On the feast of the holy rosary and Respect Life Sunday, the parking lot of St. Mary Church in Altus was a blazing testament to parishioners’ faith.
Earlier that day Oct. 7, St. Mary’s youth group had set up a fire rosary near the church grotto, using 4 by 4 and 12 by 12 tiles and small and large coffee cans strategically arranged behind a tile cross.
“My husband Tom and I learned about the fire rosary last summer at the Bible Institute in Little Rock,” youth coordinator Amy Post Sexton said. “Travis Gunther, who attends St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish, told us he had been to a fire rosary and we decided to bring the idea up at St. Mary’s.”
Gunther, who came down from Fayetteville to be St. Mary’s torch lighter, said, “The fire rosary was something I experienced at a summer camp two years ago. Each bead of the rosary was represented by a flame to help me meditate on the mysteries. I found that the fire rosary helped me and others who have trouble meditating and actually praying the rosary.”
When the catechists, Trish Alston, Lecia Butler, Diane Gray and Tonya Comp, met with the Sextons to plan the event, they decided it would be good to use a pro-life theme for the rosary. They chose a variety of mysteries reflecting their theme — the Annunciation, birth of the Lord, proclamation of the kingdom of God, crucifixion and the resurrection — and wrote short meditations to be read by the youth after each prayer. They found most of their ideas for the reflections on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Web site.
At dark, parishioners gathered at the church and walked in procession to the grotto. Amy Sexton, who also serves as choir director, introduced a hymn at the start of each decade.
Some people followed the torch lighter as he lighted each “bead” while others sat in lawn chairs as their prayers took shape, lighting up the evening sky.
Debra Post, who attended the fire rosary with her husband and six children, said it was meaningful to every member of her family. Post said she was especially focused during the rosary for prayers for her seventh child who will be born in December and for her 6-year-old daughter who recently completed cancer treatment at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis.
“Our children were impressed with the beauty of the flames glowing in the night, each representing a shining prayer that stretched forcefully toward heaven,” she said. “They loved that the end result was a large glowing rosary in front of them to not only see all of the prayers that they had just prayed, but also to feel the warmth of the flames … intensifying with each additional prayer. It made the power of our prayers tangible to them by seeing, feeling, smelling and hearing the flames as each large candle was lit by a torch in sequence with each prayer.”
Amy Sexton said parishioners enjoyed the event so much that another fire rosary is planned on the feast of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8.
