While the Rosary is a beautiful prayer and many saints have promoted it throughout the centuries, it can be easy to think that all we need to do is pray the Rosary to get to Heaven.
We might even think that we need to reach a certain number of Rosaries said in our lifetime.
We could also become distressed if we don't pray the Rosary on a specific day, thinking that Mary will be angry with us.
In some ways we might project onto Mary an image of motherhood that was modeled for us by our earthly mother.
Maybe our mother was very demanding, and if we didn't do everything precisely correct, we would get punished.
We could then imagine the Blessed Mother in the same light, thinking that she is a demanding mother who is always displeased with us.
Is this true?
False devotion
St. Louis de Montfort, well known for his teachings about Marian devotion, labeled this kind of devotion under the heading of "false" devotion in his book, True Devotion to Mary:
External devotees are persons who make all devotion to our Blessed Lady consist in outward practices. They have no taste except for the exterior of this devotion, because they have no interior spirit of their own. They will say quantities of Rosaries with the greatest precipitation; they will hear many Masses distractedly; they will go without devotion to processions; they will enroll themselves in all sorts of confraternities.
He worried that those who are most concerned about the number of Rosaries they recite do not have an internal devotion to Mary:
[W]ithout amending their lives, without doing any violence to their passions, or without imitating the virtues of that most holy Virgin. They have no love but for the sensible part of devotion, without having any relish for its solidity. If they have not sensible sweetness in their practices, they think they are doing nothing; they get all out of joint, throw everything up, or do everything at random.
Instead, St. Louis de Montfort suggested an interior devotion that had a tender trust in the Blessed Mother:
It is tender; that is to say, full of confidence in her, like a child’s confidence in his loving mother. This confidence makes the soul have recourse to her in all its bodily or mental necessities, with much simplicity, trust, and tenderness. It implores the aid of its good Mother, at all times, in all places, and about all things; in its doubts, that it may be enlightened; in its wanderings, that it may be brought into the right path; in its temptations, that it may be supported; in its weaknesses, that it may be strengthened.
The key to Heaven does not lie in the number of Rosaries we pray, or the novenas we participate in.
Rosaries and novenas can be helpful, in so far as they foster an interior devtion.
We need to reform our lives and love God with a sincere heart.
The Blessed Mother is not a strict disciplinarian, but a loving mother, who cares for us and picks us up when we are down.
The next time you pray a Rosary, do so with your full heart and don't be afraid when you "miss" a Rosary. God, who is rich in mercy, would rather you pray one Rosary well than many that only scratch the surface.
