Courtney McGrailDear Editor, In this digital age where so many of us have a closer relationship with our allegedly ‘smart’ phones and less with our creator, might I respectfully suggest that the better accessory to which we should become attached is a set of rosary beads. Granted, such rosarys lack technology but neither will they run flat; they do not offer a multitude of polyphonic sounds but rather the love-lined avenue of silence; they don’t rely on apps but rather on attitude; and they don’t drag the user into despair waiting for a text since the line of communication with God, accompanied by the love of Mary, is always open.
Rosarys come in many colours too – I’m particularly fond of a set multi-coloured beads I picked up in Fatima some years ago – but, no matter their origin or maker, all rosarys offer the consistency and contentment that social media can never hope to offer. You will not find an 11th bead on a section of rosary beads where there should be just 10, nor will you will misled into reciting six decades of the rosary because of some technical fault. They do not need to be reset nor switched on/off again in order to get them to work. They simply work – anywhere and always.
It could be that the best way of getting rosary into the hands of those of us who need them most is to rename them iRosarys. I live in hope.
Yours etc.,
Aidan Austin,
Beaumont, Dublin 9.