Editorial
On praying the rosary
If praying the rosary isn’t already part of your daily devotions, perhaps you could consider adding it during the month of October. Why? Because October is traditionally observed as the Month of the Rosary, and Oct. 7 is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. But mainly because the rosary is obviously the Blessed Mother’s favorite prayer, and she has asked us to pray it.
When she appeared to St. Bernadette at Lourdes, France, did you notice that Mary herself had a rosary? Here is how Bernadette described Mary’s first appearance to her: “I looked up and caught sight of the cave where I saw a lady wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt. On top of each of her feet was a pale yellow rose, the same color as her rosary beads. I put my hands into the fold of my dress where my rosary was. I wanted to make the sign of the cross, but for the life of me I couldn’t manage it. Then the lady made the sign of the cross herself, and at the second attempt I managed to do the same, though my hands were trembling. Then I began to say the rosary while the lady let her beads slip through her fingers, without moving her lips.”
When the Blessed Mother appeared to Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta at Fatima, Portugal, she immediately identified herself as Our Lady of the Rosary and exhorted the three children to pray the rosary for world peace. (The movie Fatima is now being shown, and we encourage you to see it.)
With families staying at home because of the pandemic, perhaps now would be a good time to resume the family rosary that Holy Cross Father Patrick Peyton encouraged during the decades following World War II. His Family Rosary Crusades spanned the globe, and we all knew his slogan, “The family that prays together stays together.” Catholic families everywhere prayed the rosary together most evenings.
Father Peyton was reviving a devotion that began in the 12th century when laity began to pray 150 Hail Marys while monks in monasteries prayed the 150 psalms. Then St. Dominic and his followers publicized the devotion, adding the meditations about the life of Jesus.
The name “rosary” became the name of the devotion in the 15th century when the Carthusian monk Dominic of Prussia divided the 150 Hail Marys into three sets of 50, and began to call each of the 50 points of meditation a rosarium because the rose was the symbol of joy and Mary was “the cause of our joy” for bearing Christ.
Another 15th-century Carthusian monk, Henry of Kalkar, then divided the 50 Hail Marys into decades with an Our Father between each. In 1483, a Dominican priest wrote a book on the rosary called Our Dear Lady’s Psalter. It listed the same 15 mysteries that we meditated on through the 20th century, except that the fourth glorious mystery combined Mary’s assumption and coronation and the fifth glorious mystery was the Last Judgment.
We think of the rosary as a Marian devotion because of the repetition of the Hail Mary. But, like every devotion to Mary, its main focus is on Jesus. The purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the mysteries of our salvation, on the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. It combines vocal prayer, mental prayer and Scripture, since every mystery except the last two is taken directly from Scripture—as is the first half of the Hail Mary.
For more than 500 years, there were 15 official mysteries: five joyful, five sorrowful and five glorious. Then, in 2002, St. Pope John Paul II recognized the obvious gap between the finding of Jesus in the Temple when he was 12 and his agony in the garden. So he added the five luminous mysteries, or mysteries of light, recalling events in Jesus’ public ministry—his baptism, the wedding feast at Cana, the proclamation of the kingdom, the transfiguration, and the institution of the Eucharist.
October is the perfect time to begin the practice of reciting the rosary daily. We encourage you to give it a try.
—John F. Fink