My Rosary
I pray the rosary every morning, something that was unfathomable to me even a few years ago. I believed that I was to far gone, that my sin was too big, too deep. God would never forgive me because I had never forgiven myself for the things I had done and never asked for forgiveness. I have only daily been praying the rosary for about a year, but before that and continuing to this day, I have been studying the mass readings for each day, their meaning and also going over the Divine Mercy readings and the Catholic Church’s Saint of the Day. I spent more than an entire year studying the bible from start to finish before that. I have been rebuilding my faith for some time.
I must admit that there are days when I don’t want to pray. Some mornings I have to meet with a client or have breakfast with a friend and spend the time after or as late as in the evening. Sometimes I’ll get into bed and realize that I’ve said all of my prayers and forgotten to pray the rosary and I will begin to recite it from memory only to fall asleep. Some days, I hurry through the mysteries and on at least one occasion, I answered my phone and got into an argument with someone. It completely ruined my time in prayer.
It takes about an hour each day to get through the mass readings, interpretations, saints and the rosary, but one thing makes it special; my grandma’s rosary.
My Grandma Ponce, my father’s mother, was a squat, rotund woman with salt and pepper hair tied back in a bun and a huge wart on her forehead who spoke no English. I remember her perpetually being in an apron. She was very devout, walking the five blocks to church every morning where she would pray the rosary with other women before mass. She fasted from her last evening meal and took communion every morning. She made rosaries for the Altar and Rosary Society to sell to make money to buy more material to make more rosaries. By the time I got to know her, she was very old and lived in a small place with my grandpa. We would visit every Sunday after church and all her sons and their families in town would cram into a little three-room house to visit them, have dinner and socialize.
My grandparents had a sign on their front door that read “Católico, Sí! Comunisimo, no!” At the time, Catholics across the world were asked to pray the rosary for the fall of communism and it’s godless, edicts. On Sunday afternoons as we ate dinner in small groups, (the men first, the children next and then finally, the women) and my grandma would sit and watch the only Spanish language show on local television, the “Val de la O Show.” She patiently assembled rosaries from a coffee can that held blue beads and another that held gold-colored chains, the silver medals with the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe for praying the Salve Regina and metal crucifixes. She worked the material peering through her bifocals at the handful of beads in her lap, passing small wires through each bead and twisting the end of the wire into a hook with a small pair of needle nose pliers that she would then attach to the chain links one decade at a time.
As kids, just before our first holy communion, we would receive from our grandma a brand-new handmade rosary that she’d had blessed by a priest. It was a special gift because we knew she had made it herself. I have the only surviving rosary of all my siblings. The beads are wooden ovals painted sky blue, drilled longways through the middle and positioned laterally between the two chains, like a railroad track. I’m missing six beads. One right next to the crucifix where we pray the first Our Father to start the rosary, one in the third decade, the second to the last Hail Mary, the Our Father bead between the third and fourth decade and then the third, seventh and eighth Hail Mary beads of the last decade. The crucifix is silver colored with wood embedded underneath the figure of Christ crucified.
I have never seen another rosary like this except for the ones that were given to my siblings decades ago. Some of the paint has been scuffed off the beads and the image of Mary on one side of the metal is almost smooth from so many fingers caressing it in prayer. For years I carried it in my pocket as a kid in Catholic school and later in mid-school. I abandoned the rosary as I abandoned the church in my teen years and through my twenties, thirties and forties, but it always remained in my jewelry box among old mementos and things I no longer had any use for. I might pick it up and examine it from time to time, but mostly, it stayed locked away.
And then I had to attend the funeral of a family member. In catholic culture, there is always a rosary said before the funeral mass, sometimes the day before and sometimes just prior to the funeral. I pulled it out of my jewelry box, stuffed it into my pocket and went to the funeral. I was surprised how much of the rosary I remembered; the Apostles Creed, the Salve Regina and even the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. These were drilled into me in Catholic school but it brought back fond memories of praying our family rosary every night kneeling around my parents’ bed as kids, my father dozing off in the middle of prayer.
I prayed the rosary with my family when my father passed away almost forty years ago. I prayed the rosary with my mother in the hospital as my brother lay dying from alcoholism, unconsciously thrashing about wildly in withdrawal and calling for Jesus to save him. He went peacefully in his sleep a few days later. I prayed it at my mother’s funeral with the women from the Altar and Rosary Society who got my mother’s name wrong during the rosary, referring to her as Grace from a previous funeral, and the apologized profusely afterwards. I have prayed the rosary countless times at countless funerals, prayed for the health of my friends, family and even pets. I have prayed the rosary with intentions for peace, for those in poverty, the lonely, the aged, the dying.
As Catholics, we are often criticized as droning on mindlessly, reciting a mantra, not to God, but to his mother but this prayer is a prayer of intersession, a prayer of worship and praise. It is tangible proof of our faith. It is not a magic prayer, but a prayer that asks for compassion, forgiveness and peace comprised of the most perfect of prayers, the Our Father and the Hail Mary.
This rosary, tucked away for so many years did not mock me or call to me, but waited patiently for me to return home to the prayer that had shaped my Catholic faith. It feels comfortable in my hand. It’s unique beauty, crafted by my grandma so many years ago reminded me of the time we prayed for my grandpa’s recovery from a stroke. I remembered receiving a benediction from my grandma before leaving home for the first time. It brought back the image of the altar she had in her home dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a comfort, a way to center and strengthen myself and it reminds me of my faith every day.
Copyright 2026 by Jose Antonio Ponce