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[–]FlippyKing[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3_IJxLliXQ

This is another take on the devotion of saying three Hail Marys, with a little history.

When I first saw the title of the video, I thought "we only do 3? Since when???" If we say the Prayer to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, we do three Hail Mary's at the end of it (plus a Glory Be). We do the Angelus Prayer (so 3 more), we say 5 decades of the Rosary (so, fifty plus the three at the start for an increase in Faith Hope and Charity), and we say the 3 Hail Mary's (I'm up to 62 Hail Marys here)

But the Three Hail Marys devotion is as I think I said above is a surprisingly effective way of getting help avoiding sin. It doesn't make a lot of sense, because it is literally supernatural. It just works if you are trying and serious about it. If you don't want it, no amount of help will help. She really is there, she really is real, and if you ask and are serious, she's really there for you even if you do not see or hear her or you don't get all the toys you want. This life is never the point, the situations we're born into or we end up in are our crosses to bear in trying to make the world better and help others. Everything else is not the point.

If you gather from other parts of this little sub, then you see there is something powerful there for us if we take it but we have to believe and we have to want "Thy" (God's!) will be done, not ours. That is the tough one to get our head around. "What's the harm in ... " any number of things may not be apparent to us, but some things become more clear if we try to stick to the rules and learn. The harm to others becomes obvious. But, the harm we do to our selves starts to become clear too.

The idea that there is such a thing a spiritual sickness becomes self evident, and you can't like "unsee it" once you do. There's a reason saints reject the world and their own weaknesses in such stark and surprising words, and long for heaven so fervently. Everything does not become clear, it can't; but so much does. Does that make anything easier? I'm not sure.