Student gathers classmates for Rosary night on Mondays

Last spring, Cassandra Miller looked at the only other student who had come to recite the Rosary with her in the chapel of Siena College in Loudonville, and shrugged.

"Remember, 'Where two or more are gathered,...'" she told her fellow student hopefully, recalling a line from Matthew's Gospel: "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (18:20).

Still, she was discouraged. A devotee of the Rosary who had grown up praying it with her family, she had had the sudden inspiration to start a Rosary group at Siena and almost no one came.

More on hand

Fast-forward to this semester, however, and the pews in the quiet chapel are starting to fill up on Monday nights. More than a dozen young adults now gather to pray together.

"It has to be the work of the Holy Spirit," said Ms. Miller, a senior majoring in history and a parishioner of Sacred Heart Church in Troy. "Christ inspired me to start the group and to honor the Blessed Mother."

When she had wondered whether the group would succeed, her mother handed her a mustard seed and reminded her that faith the size of the tiny seed could move mountains.

On the practical side, Ms. Miller thinks publicizing the group and changing its meeting time from 7 to 9 p.m. made it possible for more students to attend, since other meetings and homework are finished by then.

Quiet together

Students say they like the support of praying with other people. Ms. Miller called the Rosary "a meditative way to pray; a quiet, simple prayer."

Besides, she said, it only takes 15 minutes out of students' busy schedules to recite the prayer, including reading a Scripture passage before each decade that explains which parts of Christ's life the decade will focus on.

Most students, she's found, are already familiar with the "Our Father," "Hail Mary" and other prayers recited in the Rosary. However, not everyone knows prayers like the "Hail, Holy Queen," which she adds afterward; so each student gets a pamphlet with the prayers.

Ms. Miller likes the sound of many students' voices praying together. "It's so important, on a Catholic campus, to do that," she stated.

(Cassandra Miller is president of Siena's history club, lectors at Mass and works in the campus ministry office. She is on the President's List for her academic work. The Rosary group meets Mondays, 9 p.m., in St. Mary of the Angels Chapel at Siena. Everyone is welcome.)

(9/29/05) [[In-content Ad]]