Invitation to give Roses to Our Lady!
Hey guys! I'm just writing this message to invite you to join me in something - IF you want and IF you think it would be helpful for your Third Order membership!
Basically some friends and I have been working on a project the last couple of months and I thought I'd share it here. The idea is to help people live Marian Consecration in daily life (as opposed to making the consecration and then kinda forgetting about it until the next renewal).
To that end there are a couple of things in the project, but the thing I wanted to share here is the monthly Rose Crown for Our Lady because it has actually been SUCH a help to me in regulating my Third Order observance! I actually think it's really providential for my own soul that we started when we did, which was around the the time I stumbled across the Third Order online...
So basically the idea is that each month we put up an anonymous form on our website where people pick a title of Our Blessed Lady (or a few titles if you want to divide the spiritual bouquet) and present Her with a number of 'spiritual roses' that we have 'cultivated' during the month. It's a way of stopping to offer not only ourselves in general, but also specific continued efforts and prayers to Jesus through Mary. There are two ways of cultivating these 'Roses' - but the ones that are really relevant to the Third Order are the perennial roses. There's a little table you can print out and fill in and that's the method I use to keep track...
The reason it's helped me so much with observance is that the little table keeps one personally accountable for recording - eg. how much of the Office has been said etc. But unlike every other method of keeping record I've ever come up with, at the end I'm not left with a checklist where the main thing I do is beat myself up over the gaps - I'm left with the things I HAVE done and can offer to Our Lady as Roses, and at the same time with a clear indication of the areas in which I could be able to give Her more roses if I try harder next month. So I wind up motivated rather than dejected.
Perhaps not everyone is the same and this is just something that helps me, but it's been on my heart to share it here for a while, especially when people were posting in the thread about efforts to keep the rule. I've been busy and not had enough time to explain properly, and also a bit interiorly resistant because some of the 'seed roses' (that's a whole other thing, separate from the perennial roses, that takes longer to explain!) are probably more 'new', and not so traditional so I wasn't sure if you'd like it... But sure if you don't like it that's ok! I just post in case it helps even one person as much as it has helped me =)
And here are the specific relevant pages:
Perennial Roses and how to count them (you check various areas using buttons at the bottom): https://goldenroseapostolate.com/the-perennial-aspect-regular-roses/
The page where you find the Form to Submit Roses (available from the first Saturday to the 13th of each month) and the printable table to keep track:
https://goldenroseapostolate.com/form-for-submitting-roses/
What happens to the Roses on the 13th of each month when the form comes down:
https://goldenroseapostolate.com/archive-of-spiritual-rose-crowns/
For a wider explanation of everything else: https://goldenroseapostolate.com/introduction-to-the-golden-rose-apostolate/
It's still pretty new so everything's a work in progress! This is the site in general:
This looks like a great way to grow and encourage others in a daily offering to Jesus through Mary and be more mindful of the gift of our consecration to Mary. I passed the web link along to some friends, thanks for sharing.