5 KEYS
FOR MAKING YOUR
PRAYER
MORE EFFECTIVE
+ STEP BY STEP
+ FREEDOM AND PEACE
+ CONCRETE RESULTS
WELCOME
THANK YOU and CONGRATULATIONS for obtaining this ebook to live the transforming experience
of effective meditation.
Spirituality is back in vogue, and meditation programs are flourishing. Everyone certainly has their
own analysis of such success. As for me, I am convinced that the profound challenges and upheavals
of our time give us the desire to focus on the essential:
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Are you too fed up with the ambient and self-interested materialism that doesn't really
take care of people in all dimensions of their lives and their person?
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Do you also, with professional stress, family life, hectic rhythms, and lack the time to
quickly and efficiently rebuild your energy and inner strength?
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Are you also attracted by the beauty of a moment of silence, depth, interiority and
spiritual intimacy?
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Do you also feel the desire to express your inner potential, emotional, spiritual, vital
energy that inhabits you and makes you move forward, for a life lived with more fullness,
freedom and serenity?
If you answer yes to one of these questions, this ebook is for you 😉😉. Meditation brings an answer
to these questions. And a concrete answer, accessible, simple and possible from your home, which
integrates easily into the contemporary way of life.
However, if a first experience of meditation is easy and accessible to all with a certain number of
methods and techniques, a disappointing observation often occurs after a while: "I have not
experienced any real transformation"; "the same anxieties recur"; "nothing has changed. " Why isn't
the result up to scratch? Profound expeditions, the essential quest of our being has not been
nourished. Peace, happiness and serenity are beautiful promises, but how can we guarantee these
results?
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As no one is interested in wasting time and energy at the risk of being disappointed after several
months of persevering practice, with the feeling that they have invested themselves for the wind, it
is important to ask the right questions at the outset. The contribution of the method that I propose
here is that of meaning, a real meaning.
Christian meditation is still little known. But I can see around me that it is being rediscovered today
with immense strength. For it offers authentic and true wisdom, with simple exercises that lead to
authentic peace of heart: human equilibrium, blossoming intelligence, deep freedom, unconditional
love. In a word, it makes man truly free, the heart welcoming to the unconditional and infinite
gratuity that is given from elsewhere. In my language I call this divine grace.
Here I offer you 5 keys to mark out a sure and certain path towards a practice of meditation that
reaches the deepest aspirations of the human person, at the school of proven Christian wisdom. By
following these markers, you cannot get lost.
This is the originality of my approach. Unlike Eastern currents, I invite you to discover or rediscover
the totally unexplored power of Christian meditation, and more particularly Catholic* meditation,
which is nevertheless rooted in four millennia of rich experience. And it is this richness that we are
going to explore together so that it can become yours, if you wish, step by step, at your own pace,
with the basic elements in this ebook.
I am sharing my experience with you in this book, because I want to help you save precious time by
going straight to what is important and enter into the joy of a meditation that gives results. For this,
5 keys and a concrete tool that I will discuss in the last part. You will then have to go deeper into the
areas you want, for example thanks to the content that I regularly present on the blog or in video
or my trainings. I am sure that you will take giant steps forward to be happy with your transformed
and renewed life. Free and serene, full of grace.
One more thing: if you listened to English videos With Mary, you surely heard the wonderful and
praying voice of Joseph... his English is far better than mine and I want to thank him a lot for his
precious collaboration. We’re very happy to propose you this renewing experience of prayer.
Good discovery of this ebook! Friendly,
Christophe
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WHO AM I?
My name is Christophe Renault, and I am a Christian, an
ordinary Christian, as they say. I am not a monk or a religious,
but I am fully engaged in my professional, friendly and family
life. I started the practice of Christian meditation only a few
years ago thanks to a strong spiritual experience that has
transformed my life. I felt the need to connect with this
divine force that had touched me. At this time I was working
for a large company in the Paris region at La Défense and I
was living in a tiny Parisian flat of a few square meters in
Châtelet, which was convenient for public transportation. That's the point when at “subway-eatsleep” (as we say in French) I added meditatio 😉😉.
When I started meditating, I needed a method, a guide. In a way that I re-read today as providential,
I entered a Christian bookstore for the first time. I found a little book that had just come out, a letter
from Pope John Paul II to Christians on the theme of prayer. The little book was short enough not
to put me off, so I bought it. In this letter, John Paul II shared his passion for prayer and especially
for this Christian prayer called the rosary. He gave his method, why this form of meditation was of
immense depth, why it was a valid method for contemporary times and today's needs. To this prayer
which went through and contemplated the life of Christ in 15 stages called the mysteries, John Paul
II proposed to add the meditation of 5 important moments of his public life, which he called the
luminous mysteries. Today, therefore, the Rosary is made up of 20 mysteries.
It is said that God's ways are impenetrable. It is as if this book is waiting for me. I liked to think that
the Pope was taking the liberty of changing a prayer that was several hundred years old in order to
modernize it. I thought it was audacious and even daring to move what had seemed to have been
carved in marble for centuries. And as the Pope explained his method step by step, I felt personally
concerned as a beginner and I thought I would try it, to meditate on the rosary with its luminous
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mysteries. Obviously, it is a meditation exercise that takes a little time, but I had really decided to
enter into the method and I was just on vacation at the time. So I took the space and the time for it,
with method and application, determination too. What impressed me enormously was how quickly
I dived into intense meditation. Two hours passed as if in 2 minutes. Everything spoke to me, of the
stages of Christ's life, and I remember this inner feeling that became almost physical, of being
enlightened, illuminated by the life of Christ. Everything made sense and was organized, and in the
space of those few moments of meditation, starting from scratch, I tasted a peace and freedom like
I had never experienced before. This is how the rosary became my personal guide. Its method
allowed me to have a support on which to rest my meditation in order to raise my eyes to heaven
and contemplate, letting myself be visited by the grace of God. By implementing this simple stepby-step method, my life had been deeply renewed.
So I repeated the experience regularly, and each time I took the time, usually after work, to meditate
seriously, my intelligence was enlightened by a new light: both the content and the form of this
meditation led me in a dazzling spiritual growth, I who knew nothing or almost nothing about it. My
well-being could be seen and I had feedback from people around me who told me so because they
saw my joy and inner peace.
This discovery, which transformed my life in a lasting way, went hand in hand with the surprise to
see that extremely few people, even Christians, took the time to practice meditation. As a result,
very few spoke about it. Fortunately, I had been able to find these mentors, if I may say so, in John
Paul II and later in the figure of Mother Teresa, who testified how the power of the rosary had, long
before me, transformed their lives. I even went to Calcutta for a while to try to understand Mother
Teresa's powerful intuition and why she had such a radiance: I understood that she had founded
and rooted her work in meditation and prayer, especially the rosary. And I was even happy to find
the roots of the Rosary in my family, where some of the elders had had this fruitful experience.
