CNA Staff, Dec 31, 2024 / 07:00 am
First came “The Bible in a Year,” then “The Catechism in a Year” — now comes “The Rosary in a Year,” Ascension’s newest podcast that will begin on Jan. 1, 2025.
Hosted by Father Mark-Mary Ames of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the podcast will consist of daily 15-minute episodes that will guide listeners through a deeper encounter with all the elements of the rosary.
Ames, who experienced a conversion at age 18, spoke about his own journey with praying the rosary and how he hopes the new podcast might help those who experience barriers while praying the rosary.
Soon after his conversion, Ames said, he began praying the rosary daily. However, “at the beginning, to be honest, it was a little bit of a struggle,” he told CNA in an interview.
“I wasn’t really taught how to do it and so I had this thing I was supposed to do every day, but I [didn’t] really know how to do it,” he explained. “So, what ended up happening is it became ... [a bit like] having a 15-minute phone call on the phone but nobody was on the other line … a one-sided thing. I’m saying these things but there’s not really a connection to God.”
Ames admitted that he stopped praying the rosary for a period of time but was able to make it a daily habit again after years of growing in his faith, especially as he entered religious life.
He pointed out that he has come across a lot of people who struggle to pray the rosary due to a “sort of lack of maybe formation in it or guidance in it” and hopes that “through some accompaniment, some formation and understanding of like what we’re supposed to be doing, what the mysteries mean, that actually it will be something that is a huge source of grace for everybody who’s praying it.”
“The Rosary in a Year” podcast aims to serve as that form of accompaniment and guidance by taking listeners through six phases of deepening their understanding of the rosary. These include looking at what it means to pray in general and focusing on the actual prayers of the rosary and what they mean. The longest phase will be diving deeper into the mysteries of the rosary, practicing “lectio divina” and “visio divina,” reflections from the saints, and finally praying the rosary.
Ames said he hopes these phases will help to build “the muscle of prayer.”
“I think there’s a reason the rosary is so popular across demographics, across centuries, [and it’s] because it is really in many ways a great unmatched means of prayer,” he said.
As the new year approaches and with many people making new year’s resolutions, Ames said an “ongoing, consistent resolution should be ‘I want to make the next best step in my prayer life or develop a prayer life,’ which is really a struggle for a lot of people.”
Ames said he hopes those who listen to the podcast will “grow in their life of prayer and that particularly they fall in love, maybe for the first time, maybe again, with prayer and with the Lord and with Our Lady and with the rosary because they experience the rosary as this privileged doorway in which they get to encounter the Lord.”
