Prayer beads, rosaries, etc. etc. … and the Lutherans
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006The subject of rosaries usually can elicit lively discussion between Lutherans. Most of us think first and foremost of standard Roman Catholic rosaries, with their decades of Hail Marys, the occasional Our Fathers, the meditation on the various “mysteries,” wrapped up with the Hail Holy Queen. In other words, a Marian rosary with the purpose of invoking her, and certain promises of merit and blessing attached to its recitation. Suffice it to say that Lutherans don’t go in for this invocation stuff, nor of the benefits of any man-made work, not to speak of the confusion of the nature of works in our salvation. Our confessions condemn this sort of practice as a “childish and needless work,” which is not actually a true good work at all.
Lutherans who have therefore abandoned the ancient Christian practice of using some form of counters or beads in certain prayer settings, due to the Roman abuses of the same, tend to be rather off-put by that picture of Martin Chemnitz with his rosary beads, or puzzled by the notion of any Lutheran using them. It’s hard to dislodge the usual rosary associations we have with Rome. Of course, the fact is that the ancient church did not invoke the saints on their beads, stones, or knots, and so their practice did not greatly resemble the Dominican rosary we tend to think of nowadays.
So if Lutherans are indeed free to use prayer beads in our prayer lives, as we use bookmarks in our reading lives, what might an “acceptably Lutheran” set of prayer beads look like?
A search on words like “Lutheran rosary” yield some interesting results. Very liberal church groups are not above using practices of the ancient church… usually with some bizarre twists. I’ve seen “churches” use a feminist sort of rosary with a goddess figure where the cross should be. This ELCA site starts out with what seems like an okay set of prayers for their rosary, but by the time you get down to “Good Friday” you’re feeling kind of iffy, and by the time you get to the E.E. Cummings poem, I’m inclined to say, ”No thanks.” But they also include this downloadable booklet for praying through the Small Catechism, with looks much more promising.
This frequently-mentioned Lutheran Rosary includes, as a possibility, the “pre-Trent Hail Mary,” which excludes the second half of the prayer, requesting her intercession. While I’m not at all against honoring Mary, having images of her, speaking in praise of her, etc, I’m not comfortable with using this as part of a rosary, which is commonly understood to be a set of prayers. Unless you’re going to use your beads entirely for the recitation of Scriptures which speak highly of the saints, it would seem that including such a “praise” in the form of a direct address, alongside other prayers, is a bit misleading. This is my opinion; maybe some will come along to contest it! All in all, this set of prayer beads is okay to me. The Jesus Prayer, often used in the Orthodox church, is very good. I’d use the Magnificat instead of the Hail Mary, though.
This ecumenical “Lutheran” rosary from Sweden is too on the touchy-feely, uber-”mystical” side for me. If you look at the prayers suggested, a lot of them are of the “I breathe out my worry, I breathe in your peace” fluff variety. Not a lot of Jesus in these prayers.
Personally, I like a lot of the prayers commonly associated with the Anglican rosary. See the prayers suggested at the bottom of this page.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t post this to necessarily encourage or urge people to take up this particular devotion or any other. Let the practice of these things be a personal matter, provided that it does not work against our faith. The discussion can be useful for determining what really does or doesn’t work against our faith, or what may prove to be more or less beneficial. But I’m not turning this topic into a matter of “we ought to.”
Okay, fire away discussion!
