I once read a book on exorcisms, and the priest mentioned that the prayers for doing the exorcism were more powerful and effective when prayed in Latin. Our priest, who baptized Luke, said the same thing. Ever since then, I've felt a desire to learn the basic Catholic prayers in Latin. One night, after praying our family Rosary, Phil and I both agreed that we should try out saying the Rosary in Latin. So, there it was...my entry into actually acting on my desire to learn the prayers. Now, if you've ever read my post about how our family Rosaries usually work, you are probably thinking that we are crazy for adding a whole new level of complication to our Rosary.....you're probably quite right! But, nonetheless, I feel compelled to do this =) I have a couple of prayer books that have various prayers in Latin, but none that really have all the prayers specific for the Rosary in one place. So, in the 3 or 4 times we have done the Rosary in Latin thus far, I am constantly flipping from page to page, or book to book. It makes it very difficult to concentrate on the actual praying part, and forget keeping track of which bead we're on! There are websites out there with Latin/English Rosary instructions, but I really don't want to be at the computer while praying the Rosary. And, unlike my husband and daughter, who just magically remember the prayers after saying the Latin Rosary one time, I just don't have that gift. So, I put together a kind of comprehensive Latin Rosary cheat sheet. I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else would like to learn how to pray the Rosary in Latin with me. I used a handful of different websites/books to reference the Latin translations of the prayers, so I am not going to link all my sources...I hope that I'm not breaking some kind of rule or something!
Just print both pages as a double-sided sheet of paper...you could even laminate it. Also, I'm sure not everyone uses the same ending prayers as we do, but when I first started saying a family Rosary - which wasn't until I was engaged, by the way - these are the prayers my in-laws always said at the end of the Rosary, so that is how we do it in our family now. We never said family Rosary growing up at my house. While I learned the Rosary in school, we just never said it at home, but I love the idea of praying the Rosary at home. Oh, and here's a really embarrassing funny story to end this post with...the first time I met my in-laws (or one of the first times I met them), we said a family Rosary after dinner. They asked if I wanted to lead one of the decades. Wanting to impress them, I said yes...this was my first mistake! Now, I had left the Church for several years when I was younger, and had only just started going again...Phil invited me to come back to Church after we had been dating for a few months. So, it had been a LONG time since I had prayed traditional Catholic prayers, much less an entire Rosary! And, I was SO nervous about meeting Phil's parents for the first time, and was worried they wouldn't like me. Anyway, it was my turn to lead the decade. I got through the Our Father just fine, but when I got to the Hail Mary, I went completely blank!! All I could get out were the words "Hail" and "Mary"...Phil had to bail me out. I.was.mortified! I am pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night =/ But, no worries...my in-laws are really great, and they have never, to this day, made fun of me or said anything about it. And, I do now know the compete Hail Mary prayer...in Latin even ;)
