The Rosary kept this prisoner of war from going insane

I heard this story as a teenager — long before I became a Catholic:

A young American soldier was carelessly thrown in a heap into his sweltering jungle prison. Sick, sweaty and malnourished, he lay semiconscious on the dirt floor. The beatings he endured now occurred daily and at times, hourly. As night merged with day and week gave rise to week, the steady brutality came without sense, without mercy and without end.

And yet, though collapsed under the weight of excruciating pain and feverish delirium, moments of lucidity found the soldier’s trembling finger tracing – etching — something onto the earthen floor. Ten dots were roughly connected in a circle and in the center, a cross. …

The Rosary, this soldier later recalled, was what kept him sane in the midst of a time of incomprehensible ruthlessness. To utter the words of the angel Gabriel and St. Elizabeth to Mary, Hail, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, to pray the Our Father and the Glory Be, and to contemplate the Joyful, Sorrowful or Glorious Mysteries vividly brought God into that desperately black prison cell.

For the Rosary, as this soldier so clearly understood, is not a mindless recitation of phrase after phrase or a spirit-less cataloging of the events of Christ’s life. No. Rather, it is none other than a deeply mystical immersion into God. It is an escape from the callous now into the loving Eternal. It is an opportunity to center oneself in the warm embrace of Christ using prayers and phrases and imagery drawn from millennia of devout worship.

Tod Worner - published on 11/28/16

Adapted from www.aleteia.com