Quickly, seeing the results of this meditation in my life, I said to myself: "Christophe, you must
spread this secret. "I gathered a few friends at my house, and we prayed for several hours at a time
without seeing the time go by. The miracle, if I may say so, was being repeated by many. After a few
months, I proposed this experience in a church in Paris, the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in
French “La Chapelle de la Médaille Miraculeuse,” which welcomed our small group and we started
a rosary meditation group. Today, 4 times a year, more than 500 people continue to come to this
group and leave transformed. An association of young people was born from there, “Alliance
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Mariale” (Marian Alliance), to spread this intuition with a Festival each year, called the Marian
Festival. These events have so far touched thousands of people and continue with enthusiasm and
fruitfulness, for which I am full of gratitude.
Today I tell myself that in parallel to my professional activity as an entrepreneur, lecturer and digital
agency, I have received an authentic inner call to make this form of meditation even more widely
known: I am convinced of its power to transform your life, since it transformed mine, as I was
starting from scratch, and one can even say that "I was in the minus" 😉😉. I don’t know where you
are at in your life, but maybe you are a beginner too, and it’s great: by following the path of
meditation with the Rosary step by step, with a few recommendations and the pedagogy that I am
happy to share with you, you will be able to benefit from my humble experience to go even faster
and further. It is my dearest wish that many people will become experts in meditation and
contemplation through the rosary.
If you want to be guided for the steps that will follow this ebook, I continue to develop training
courses to help you enter even more deeply into the spiritual life: they give you points of reference
to grow in humanity and in freedom, in a daily fullness that allows you to overcome life's difficulties
with greater ease, with the grace of God.
But for now, let's get to the heart of the matter: what are these 5 keys to make your meditation
truly effective?
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Note
Are you of Lutheran, Evangelical, or other Protestant denomination? You are
also welcome to read this free guide!
Being a Catholic myself, and having had a strong experience of God in the
Catholic context, some of the formulations or proposals in this book may seem
irrelevant to your confession, especially on the Pope, Mary or the Rosary.
My intention is not to shock or provoke you. I have the unity of the Churches at
heart and I myself have received much from Protestants who have shared with
me their love of the Word of God and of praise.
I therefore invite you, if you feel the need, to read the parts of this ebook that
are compatible with your own convictions. I hope that reading the rest, if it
interests you, may perhaps bring you a renewed knowledge of certain features
of Catholic spirituality.
May God bless you. I am united with you in prayer for Christian unity.
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WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS
GUIDE?
With the experience I've gained, I've seen how much time and energy it saves to be guided:
reinventing essential steps can cost a lot of time and money when others have already done the
work and share it graciously if possible.
With the observation that Christian meditation is very little proposed today, as belittled in front of
Eastern meditation or mindfulness, I want to make people rediscover its immense value, its ease of
access for all, even (especially) for children, founded in millennial roots, and without dogmatism.
For these reasons, I have identified 5 keys that I think are the most important in order not to get
lost along the way: I give them to you here, along with my practical advice and tips that will be most
useful to you.
Is Christian meditation still relevant?
I like images that often summarize things better than speeches. I would like to take you in spirit to
the eternal city, Rome. Perhaps you have been there before; it will probably be easier for you to
find your way around. If not, maybe these few lines will make you want to go for a ride.
We arrive at Rome's main train station, Termini Station. Just a short distance from there is a church,
Santa Maria della Victoria, in which, on the left side, you can see one of the most beautiful sculptures
that exists of spiritual experience: the ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila by Bernini. Teresa of Avila is a
16th century Spanish nun who had an extraordinary experience of prayer she called “oracion”, a
form of meditation. This experience refocused monastic life on silent prayer, the prayer of the heart
to make the soul grow. Teresa the Great, as she is called, spread the extraordinary gift of this
(re)discovery throughout Europe and the whole world by reforming her religious order, the Order
of Carmel. She wrote magnificent works, including the inner castle, which describes the human soul,
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the human heart, as structured in 7 mansions, each one becoming more and more inwardly linked.
And at the heart of the heart is the place of the divine presence. Thérèse described with great
precision the different stages that lead from one dwelling to another. Her books and works have led
to an immense growth in the practice of meditation in the West, a meditation still practiced today
in monasteries and by more and more lay people. Theresian prayer is a sure way to reach what she
calls spiritual marriage, the union of the soul with God that transforms the soul and gives it a new
capacity to plunge into divine love, the place of true and infinite happiness. It is this spiritual height,
with its beauty captured in marble that Bernini wanted to represent in the Church of Saint Mary of
the Victories. And he visibly succeeded 😉😉
As we push our Roman steps towards the Tiber, we cross it to take the Via Della Conciliazione
towards the well-known silhouette of the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome. We pass the colonnade of
the same Bernini to enter the immense church, framed by hordes of tourists. But for us, in the
silence of the deep recollection that gripped us, we will go no further than this chapel, on the right
as we enter, where the universal masterpiece that is Michelangelo's Pietà is located. We are no
longer there in divine ecstasy as St. Teresa, but we contemplate the Mother with her dead Son on
her knees. How can we describe this mother? Mother of pain and peace, mother of suffering and
forgiveness for all the executioners of her Son. The Pietà is in fact a representation of Mary, Mother
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of Jesus Christ, who welcomes her Son when he has just died unjustly crucified, and his horribly
bruised body is detached and taken down from the cross. We are no longer in the glory of Theresian
meditation, but in the sorrow of a Mother's heart bending over her Son. She has the royal
maintenance, and yet she is the handmaid by excellence of the one who has just given her life for
the love and salvation of all men. She does not spread herself in sorrowful and demonstrative
complaints. Nor does she judge anyone. It is her heart that loves and suffers an unknown
martyrdom, seeing the pains that the world has inflicted on her innocent Son, a lamb without stain
led to the slaughterhouse by the jealousy of men.
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We are in the other extreme of Christian meditation: Mary's compassion, her love in suffering
offered, by an indescribable love, are incomparable. Mary forgives, following in the footsteps of her
Son, all torturers, all sinners. She does not have a single word of curse, but she blesses God for
having accomplished the great work of Redemption. The compassion of the Mother, how can we
understand it? Can we imagine it?
This is how, through these two incomparable artists and their masterpieces, the two poles of
Christian meditation are made perceptible to us: a pole of glory and mystical union on the one hand,
and on the other, a pole of unconditional love, heroic compassion and pure forgiveness. Glory and
Cross.
