Today I started reading a new book as part of my devotional time - it's a little book that is actually a collection of meditations on Mary from the letters of St. John Henry Newman - the book is called The Mystical Rose

I just started it, so not too much to say yet, no doubt more insights will come from it, but in the introduction, St. JHN makes the distinction between devotion and doctrine (he calls it faith in this context, but he means the content of the faith).

He's famous for clarifying the concept of the development of doctrine, but part of the whole point of that is that there are boundaries on doctrine, and legitimate development can never really be anything new, but rather only the clarification and natural growth of what was there from the beginning.

But, he says, with devotion, there is more freedom for new things to come into the Church, and one of the ways in which Catholicism is rich and robust is in the great number of devotions, and in the great freedom the Church gives to individuals to pick and choose different devotions, according to their taste - and this almost jumped off the page for me - because we would never say that doctrine is a matter of taste, but here he gives us permission to say that devotion IS a matter of taste. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that it's OK if different personalities gravitate to different devotions.

So the fact that the rosary did not exist in the first 1,000 years of the Church does not mean that it's bad - it was new in the middle ages, but since it is a devotion and not a doctrine, that's ok (though I would argue - and I do argue in the book on prayer - that the rosary is consistent with prayer that was going on from the beginning, and only builds on it).

And now there are so many devotions it would be impossible for any one person to practice them all - and this can seem like a problem for Protestants and new converts - but the point is that it's ok to like some and not others. Some people are devoted to some saints; other people are devoted to different saints. Some people pray the Divine Mercy chaplet; other people are into the Sacred Heart or other similar devotions.

I think it's good to be intentional about what devotions you gravitate to, and not try to do them all - but on the other hand also not give up on them because there are so many. I also think that devotion to Mother Mary, and the rosary should be something everyone does (the rosary at least on occasion).

But in any case, what are your devotional practices? Share if you feel like it (I'll share mine if you share yours), or at least think about them for yourself. Are you still looking to find the right one(s) for you?