The full Rosary was therefore made up of three thirds. It was prayed by meditating on the first third, the Joyful Mysteries, corresponding to the Birth and Infancy of Jesus, then the second third, the Sorrowful Mysteries, corresponding to his Passion and Death, and the last third, the Glorious Mysteries, corresponding to his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.
The Church was slow to realize that the Rosary was incomplete with only the mysteries of the incarnation birth, passion and death, and resurrection of the Lord. It was missing the mysteries of his public ministry in which Jesus of Nazareth by his preaching, attitudes, ways of living and acting models for us the new man, the one who is the way of truth and life for all human beings.
With the creation and integration of the Luminous Mysteries by Pope John Paul II in his 2002 apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, the logic of the three thirds making up a complete Rosary didn’t make sense anymore. The full Rosary is now four “thirds” comprising of 50 Hail Marys each thus totaling 200 Hail Marys instead of the original 150. By including Jesus’ public life in the Luminous Mysteries, there are now four sets of mysteries to contemplate.
The structure of the Rosary
It is called the Rosary because the now 200 Hail Marys intertwined into groups of ten, forms a “Crown of Roses” which is offered to Mary, Mother of the Lord and our Mother. The twenty mysteries which recall the events in the Lord’s life are divided into four series of 5 mysteries each. In each recitation of the Rosary, we pray only five mysteries of one of the following series:
In the Joyful Mysteries, we meditate the beginning of the redemption of humanity, from the annunciation to Mary and the incarnation of the Son of God in her womb until Jesus’ adolescence.
In the Luminous Mysteries, we meditate the most important moment of Jesus’ public ministry, from his inauguration at Baptism until the institution of the Eucharist as the memorial of his Passion. It is during these years that Jesus truly revealed himself to be the Light of the World (John 8:12), by his attitude before the most diverse situations he encountered in life, by the doctrines that he taught, and by his actions.
In the Sorrowful Mysteries, we meditate on the events of the passion and death of Jesus, from his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to his last breath on the cross. When we say that Jesus died for our sins, we imply not only that he paid off our debt in full which we are incapable of paying, but also that the sins of those who intervened in his death are still being committed today, and always will till the end of time. For this we can conclude that Jesus was killed by the sins of all humanity.
In the Glorious Mysteries, we meditate on Jesus’ triumph over death by his Resurrection. Death has been conquered once for all just like the sin that caused it. After Jesus’ Resurrection, death is no longer the final destiny of mankind, but rather a passage to eternal life for those who choose him as the way, the truth and the life. Jesus’ life that began with a ‘Yes’ from Mary to God’s plan ends now with the glorification of the one who is for all a model of Christian life.
The Our Father – The Lord’s Prayer, which precedes each mystery, is much more than a simple prayer that the Lord taught us to recite occasionally. It summarizes the most important aspects of the Gospel; it is in this sense an entire pocket Gospel because it contains all we should know and do, the words to live by.
Since it is made up of several unrelated statements, it can be viewed as a “shopping list” that we make in order not to forget the important things that need to be done. As a list, it concerns with the protocol of our relationship with God, that is, how our prayer should be structured: how is God to be addressed, to be praised, and in what ways can we ask for our needs, in what order, and when. Therefore, more than a prayer, it is basically a practical guide on how to pray and live.
The Hail Mary – This prayer is divided into two parts. The first part is biblical and is made up of two greetings, one by the Angel Gabriel and the other by Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. The second half has its origin in the faith of the Church, it is not known how or when or where it was first used. For this reason, the Hail Mary prayer represents the perfect union between the Bible as the Word of God and the Church as the community of believers.
In an upward movement, the first part which is descended from the Bible, is made up of 5 ladders that ascend to Jesus. In a downward movement, the second part is also made up of 5 ladders that descend to a human reality, our death.
This cannot be understood by our Protestant brothers and sisters, the advocates of the “sola fide sola scriptura solus Christus” because the Scripture, the Word of God described in the first part, is united in a harmonious way with the Tradition, that is, the history of the Christian faith throughout the ages embodied in the second. Jesus who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and the center of human history is the hinge that unites these two parts.
The Glory Be – It is an invocation of God as One and Triune. One single God in three different persons united in a triangle of love. It is the solution to the dialectic of Greek philosophy between the one and the multiple. This prayer also helps to remind us that made in the image and likeness of God we human beings are also one and triune: we do not exist nor subsist outside the family.
The origin and history of the rosary
As an instrument of prayer, the beads of the rosary have their origin in India, in the third century BC. In Christianity, it was the desert fathers in the third and fourth century who started using this counting instrument for prayers, especially for praying the Our Father.
Furthermore, in the antiquity, the Greeks and the Romans used to crown the statues of their gods with crowns of roses as a way to show their love and gratitude. Perhaps following this tradition the Christian women who were led to martyrdom were dressed to the hilt, wearing on their head a crown of roses, a symbol of their joy and surrender as they made their way to meet Christ the Bridegroom. After their martyrdom, other Christians collected these crowns and prayed, one prayer for each rose, for the souls of the martyrs.
At Fatima, Lucia and Jacinta liked to put flowers in their hair. On the days of the apparitions, the three shepherd children wore their Sunday best as if they were going to Mass; the two girls placed flowers in their hair, especially Jacinta who was photographed wearing a crown of roses on her head for the occasion of the apparitions.