This is where Christian meditation finds all its power: it is not afraid to plunge into the deepest
experience as if being elevated to sublime contemplation. It embraces the whole depths of human
life, from the most difficult to the most glorious, in a strong, concrete and creative union between
the carnal and the spiritual.
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5 KEYS
FOR EFFECTIVE MEDITATION
KEY 1
Being more efficient through a meditation ritual
The importance of rituals is no longer in doubt. Capital in the education and transmission between
parents and children, but also in the life of adults, the ritual brings many benefits:
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Rituals mark your growth: the great rituals of life provide a framework that marks the
major passages of life: graduating high school, passing the driver's license, getting
married ... Rituals often correspond to stages of growth, the entry or exit of an age of
life.
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Rituals give you a sense of belonging and avoid loneliness: in a group, rituals will
manifest the culture of that group, its roots, its identity, its codes, and determine the
limit of belonging or not to that group. The rhythms of family life, or the morning coffee
with your team when you arrive at work are daily examples.
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Ritual makes your action easy: building a ritual is like building a skill: it takes a few
weeks to change an action into a habit. Daily repetition at the same time each day
makes it easy to perform the ritual after a while. Getting up in the morning becomes
much easier when it is at the same time every day.
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The ritual brings you security and evidence: we ask far fewer questions when an action
is ritualized. A bedtime that goes through the same steps every day makes it easier to
fall asleep and enter peacefully into the night. For example, children need the parents'
kiss to fall asleep.
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The ritual makes you strong and flexible at the same time: the rising ritual is important
to enter the day serenely and with confidence, it brings certainty and solidity. Be
careful however not to confuse ritual and obsession: at times it is necessary to know
how to question existing rituals to avoid the "old guy" or "old girl" syndrome.
"Optimizing one's rituals is an art, in which the essential is to keep the sap of life,
between the pitfall of obsession and that of laziness.
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Rituals develop your personal capacities: according to psychologists and
neuroscientists, rituals allow the development of memory, self-confidence, trust and
relationship with others, capacities such as anticipation, organization of space and time.
With rituals, the child feels safe to learn and grow effectively. This is easily transposed
to the adult.
This ebook not being a study of the rituals 😉😉 I stop there with this idea to propose to you:
Have fun writing down your personal rituals, those of your family and professional environment.
It is important to note that the value of ritual in personal Christian meditation has often been
overlooked. Ritual has been "reserved" for common celebrations. However, having a meditation
ritual allows you to enjoy all the benefits mentioned for the development of your spiritual life: you
can set up a simple routine that gives you a stable and peaceful setting.
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What are the dimensions of this framework to give you? I see 5 basic ones.
- Your space
- Your time
- Your body posture
- Your silence
- The content of your meditation
I detail these 5 elements.
- Your space first: fix yourself a place in your home that you like, always the same: ideally, a
space dedicated to that, intimate and peaceful, a pleasant place that is not draughty, lit at your
convenience. You are at ease there and you can breathe freely, the space allows you to take easy
body postures. The decoration of this space has its importance. Personally, I like a certain sobriety
but I know people that a more abundant decoration helps to meditate. It is you who choose your
space! You also know that very often, the outside space says how our interior space is also
arranged for meditation. A cluttered, out of order room is said to be a cluttered interior space and
therefore made it difficult to practice prayerful meditation.
Don’t forget that spring cleaning can be done all year round. 😉😉
- Your time: from the recommendation of all spirituals, set a time for yourself. You can start
with 5 minutes each day. The secret is not in the duration, but in the daily regularity. Better 5
minutes a day than one hour every week. Regularity and fidelity go hand in hand with an
organization of the day that allows it. For my part, I organize myself to get up at 6 am every
morning, and I meditate from 6:30 am to 7:30 am every morning. When it's the weekend or the
vacations, things get tough and I make my flexibility grow! But I plan in my agenda for this onehour slot no matter what happens, also because being well aware of this secret of regularity,
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I know that if I let go once, the next day it will be a little harder to get back into it and the day after
even more. This calls for an assertive decision and a certain practical asceticism.
Use an alarm clock to avoid worrying about how much time has passed...
It is an interesting exercise to meditate without looking at your watch.
The alarm clock will ring at the end of the meditation time you have given yourself.
- Your body posture is essential, to promote calm, peaceful, regular breathing. You can also
begin your meditation time with breathing exercises (cardiac coherence) that aerate the brain and
make it more available and attentive to meditation. You can change your posture during your
meditation, finding the right balance between sleep and agitation, in an attentive presence. If you
have the physical condition to do so, the posture that I appreciate and recommend is to kneel,
sitting on a small prayer bench about 15 cm high, standing up when necessary to oxygenate
yourself and circulate blood, which refocuses and energizes prayer and meditation. Occasionally, I
also like to take a few minutes in the posture of prostration before God, bringing humility and
peace. In synthesis, the best posture is the one where you feel at ease and which bodily manifests
the inner attitude you are seeking in your meditation.
You will find example of prayer bench on Amazon:
Meditation Bench
- Your silence: how can you silence your emotions and thoughts to connect with God and
listen to Him if you are in noise? First of all, it is a matter of making the external silence: sorry to
repeat this obvious fact, but no one can meditate properly with the sound and advertising waves
of TV, radio or the web close by. Put your phone in airplane mode to avoid untimely notifications
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or even just to avoid keeping a square of your brain attentive to the possible message you might
receive. Then how can you reduce external sources of imponderable noise such as the street,
neighbors, or children? The choice of the moment of meditation is very important here: my
preference is to meditate early in the morning, the night atmosphere is calm and favorable. One of
my tricks is to get a noise-cancelling helmet. It is the guarantee of a deep and lasting silence,
without worrying about the sound environment, and it can serve you in many other occasions.
And in the personal meditation, these Mickey's ears won't make anyone else laugh but you. 😉😉
Here again, amazon offers good noise cancelling headsets:
Ear plugs
Helmet
Inner silence is another essential issue. To welcome it, there are 3 levels to visit: the silence of the
body and movement, the silence of feelings and emotions, the silence of thoughts and will. It is a
work to be done and done again often, without obsession but with simplicity and determination. If
your thoughts go astray, return peacefully to the object of your meditation and pick it up again.
Breathing and posture will help you stay focused and awake. If you fall asleep, listen to yourself: a
little nap will surely do you a world of good.
In the beginning, the silence, both external and internal, can produce real difficulty and even
anxiety: the contemporary world is too little used to it. In this case, soft music, guided meditation,
spiritual reading or recorded prayer can help you to tame silence. Don't put pressure on yourself.
