you guys let's pray it every single day I strive to do that and I'm telling you it when I do there's a closeness to God I feel so thank you guys so much for watching this was number six I've got more videos coming with the last four things that are unexpected but awesome about being Catholic god bless you guys [Music] you

Channel: Keith Nester

Views: 50,872

Keywords: Rosary, Keith Nester, Prayer, Catholic, Roman Catholic, Catholic Feedback, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Talk Show, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Taylor Marshall, Matt Fradd, Mike Schmitz, Robert Barron, Catholic Answers, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Church Militant, Bishop Barron, Unpacking the Mass, Rosary Crew, Scott Hahn

Id: Lv9VMxwG31U

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 27 2019