Categories: LIFESTYLE

Why I Wear a Rosary as a Necklace

An interesting question was asked of me today: “You wear a rosary as a necklace. Can you explain this?” It is not an easy thing to answer, but it does have a reason and a story behind it. You see, I am not Catholic. When people see me with a rosary, their first thought it that I must be Catholic. When they learn that I am not, they become puzzled over the fact that, why would a non-Catholic have a rosary?

Well, my wearing a rosary started many years ago, and actually, at the time, I did not know what a rosary was. I simply saw it as a very fancy necklace, and thus I wore it as such. Than one day, a former Catholic man walked up to me and said quite out of the blue: “You’re sacrilegious.

I was puzzled by this, because I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew this guy, so I knew he was raised Catholic but had joined a different church later on. Anyways, I asked him why he had said that, and he pointed to the crucifix necklace that I wear (I own several and am almost always wearing one) and he said, “It’s sacrilegious to wear that”.

Still puzzled I asked why, and he said “Because it’s a rosary not a piece of jewelry! It’s disrespectful!” A rosary? This was new. I had never heard of a rosary before so I had no idea what he was talking about. It was the first time I was made aware that this was anything other than a fancy necklace.

Well, now I’ll explain how I got started wearing them: You see, I was raised a Mormon. I’ve been a Mormon for 34 years. As a child, while I knew no one ever mentioned the cross, crucifixion, or resurrection, I didn’t know why. No one had ever bothered to tell me that crosses, crucifixes, and the resurrection were taboo topics in our church. I didn’t know that it was taboo to mention such things. So it never occurred to me that it was also forbidden to wear a cross in church, and thus what happened when I was a teenager, took me quite by surprise.

When I was going through what adults called my “Jesus Freak” phase, I bought a big cross necklace – big like 5 inches tall and made of pewter – and started wearing it everywhere. Later that week, I wore it to church. I was 14 years old, and our Young Women’s group was going to have our class pictures taken that afternoon. We all got ready, and were waiting for the camera flash, when our teacher said: “Wendy take that thing off!”

“What thing?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. She was using the word ‘thing’ which could have been anything. She was going to have to be more specific if she wanted me to take the ‘thing’ off, I would have to know what ‘thing’ she was referring to.

“That disgraceful thing around your neck”.

“What, the cross?” I asked.

“Yes, get that horrible thing out of here and never wear it to church again.”

“But it’s a cross? Jesus died on the cross.”

Every body went dead silent. I had said something wrong. I knew it. I just wasn’t sure what it was that I had said to cause every one to suddenly become as silent as a grave. The teacher flew into hysterics and went out the door, than came back a few moments later with the Bishop. The teacher, was still all hysterical screaming and yelling and pointing, as she told the Bishop, “She keeps saying that word!”

I do? What word? I was looking around hoping someone would give me a clue as to what I had said and why whatever I had said was causing our teacher to become so upset. No one was answering me though. They were all too shocked by the fact that I had dared say “that word” to tell me, what word it was.

I was baffled, as I was dragged off to the Bishop’s office where I spent the next hour being lectured on how “we don’t say cross” and “we don’t wear crosses” and “we can’t talk about the crucifixion because it’s a sad memory in Jesus life” and “we must remember his life not his death” and “we don’t talk about death” and “we don’t remember death” and “to wear a cross is to disrespect Jesus. I was told, that under no conditions was I ever to wear a cross to church again. I was sent back to class, but because I refused to remove the cross, I was not allowed to be in that class picture nor any other class picture in the many years since than either.

Well, none of that sat well with me, so I made sure to never take that cross off. I wore it every day, and I made sure to wear it every Sunday to church. My young mind told me that they were the ones who were disrespecting Jesus, not me. I was just a kid, but I knew that I was not ashamed of Jesus and I wasn’t going to hide my faith in him.

I started collecting cross necklaces after that. I had every shape, color, and size you could think of. There were metal ones, plastic ones, gemstone, and wooden. You see, just a short distance from my house was this tiny little shop that is run by a monk and two nuns, and they sold mostly prayer cards, bibles, and crosses of various types. So, I access to a wide range of cross necklaces and I just started buying lots of them. Well, my favorite ones were the long colorful stings of beads that had a crucifix on them, and so I started collecting those, and wearing them. I did not know that only Catholics were supposed to own them. I did not know they were rosaries and even if I had, I would not have known you were not supposed to wear them like necklaces.