Prayers and meditations that I have recorded can help you
(English subtitles):
Evening prayer before going to sleep
Morning prayer
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- The content of your meditation is the 5th element to build your ritual at your
convenience. Starting with simple breathing and posture exercises helps to center yourself. Then,
the content adapts to the objective of your meditation. Since the goal of Christian meditation is to
receive happiness, freedom and serenity, in a word grace as the gift of contemplation of God and
in the end to commune with God himself, the concrete ways to reach this goal are multiple: some
will like to start with a spiritual reading, stopping with a few words of meditation. Others will
stimulate their gratitude for God, for the gifts they have received during the day, the week, the
month. Still others practice meditating on a biblical passage by identifying with each character in
turn. The traditions of meditation are multiple and incredibly rich. Some prefer the freedom of
improvisation in love meditation. Here again it is a question of balance between the two extremes
of obsessive rigidity and soft dilution.
In my experience, I like to be precise about the content of my morning meditation hour, which
allows me to stay focused, my faculties mobilized without falling asleep if the night has been short.
It also gives rhythm and purpose to my meditation. I organize myself in several stages: an
interiorly meditated rosary, some vocal prayers, a rosary to the divine mercy, and the silence of
the heart.
My main recommendation is to build your meditation content around a
meditation core. In my opinion the 5 keys that I propose in this book find their
realization par excellence in the prayer of the rosary: it is my essential core. And
you, what is yours?
With these elements in place, you are now ready to enter into the heart of the experience to taste
the effectiveness of Christian meditation, to the point where it becomes spiritual life and profound
union with God. Let us see the following keys to this.
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KEY 2
Meditate easily
starting with the Bible
At the heart of Christian meditation, and this is the main point that differentiates it from mindfulness
meditation or other Eastern meditations, there is a goal: to experience the loving union with God
that makes us truly happy. This is what we saw when we spoke of the prayer of Teresa of Avila: the
innermost dwelling place of our being, the tip of our soul, as other spirituals will say, is the nuptial
chamber, the place of intimate union with God.
For Christians, this God is not simply positive energy or vague love that makes our life more pleasant,
like the sun warms us. It is a God who is someone, who created man and desires to enter into a
relationship with man. But God has given man this immense gift of personal freedom, which is why
he will never force the door: God waits for man to choose to come and find him in the most intimate
part of himself. Saint Augustine wrote a vibrant prayer on this subject:
Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
And behold, you were inside and I was outside, and there I was looking for you...
You were with me and I was not with you...
You called, you shouted and you broke my deafness.
You shone, you shone and you dispelled my blindness.
You embalmed, I breathed and panting I yearn for you
I have tasted, and I am hungry and thirsty;
you have touched me and I have been inflamed for your peace.
When I have adhered to you with all myself
Nowhere will there be pain and toil for me
and alive will be my life full of you.
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When one reads these lines written from a vivid and powerful experience, one can say that St.
Augustine knows the heart of meditation, this beating heart.
But how does God reach man and arouse in him the desire to love him?
God saw man move away from himself by choosing evil from the story of Adam and Eve told in the
book of Genesis, which has a strong symbolic and theological significance: the experience of
temptation and sin concerns us all. Since then, man has experienced loneliness, spiritual misery,
suffering, failure and finitude, death. But God has not abandoned him to the power of death. He
gradually revealed himself to humanity as the God who is "slow to anger and full of love": his
revelation of love culminates in his coming among men in Jesus: "The Word became flesh": to save
us from eternal darkness, God came to make his light shine in men and "to offer his life as a
ransom for many.” Through the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of Christ, which signifies his
definitive victory over suffering and death, God offers eternal life of happiness and joy to all
people, and calls them to pronounce the yes of faith and love in order to freely consent to and
accept the grace of salvation.
In short, if God has made himself accessible to men, God waits for man to enter into himself in
order to meet him in the depths of himself. The good news is that God waits there for everyone,
truly and personally. In order to reveal Himself to men, God has taken the path of Christ and of His
word. To go towards God, the path is the same, so it has already been traced. This is why Christ is
the heart of the Christian spiritual experience: what Christ tells us is a living word, the word of
God, expressed in the Bible. Saint Jerome once said: "To know the Bible is to know Christ”.
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As meditation is never disconnected from reality, experience, history, or human intelligence, the
Bible, where an incomparable richness is placed at our disposal, is an inescapable place to
communicate to us a powerful spiritual impulse.
In the experience of the rosary and the rosary, the Bible has an essential place: each of the events
in the life of Christ on which we meditate is described in detail in the Bible, sometimes in several
places. The reading of the Bible gradually becomes a living reading, links are made between
passages, and we quickly understand, with God's grace, that the texts of the Bible lead us to discover
God's plan of love for humanity, a brilliant plan invented by the Creator of the universe to freely
invite mankind in an immense and infinite love.
Still, my experience when I started, and perhaps also yours, is that the Bible is difficult to access.
This is why, for those who are discovering Christian meditation and the Bible, I advise to be
accompanied to have a first approach to reading the Bible. It is possible to get closer to Bible study
groups. But to make it simple and quick, I offer you my free Bible reading guide, elaborated precisely
to help you read the Bible with ease: it helps you understand the meaning of the main texts and the
extraordinary call of God for mankind revealed in the Scriptures.
Download now my Bible reading guide
(French version, soon translated)
How to read the Bible easily
To get into the Bible in a simple way, I would like to share with you a simple and unavoidable trick
that very few people use: enjoy yourself when you read the Bible! There is no reason for it to be a
chore, no reason to read a Bible in font size 2, 1950s version. Nor is the Bible a library dust book: it
is a living book, to be understood and opened when you need it with simplicity, within easy reach.
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To make this easier for you, I would advise you to get 2 Bibles today:
-
A beautiful Bible for meditation, big written 😉😉 and which is easy to read.
-
A working Bible on which you can write, scribble, put your ideas, make colored pencil
links between texts... the Bible is the living Word of God, live with it. But can you write
on a Bible some people ask with a touch of anguish? The Word of God is sacred, yes, but
not the sheets of paper on which it is written. So there is nothing to stop writing on a
Bible.
There are many translations of the Bible. For French Catholics, 2 reference translations are the “Bible
for liturgy” and the “Jerusalem Bible”, which are regularly updated. Don't hesitate to get it, and I
strongly recommend that you take an annotated edition, with footnotes: often the annotations
explain a lot of things that you wouldn't have understood in a first reading.
Here are links of several versions of the Bible:
NRSV Catholic Bible
Ignatius Bible
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KEY 3
Growing by leaps and bounds
by imitating the goodness of Christ
Let us reformulate our objective: meditation is a process to find peace, happiness, and the joy of
living.
