About the Rosary

What Is The Rosary?

The Rosary is a way of praying that has been common in the Latin or Western branch of the Catholic Church for several centuries. In art and literature it has been linked in a special way with St Dominic Guzman (1170?-1221), the founder of the Dominican Order.The origin of this link is due in large measure to a vision of St Dominic receiving the Rosary from Our Lady, a vision recorded by Blessed Alan de la Roche, a French Dominican who lived and promoted the Rosary some 250 years after the death of St Dominic. There is no hard and fast historical evidence to substantiate Dominic's originating of the Rosary. There is historical evidence that another Dominic, a Carthusian from Prussia at the beginning of the 14th century, played some part in the formation of the Rosary's structure. The Rosary as we know it is a structured prayer in which key events in the life of the Lord Jesus are set down in orderly fashion as mysteries; subjects of meditation and wonder. Each mystery is introduced with the Lord's Prayer. This gives the Rosary a distinctly divine setting. The Rosary is distinctly God-centred. Then the Mother of Jesus is invoked with the Hail Mary prayer. We maintain her helpful and intimate motherly presence throughout our pondering of each particular mystery as we pray ten successive Hail Mary's for each mystery. Hence the name "decade" also given to each mystery. In all there are twenty mysteries or decades that make up the content of the Rosary. Each is endless in its richness. The human mind and human heart, no matter how familiar with the mysteries, can never circumscribe or totally comprehend them. For such is the meaning of mystery in the Christian faith.

The mysteries are structured in four sets of five principal events, beginning with Our Lord's entry into the world. And so we start the Joyful Mysteries with the Annunciation to Mary of Nazareth, her Visitation to her elderly relative Elizabeth, our Saviour's Birth in Bethlehem, his Presentation in the Temple as a forty day old Child, and finally, the Finding of him in the Temple as a boy of twelve. After Jesus' entry into our world and his growth to maturity we come to five key events in his public ministry. These mysteries are in fact a new addition to the traditional prayer, officially introduced by the late Pope John Paul II in 2002. The first of the five is Our Lord's Baptism in the River Jordan, then comes his first miracle in which he changes water into wine at the Marriage Feast of Cana. Proclamation of the Kingdom and the Call to Repentance comes next, followed by The Transfiguration, with the Institution of the Eucharist completing these (new) "Mysteries of Light" or "Luminous Mysteries" as they have been called. That brings us up to the Sorrowful Mysteries in which we contemplate the Saviour of humankind laying down his life in the redeeming sacrifice expressing the infinity of love designed to draw every human mind and heart up into himself, enabling the conquest of every human sin in those who desire it. First, Jesus is in Agony of soul in the Garden, next he is Scourged at the Pillar, then Crowned with Thorns, Carries his Cross to Calvary, and is Crucified, dying on the Cross. The final set of Mysteries is termed Glorious, beginning with Jesus' Resurrection from the dead, his Ascension into Heaven, the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon Our Lady and the Apostles, then Our Lady's bodily Assumption into Heaven, and finally, her Coronation as Queen.

Clearly then, the Rosary in its mysteries is a form of prayer inviting us into the principal mysteries of our whole Christian faith. That is its enduring value. That is the secret of its attraction to generations of Christians. It is a prayer for little children and a prayer for university professors, and for everyone in between. It is powerful in instances of suffering and all kinds of need. Its beads are held fondly by the disabled and the dying. It comes to the fore in times of war and grief, it bonds people together in small groups and in large public processions.

The Rosary is known in the Church these days as one of the "pious exercises" fostering Christian devotion. As such it is like a daughter to the sacred liturgy. It is in no sense a rival.

If the Rosary is to be seen as a kind of daughter to the Liturgy, can we not see how it captures in the most wonderful way the feminine dimension of our Faith? The Motherhood of Mary is enshrined in the mysteries of Our Lord’s life death and resurrection. It is these mysteries we contemplate in her company that provide the content of the Rosary. The metaphor of daughterhood seems to go like this. The liturgy, beginning with baptism, actually incorporates us into the mystery of Christ.
All the mysteries of Christianity, each with its distinctiveness is ultimately the mystery of Christ. Through the liturgy of Baptism, Eucharist and the other sacraments the mysteries of Christ are our life. We are born sacramentally into the mystery which is Christ our Lord. We live that life. It is our new being. The Rosary does not give us a new being in the way in which the Liturgy does, nor does it sustain us in that life as the Mass and sacraments do. But it becomes the loving constant awareness of Christ and His mysteries. And it does so with Mother Mary “First Disciple” mothering a discipleship in each of us. More than teaching us what Jesus taught, she teaches us  in a motherly manner, Jesus Himself, as Pope John Paul put it.

This can help us to appreciate that while we refer to it as a Marian prayer, Our Lady’s Rosary is above all our loving prayer-awareness of the mystery of Christ the Lord. As such, of course, it has to be a reaching out in love to all who are in any way our neighbours. Mindful always of our fellow human beings, we praise, we beg, we thank, we repent, in Our Lady’s school, with their interests before us. Thus there is a spiritual bonding with each other in God through the Rosary Confraternity, a prayer-bonding that confirms the communion already granted us as Christians in Christ.