The praying of the Rosary came out from the shadows of the monasteries as the psalter of the laity in the year 800. It was only in 1214, however, that the Church accepted the Rosary in its present form. Tradition says that it was given to the Church by Saint Dominic de Guzman who had in turn received it from the Virgin Mary as a powerful weapon against the enemies of the faith.
The Rosary gained great momentum after the naval battle of Lepanto where Christians defeated the Turks thus eliminating once and for all the danger of Islam subjugating Christianity in Europe. Just before the battle, Pope Pius V bid Christians to pray the Rosary to support the Christian fleet. After the unexpected victory, he instituted the feast day of Our Lady of Victory on the 7th of October, the day of the 1517 battle of Lepanto. This day was later changed to the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Mary’s insistent call to pray the Rosary every day at most of her apparitions, especially those at Fatima, made this practice distinctively Catholic in contrast to the rest of Christendom, the Orthodox and the Protestants.
The way to pray the Rosary
Each day of the week we meditate on a different group of mysteries: on Mondays and Saturdays we meditate on the Joyful Mysteries, on Tuesdays and Fridays the Sorrowful Mysteries, on Wednesdays and Sundays the Glorious Mysteries, and finally Thursdays are reserved for the Luminous Mysteries.
There are several ways of praying the Rosary but for the most part people start praying by making the sign of the cross, followed by the Creed, then one Our Father, three Hail Marys and a Glory Be. After saying these introductory prayers, the first mystery is announced which may or may not be accompanied by a short meditation and then one Our Father and ten Hail Marys follow.
After the tenth Hail Mary in each decade is recited, the Glory Be is prayed followed by several pious small prayers depending on where the Rosary is recited and by whom, and ends with the prayer that Our Lady recommended at Fatima to be prayed after each mystery: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy. Amen”.
For a more complete ending, we add three Hail Marys for the intentions of the Holy Father so that we may be united to all Christendom, represented by him, and ends with the Hail Holy Queen preceded or not, according to the time available, by the Litany of Our Lady.
The importance of the Rosary
The Rosary is at the same time a Marian and a Christ-centered prayer because we repeatedly invoke Mary as Mother of God and our Mother, and ask her to join us in our prayers to the Father as we recite the Our Father and to the Holy Trinity as we pray the Glory Be, and to help us to contemplate the mysteries of the life of her Son, our elder brother and saviour, of whom she is also an integrant part.
At Fatima, as at many Marian apparitions, Mary never draws attention to herself, but rather she exclusively points to her Son. Her joy comes not when we praise her, but when we praise her Son. As the proverb says, “Whoever my son kisses, my lips sweeten”.
One does not love the son without loving the mother, therefore all the love directed to the son is indirectly directed to the mother. Every praise given to the mother is given to the son, as was the case of the woman who in the midst of the crowd, raised her voice and said to Jesus, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ (Luke 11:27)
The Rosary is not a prayer of thanksgiving, nor a prayer of petition, and not even a prayer of lamentation like some of the psalms found in the Bible. The Rosary is fundamentally a prayer of meditation and contemplation. In fact, we announce and enunciate each mystery by saying that in this mystery we contemplate…
It has been told that one day when someone confessed to Pope John XXIII his difficulty in praying the Rosary because he is often distracted by the mechanical and repetitive nature of the Hail Marys, to which the pope replied, ‘What is the purpose of the Rosary but to distract us?’
Being a contemplative prayer, the repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys in the Rosary acts like the mantras in the Buddhist spirituality; they engage the mind by preventing it from jumping from thought to thought, thus enabling the person to contemplate strictly on the mysteries of the Lord’s life. The goal, however, is not to put our attention on each Hail Mary and Our Father that we recite, but to occupy the mind with these prayers as with the mantras and thus surge us into the contemplation of the divine.
The Rosary and Fatima
At the apparitions in Fatima, Our Lady asked the little shepherds to pray the Rosary every day, not just at one or two apparitions, but at all the ones that took place in 1917, as well as those that happened in Tuy and Pontevedra to Sister Lucia alone. Why the Rosary, Lucia had asked Our Lady, because it is a prayer accessible to all, young and old, wise and ignorant alike.
Soon after the apparitions, praying the Rosary became an integral part of the evening prayer routine in a Catholic home. Before or after supper by the warmth of the fireplace the father or mother would lead the prayer, and no child would ask for a bedtime blessing from his parents before saying the Rosary, no matter how tired he was.
The family that prays together stays together. The television, however, like a Trojan horse came to disturb this candor and harmony in the homes and soon the Rosary was replaced by the soap operas. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the divorce rate has increased so drastically.
The little shepherds who already prayed the Rosary before the apparitions, albeit hurriedly, began to pray it as Our Lady wanted. Especially Francisco, to whom the Lady said that he had to pray many Rosaries before he could make it to Heaven.
In effect, the Rosary identified Francisco in his earthly life because there were days when he prayed ten Rosaries a day, and it also identified his bones when his body was exhumed. Among the many corpses that were buried in the same common grave, Mr. Marto, Francisco’s father, identified the bones of his son because clinging to them was the rosary still intact that Francisco used to pray.
Penance and prayer is what Mary asked of us and others at Fatima. The Rosary catapults us into the contemplation of the Mystery of God, above all the Incarnate Word. Therefore, meditating or not, distracted or not, those who profoundly love the Rosary and cannot go one day without praying it are “ipso facto” truly people of prayer.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
Very good...
ReplyDelete