More specifically, as we have seen, Christian meditation aims at the experience of a union with God.
We exist for this, and this union gives us an inexpressible fullness, a fullness that we cannot live
permanently on this earth in our human condition, but that it is good to experience anyway 😉😉. God
loves us, and his grace wants to give us immense spiritual gifts to accelerate our growth and reach
the "stature of Christ" as the apostle Paul says.
How can we receive these graces?
First of all, it is a matter of asking God for them in confidence. But since we are not sure what to ask
God for or how to ask him, we are helped by "the Spirit who intercedes for us in an ineffable way,"
says the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans.
How do we relate this call to live fully with God and our daily human growth?
The key is both immense and simple: since God became man so that man might become God, as St.
Irenaeus says, the way we are given to go to God is the humanity of Christ. It is a question of
imitating Christ in order to share in his virtues, his gifts, and his grace. The Father, who adopted us
in Christ, loves to see his adopted sons resemble his firstborn Son. Christ himself says: "Learn from
me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. »
Wow, the program is set: imitate Christ. But is it so complicated?
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I see the thing in 3 simple and progressive steps:
-
1 Know Christ and for that, read the Bible: the Bible, as we have said, is a fantastic
resource for knowing Christ: it gives us access to the living and true Christ.
-
2 Observing Christ to increase my intimacy with him. To see and understand how he acts,
what he thinks, what he wants: to watch Christ act, to watch how he loves, his gentleness,
his determination, especially his incredible gift of love to the Passion and the Cross and
the outpouring of life and love from his Resurrection.
-
3 Imitate Christ: from meditating on the Bible, the scenes of the Gospel become a source
of inspiration for us. Doing as Christ did makes us progress at full speed. Grace makes us
grow in the desire to apply Christ's requests in our lives to taste the fruits we see in his:
love, joy, peace, constancy in trials, a superabundant life.
Christ in the stages and scenes of his life thus becomes the norm of our action, not an imposed
norm, but a norm in the way a friend wants to resemble his friend and, by dint of frequenting him,
takes on similar verbal expressions, attitudes, and ways of doing things. Because the stages of
Christ's life are each unfathomable, abysses of love and mercy, the theological tradition has called
them “mysteries.” A mystery is "something that we will never finish exploring.” The mysteries of
Christ's life are beyond our understanding (by far...) and that is why our meditation is necessarily
fruitful: we can always be spiritually nourished and draw new and useful teachings for our lives from
this or that passage of the Gospel.
To practice this meditation on the stages of Christ's life, the mysteries of Christ, a simple and
effective tool is given to us as a framework that channels, orients, deploys and multiplies our
momentum. As you have guessed, it is the Rosary. The image that comes to me is that of a
cannonball: the fire of love channeled propels us towards heaven.
How does the rosary meditate on the life of Christ?
In its elaboration, the Rosary was composed of 3 series of mysteries: those that have been called
the joyful mysteries, which retrace in 5 great stages the childhood of Jesus, then the painful ones,
which go through his passion, always in 5 stages, and the glorious ones, which contemplate 5 other
stages from of the Resurrection. Pope John Paul II chose, in a flash of genius that completes the
journey of the whole life of Christ, to add the 5 luminous mysteries that complete what was missing
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to contemplate the whole life of Christ. The Luminous Mysteries traverse the public life of Christ
from his baptism to the eve of his passion.
If the life of Christ is thus regularly traversed, even daily, in meditation on the rosary, even the
rosary, a blessed revolution is taking place in us: the life of Christ is gradually becoming part of our
life. Or rather, it is the opposite: our life is gradually integrated into that of Christ. Each of our actions
takes on an extraordinary perspective and dimension. The growth we experience becomes that of
Christ: we grow in virtues, faith, goodness, the gift of ourselves. The apostle Paul expresses it
perfectly: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
My tip for meditating the rosary with the Bible: when you pray the rosary, while you recite the tens,
keep an eye on the passage in your Bible, go through it several times. A new feeling emerges, that
of "chewing" the Word of God, of digesting it, of assimilating it, of receiving a flash of intelligence
on such a word which at first seemed insignificant to us but which is in fact rich in meaning... the
Word of God, through meditation on the mysteries of Christ's life, becomes true food and drink, a
prelude to Eucharistic gratitude.
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KEY 4
Receiving Mary’s protection
by taking her as a mother
Why pray with Mary to go to Christ? Can't we go directly to Christ? There is only one mediator,
Christ, as Paul says to Timothy (1 Timothy 2:5).
However, the Lord has willed that the members of his Church also exercise mediation, dependent
on the one and irreplaceable mediation of Christ. Each in his own way participates in the unique
mediation of Christ. In other words, I can ask someone to pray for me because I believe that he has
a strong faith or that he is a friend of God, or simply because I ask his fraternal charity to exercise
itself to support and help me through his prayer. The Church is a body, and the members of this
body are interdependent and united in this body of which Christ is the head.
Mary is also a member of the body, like us, even though she has a special place because she is the
Mother of God. She is the woman of faith par excellence: "Blessed is she who believed" greets her
cousin Elizabeth. Mary, in fact, believed in the announcement of the angel Gabriel: she will give birth
to Jesus, the Savior of the world, and will accompany his growth, a woman of faith, educator of the
child-God, an interior woman who "held all these events in her heart and meditated on them" (Luke
2:19 and 2:51). Mary is a model of meditation, because she retained all that concerns Christ, without
forgetting anything, without adding or subtracting anything.
She can therefore advise the disciples pertinently, as at Cana: "Whatever he tells you, do it" (John 2).
And at the foot of the cross, she stands firm in faith and hope, despite the apparent total denial of
the promises of the Annunciation. He who was to be king finds himself crucified, a king of derision.
And she hears this testament from him, as the beloved disciple tells us in John 19:26-27:
When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing by her, he said to his
mother, "Woman, behold your son.” Then he said to the disciple, "Behold your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
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What a mystery: Jesus entrusts the beloved disciple, and through him each one of us, to his mother.
John “takes her into his home.” Like John, Jesus asks us to take Mary into our homes.
Many theologians have reflected on this particular place of Mary in the economy of salvation and in
the Church. She will never replace Christ, since she is a simple human being, and he is both man and
God, the only savior. But God wanted to associate Mary totally gratuitously to carry out his work of
salvation, and still today he entrusts her to us as mother and educator.
This is why Mary exercises a very important protection over us: since she is the woman who fulfills
the promise of Genesis 3 to crush the head of the serpent, with her and beside her is a great peace.
