Say the Rosary, save the world

“Give me an army saying the Rosary and I will conquer the world.” Blessed Pope Pius IX

Last night at First Friday devotions before the Blessed Sacrament, my thoughts again turned to the need for Catholic ecologists to say the Rosary. (For my Protestant friends, that’s another way of saying we must turn to Christ to save souls and to elevate all creation.)

These thoughts are nothing new. They in fact summarize Christian life.

I don’t know how many Catholic ecologists today pray the Rosary. I know I don’t as much as I should. But I know I need to because our efforts are meaningless without God. As Pope Francis tells us in his Lenten Message, we must “be able to resist the diabolical temptation of thinking that by our own efforts we can save the world and ourselves.”

I had posted awhile back on spiritual practices that are necessary to protect the planet. That call will be amplified on these pages and by many others. Over the next few weeks and months groups like the Global Catholic Climate Network will be sharing news on how to fast for climate change during Lent and, later, how to pray for creation. This prayer effort will be especially heightened in April, when Pope Francis’s prayer intention will be focused on protecting the natural world.

As important as these moments of transcendence are, we mustn’t limit such practices to a Lenten observance or one month out of the year. As Pope Francis continually reminds us, prayer must be at the center of what we do. And not just private prayers in the comfort of our own minds. We must also pray as families—parish families and otherwise. We must embrace together those time-tested and true Catholic devotions of adoration, the Rosary, First Friday devotions, and many more.

Thus we encounter these questions: How will you and I embrace these devotional practices? And why wouldn’t we?

As St. Josemaria Escriva observed about one of them, “the holy Rosary is a powerful weapon. Use it with confidence and you’ll be amazed at the results.”