Trent Beattie, National Catholic Register: [David Quessenberry] The prayers of the Rosary are helpful, but also the physical rosary itself is helpful, since it gives us a tangible means of expressing our soul’s desire for grace. Praying without objects is great, of course, but when those objects are there, it just makes it easier to concentrate on why you’re doing what you’re doing.
I didn’t always see things that way, though. Growing up, I didn’t get why we had to sit, stand and kneel at specific times during the Mass. The “Catholic calisthenics” didn’t make sense to me; it wasn’t clear why we had to be so structured in what we did.
That changed once I came to see that Jesus was the one who started the Mass. He was there with his apostles and said to do this in remembrance of him. The Mass is not something we make up; it’s something we accept as a sacramental gift and something we participate in, not only as a religious duty, but as a major means of drawing us into the life of the Trinity.
The Mass is unique to any religion, because it’s the only place you can receive, not only the gifts our Savior gave us, but our Savior himself, in the Eucharist. Jesus gave his apostles the power to change the bread and wine into his Body and Blood, so that makes the Eucharist unequaled by any other gift we could receive. Read full interview here.