Since she has meditated so much on the mystery of God, she is a sure guide to accompany us
towards him, without detour, with fervor and efficiency, fighting with us and for us the evil one. A
Mother protects her children with strength and firmness against the enemy.
To meditate with Mary is very concretely to make this act of taking her into one's home, into one's
heart, into one's prayer. It is hearing and obeying the testament of Christ on the cross. It is to allow
oneself to be taught by the one who knew as closely as possible the Incarnation of the Son of God
and the Redemption of the world and of each one of us accomplished on the cross. It is she who
witnessed the Resurrection, assisting the apostles in her maternal role as seen in the Upper Room
(Acts 1).
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Finally, she was recognized as the woman of the Apocalypse, crowned with 12 stars, queen of the
hearts that are willing to give themselves to her to let them be led to Jesus effectively.
For all these reasons, meditation with Mary accelerates in a special way our journey of faith, hope
and charity. Because God has entrusted to her our spiritual education and our advancement, in a
very mysterious and often invisible way, she acts in our hearts when we intimately repeat "Hail
Mary, full of grace…"
John Paul II himself says that he took a decisive spiritual step when he understood that Mary was
in no way opposed to Christ, but that she was leading to him quickly and effectively. Like a guide, a
mentor, one could say today, better, like a mother full of tenderness, I too see that she
accompanies me every day and I am no longer worried about the blessed result of my meditation.
I know, by experience and by faith, that Mary will lead me into the intimacy of my inner homes to
enter into this profound union with God where all possible happiness is found.
I love in Mary her realism, her humanity, her humility, her transparency towards God. I bless God
for her maternal protection.
Of all that I have been able to read about Mary, the Treatise on True Devotion by Saint Louis-Marie
Grignion de Montfort is one of the greatest masterpieces. It helped me understand the profound
meaning of love for Mary, who is all dependant of God and holds nothing for herself. She puts her
joy in leading us to God. You are not wasting your time, if only by reading one or other paragraph
of this book or its summary, called "The Secret of Mary". You will find there some links to get them:
The Secret of Mary, free digital book + audiobook:
(French version only): Click here
The Secret of Mary, hard copy on Amazon: Livre papier
The true devotion treaty free digital book + audiobook
(French version only): Click here
The true devotion treaty in hard copy on Amazon: hard copy
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We could go further by considering the many encouragements Heaven has given us to pray and
meditate in the company of Mary. I am only scratching the surface in this eBook, which is
complemented by my site, my YouTube channel and my other contents. In her many apparitions in
Lourdes, Fatima, and so many other places, Mary invites us to meditate on the Rosary as an effective
means to quickly reach Christ, imitating, as we have said, his virtues.
The Popes are also very clear and powerful in their words on this subject: I invite you to read, it's a
matter of 3 hours, John Paul II and his letter on the Holy Rosary. It is a jewel of simplicity and filial
love: it is there that he established the luminous mysteries.
“On The Most Holy Rosay” of John-Paul II,
Vatican version: Click here
audiobook (French version only): Click Here
Take Marie home with you. It's the best choice I've made in my life; I've never regretted it for a
moment.
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KEY 5
Healing and being set free
for a regenerated life
As I have said several times, the great specificity of Christian meditation is to decentralize ourselves
in order to center ourselves on God, the inexhaustible source of life, and to enter into a relationship
with him in order to receive this life.
Mindfulness meditation and many other forms of meditation have a more ego-centric characteristic,
in the good sense of the word: I am attentive and listening to my emotions, my breathing, my
posture, my thoughts. This brings a well-being, a reduction of stress, serenity, which is very
necessary in everyday life.
These elements are both assumed and surpassed in the relational dimension of Christian
meditation, which at the same time brings a change of vision and perspective on the great questions
of life as well as those of evil, suffering and death. For the point of reference is no longer our
subjective and human experience, but God made man. The scale changes radically.
And this change is such that Christian meditation bears unimaginable fruit: the most extraordinary
gift that God gives us is eternal salvation, which we assume more and more in the filial relationship
and covenant that we weave with him in the course of our meditation. God obtains for us, through
his death on the cross and his Resurrection, that we no longer fear death, which becomes a passage
to eternal life in Christ. Even if it may seem strange to those who do not believe, everyone can have
the intuition of eternal life, at the death of a loved one for example: human hope goes beyond
death, towards a reunion.
The Christian life assumes this through faith, that is to say, trust in God, supported by the witness
of the Bible and that of the apostles: God conquered death through the Resurrection of Christ, and
this good news has been faithfully transmitted until today, as attested by scientific research on the
life of Jesus and the writing of the New Testament. God has saved and set us free, and his free gift
accompanies our humanity daily to lift us up from our sins, heal us and strengthen us. For Catholics,
this experience is alive in the sacraments. God gives his grace every day, and meditation allows us
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to welcome this grace of healing and liberation, and to grow in gratitude as we see God at work in
our lives. Our life is truly transformed, purified and enlivened from within by the life and salvation
that comes from God.
This experience can be very concrete: for some, the experience of God's love is accompanied by
physical or psychological healing, for others it is liberation through the relief of a burden, a new joy,
an overcome ordeal, a change of inner attitude, liberation from addiction or harmful relationships.
God's salvation has an echo today in my life; He heals me and gives me a new human maturity.
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With this 5th key, I would like to give you 2 tips to welcome healing and liberation in your
meditation.
The first: God gives his grace, but sometimes he waits for prayer to give us some of this graces.
You can easily, with faith, entrust during your rosary prayer intentions for yourselves, for those
around you, for the world. God wants to give you his salvation today. With some friends, I am
having this experience of praying to receive healings and liberations during our rosary. Sometimes
the Lord likes to make the salvation he gives us present and perceptible now. Very real miracles
can happen through meditation of the rosary.
The second is a dimension that is often forgotten in group rosary meditation: gratitude, also called
thanksgiving. Gratitude for God attracts God's grace. Because he likes to bless a heart full of
thanksgiving, God extends his grace, so it is an endless cycle of grace and gratitude that you can
initiate today: Mary herself had this experience of praise and gratitude, composing a song of a
deep biblical and spiritual beauty: the Magnificat, which it is worth meditating on often.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Listen to 2 versions of the Magnificat here:
Magnificat in French and Latin
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EASY TO START
STEP BY STEP GUIDE
They talk about it and recommend it
The Bible
Mary carefully kept all these things meditating on them in her heart (Luke 2:19).
This word of the Gospel is a marvel; it reveals to us that the Immaculate Heart of Mary is inhabited by the
meditation of all the events of her son's life. When we take the rosary in our hands, this meditation of Mary
becomes our own, since we stop in spirit on the great events of Jesus' life. The rosary immerses us in the
experience of the Heart of Mary. Centered on the person of Jesus, the Rosary contemplates him with Mary,
in Mary and through Mary.
Apparitions
In her numerous apparitions (Lourdes, Fatima, Bouchard Island, among others), the Virgin Mary
insists on the necessity of praying the rosary and the rosary for peace and the conversion of hearts.
Saints and popes
Many saints have prayed the Rosary fervently. St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, St. Maximilian
Kolbe, St. Padre Pio, St. John Paul II and many others teach us the power of the rosary. Through my
humble experience, I deeply subscribe to this idea; the rosary is the means par excellence to enter
into contemplation and meditation effectively and with results.
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"The Rosary is a prayer of peace because of the fruits of charity it produces.”
Saint John Paul II, the Rosary of the Virgin Mary, no. 40
"The Rosary teaches us to live with our hearts fixed on Christ, so that his merciful love may
shine on all and on everything. »
Benedict XVI, Angelus of October 16, 2005
And why not you?
The rosary is a school of prayer; its simplicity makes it accessible to all. It orients us towards Christ
and, through the contemplation it offers, allows us to deepen our "understanding of the Scriptures",
as on the road to Emmaus, in the presence of Jesus himself and Mary. The Rosary is also a prayer of
intercession, which raises our intentions to heaven with particular effectiveness. God loves to
answer the prayers that are presented to him through the hands of Mary.
If you are experiencing a transformation in your life thanks to rosary
meditation, do not hesitate to tell me about it by sending me a message on the
site, on Youtube or on Facebook.
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How to meditate: alone or in group?
The Rosary can be prayed in a group led by an animator with meditations and songs. In a church or
chapel, as the Rosary is a prayer centered on Christ, it is possible to pray the Rosary before the
Blessed Sacrament.
To begin with, however, I recommend meditating alone at home, to enter into the depths of the
process: with your Bible, asking the Holy Spirit to inspire you in the meditation of the mysteries
and in the prayer intentions. It is a question of entering into this "heart to heart" with Mary who
leads to the Heart of Christ.
A tip: at the beginning of each decade, state the mystery and then confide your intentions or
thanksgiving, in connection with the mystery, the fruits to be meditated on and received. The key
question here is: "How does this event in the life of Christ resonate in my own life?”
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How to meditate the rosary step by step?
The 20 mysteries of the rosary
The Rosary, like a crown of roses offered to Mary, unfolds the life of Christ in twenty stages, divided
into mysteries:
-
The joyful mysteries evoke the childhood of Jesus;
-
The luminous mysteries, his life as a preacher until the institution of the Holy Eucharist;
-
The sorrowful mysteries propose us to contemplate his painful passion and his death on
the cross;
-
The glorious mysteries, his Resurrection and his glory and the glory given to each of us
through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is fully realized in Mary through her Assumption and
crowning.
Each of those great mysteries of the rosary is itself subdivided into five mysteries.
The 20 mysteries, which are associated with a day of the week when it is particularly recommended
to meditate on them, are listed below, together with:
- A short extract from the Bible in reference to the mystery. As I said above, I recommend that
you should concretly open your own Bible, look for the text, broaden your reading.
- A grace, also called a fruit is associated with the mystery. This grace is not exclusive. I invite
you to a certain creativity about the fruit to ask, mysteries are rich in several fruits.
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Click on the link for a video guided meditation of the rosary
Meditation of the Rosary
The Joyful mysteries (Monday and Saturday)
- 1st Joyful mystery: The Annunciation
« And Mary said to the Angel: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. "» (Lk1:38)
Fruit of the mystery: humility
- 2nd: The Visitation of Mary to Elisabeth
« Elisabeth cried out: "Blessed is she wwho beleived!"» (Lk 1:45)
Fruit of the mystery: Charity
- 3rd: The Nativity
« The Angel of the Lord said to the Sherperds: "you will fine a newborn lying in a manger."» (Lk2:12)
Fruit of the mystery: the spirit of poverty
- 4th: The presentation of Jesus in the Temple
« Simeon received the Child Jesus in his arms and blessed God. » (Lk 2:28)
Obedience and purity
- 5th: The finding of Jesus in the Temple
« And Jesus said to them: "…Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?"» (Lk 2:49)
The search for the will of God in all things
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The Luminous mysteries (Thursday)
- 1st luminous mystery: The Baptism of Jesus in River Jordan
« A voice from Heaven said: "Behold my beloved son in whom I put all my love"» (Mt 3:17)
Faihfulness to the graces of baptism
- 2nd: The wedding at Cana
« Mary said to the servants: "Whatever He tells you, do it."» (Jn 2:5)
Trust in Mary
- 3rd: The proclamation of the Kingdom of God
«The Kingdom of God is at hand, convert and beleive in the Gospel. » (Mk 1:15)
Conversion of heart
- 4th: The Transfiguration
« The face of Jesus changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. » (Mt 17:2)
Prayer
- 5th: The Institution of the Holy Eucharist
« Jesus said: "take, eat, this is my body."» (Mt 26:26)
Faith in the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist
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The sorrowful mysteries (Tuesday and Friday)
- 1st Sorrowful mystery: The agony of Jesus in the garden of Olives
« Father, not my will be done, but yours. » (Lk 22:42)
Contrition for our sins
- 2nd: The scourging at the pillar
«The men who guarded Jesus scorned and beat him. » (Lk 22:63)
Mortification of senses
- 3rd: The crowning with thorns
« Jesus answered Pilate: "My kingdom is not of this world."» (Jn 18:36)
Love of humiliations
- 4th: The carrying of the cross
« Jesus went out of the city, carrying his cross. » (Jn 19:17)
Perseverance
- 5th: The crucifixion and death of Jesus on the cross
« Jesus cried out: "Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."» (Lk 23:46)
Love
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The gloriours mysteries (Wednesday and Sunday)
- 1st gloriours mystery: The Resurrecton
« Jesus answered to Martha: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. "» (Jn 11:25)
Faith
- 2nd: The Ascension
« While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. » (Lk 24:51)
Hope and longing for heaven.
- 3rd: The Pentecost
« Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. "» (Jn 20:22)
The gift of the Holy Spirit
- 4th: The Assumption of the Virgin Mary
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am." (Jn 17:24)
The grace of a good death
- 5th: The coronation of the Virgin Mary
“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and
a crown of twelve stars on her head.” (Ap 12:1)
The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
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Step by step process
Introduction to the Rosary
-
Step 1: The sign of the cross
The sign of the cross is a real pray to be said calmly, slowly, with interiority, by tracing on his body a
large sign of the cross saying:
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
Listen to the sign of the cross prayer (French version):
The sign of the cross
-
Step 2: « I beleive in God »
The fingers are on the cross of your rosary. You say this prayer which is the summary of the whole
Christian faith of the « Creed » or « I beleive in God ». They are two versions of this prayer.
Credo version 1, called "The Apostles Creed".
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Amen.
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Credo version 2, called "Nicene Creed".
I believe in one God, the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Listen to the creed in French and in Latin
Apostle creed in French / Latin
Nicene Creed in French / Latin
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-
Step 3: short prayer for the general intentions of the Rosary
It is a short free prayer. We usually pray for the intentions of the Virgin Mary, the Pope and the
Church, for example:
« Lord, in this rosary we pray for the intentions of the Virgin Mary, those of the
pope and of the Church. »
-
Step 4: Our Father
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
Listen to the recitation of Our Lord’s Prayer (French version):
Our Father
-
Step 5: three « Hail Mary »
One can add a small intention on each of these three Ave Maria, for example: “in honor of the
Father » then « in honor of the Son » then « in honor of the Holy Spirit.” or ask for the encrease of
faith, hope and charity.
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Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Listen to « Hail Mary » here (French version):
Pray Hail Mary
-
Step 6: recapitulate the prayer in the Holy Trinity:
It is an essential moment of the rosary, which often goes unnoticed. We give thanks and glory to
the Holy Trinity, the One God in three persons, the fundamental reality revealed by God at the Heart
of the Christian Faith. This moment is also called the doxology. Doxa in Greek means « glory. »
Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the begining, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Listen to “Glory be to the Father” here (French version):
Pray Glory be to the Father
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-
Step 7: The prayer of Fatima
In 1917, during an apparition in Fatima, Portugal, the Virgin Mary asked that this prayer be added
at the end of each decade of the rosary. It is also said at the end of three « Hail Marys. »
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell.
Lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Amen. »
Discover or learn more about Fatima’s apparition (French version):
The complete story of the apparition of Fatima
Listen to the prayer of Fatima:
Pray « O my Jesus »
The 5 mysteries
-
Step 8: The first decade; we have already seen together the unfolding which I summarize:
o Enunciating the mystery: “1st joyful mystery: The Annunciation.”
o Reading the Bible: after searching and finding the corresponding passage, it can be
red aloud our in a low voice.
o Asking for the fruit of the mystery, if you wish. If not, one does so in the personal
meditation that follows.
o Personal meditation: a free moment: time of silence, meditating the passage that
has just been read, praying for a particular intention, moment of gratitude. It is
good to link meditation to the mystery topic, for example praying for families or
children on the birth of Jesus mystery.
o Our Father
o 10 Hail Mary
o Doxology
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-
Step 9: recite the following decades, on the same model.
Conclusion of the rosary
-
Step 10: Closing prayers
Several prayers to be taken freely may conclude the rosary:
"O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee."
"Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you."
"Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us who have recourse to thee. »
"Saint Joseph, pray for us."
Some closing prayers in video:
Prayer at the end of the Rosary
Invoke your favorite saints:
« My patron saint, pray for us » «Holy guardian angel, watch over us. »
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The consecration of saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort is intersting because it is like a synthesis
of the rosary, it gives our whole life to Mary with the confidence that she leads us directly to Christ:
I, an unfaithful sinner, renew and ratify today in thy hands Virgin Mary, my
baptismal promises. I renounce forever Satan, his seductions and works, and I give
myself entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my cross after Him
each and every day of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have been till
now,
I choose thee this day, O Mary, in the presence of all the heavenly court, for my
Mother and my Queen. I deliver and consecrate to thee, as thy slave, my body and
soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and the value itself of all my good
actions, past, present and future; leaving to thee the entire and full right to
dispose of me, and all that belongs to me, without exception, according to thy
good pleasure to the greatest glory of God, in time and in eternity.
Listen to the prayer of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort in video:
(French version)
Consecration to Jesus through Mary
- Step 11: The sign of the cross ends the rosary or the Rosary.
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. »
- Step 12: Celebrate!
CONGRATULATIONS to you! Don't forget to properly celebrate this completed rosary: gratitude
draws God's grace into a virtuous cycle of blessing and peace.
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IT’S UP TO YOU
We come to the end of this guide to enter into Christian meditation and taste its transformative
power for your life.
I deeply hope that you will have found in these pages something to nourish your meditation to make
it a moment of pleasure and feeling that this experience makes you grow. You have the 5 keys to
begin in all serenity, and the concrete guide to start with the rosary for tenfold effectiveness!
Do not hesitate to breathe your freedom and creativity into meditating on the rosary, and why not
write your own rosary in family, with your children, with the intentions and biblical texts that best
suit you. The rosary is a tool that allows great flexibility and it adapts to each person. Moreover, the
ramifications of this spiritual experience are multiple: a meditation experience for many, human
development, leadership, service for the poorest... the paths are open to move quickly to the next
level and that your meditation bears fruit in all your areas of life. My contents are intended to help
you do this, so do not hesitate to use them.
As usual, if you have any questions, I invite you to ask them in the commentary of the videos or on
the blog.
I wish you a good, deep and fruitful meditation for you and your life; we keep in touch in a future
email. God bless you!
Christophe
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
WELCOME
2
WHO AM I?
4
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS GUIDE?
8
Is Christian meditation still relevant?
5 KEYS FOR EFFECTIVE MEDITATION
8
12
KEY 1 Being more efficient through a meditation ritual
12
KEY 2 Meditate easily starting with the Bible
18
KEY 3 Growing by leaps and bounds by imitating the goodness of Christ
22
KEY 4 Receiving Mary’s protection by taking her as a mother
25
KEY 5 Healing and being set free for a regenerated life
29
EASY TO START STEP BY STEP GUIDE
32
They talk about it and recommend it
32
How to meditate: alone or in group?
34
How to meditate the rosary step by step?
35
The 20 mysteries of the rosary
35
Step by step process
40
IT’S UP TO YOU
47
TABLE OF CONTENTS
48
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This ebook, needed a tough work of writing and translating.
It’s protected by law on copyright. All rights reserved to « Avec Marie ».
Any re-use, even partially, is forbidden, on any kind of work (writing, photo, video, audio….)
For any need, please contact the author to obtain his written approval.
Receiving this ebook doesn’t mean in any way a right to sell or distribute, that need the author’s approval:
unauthorised re-use or distribution is liable to legal proceedings.
Copyright 2021 – Christophe R, avecmarie.fr, espritnouveau.fr
All rights reserved. Artistique direction: CR.
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