The Rosary, a Contemplative prayer

The Rosary is at the same time a Marian prayer and a prayer centered on Christ – Christ-Centric – because we repeatedly invoke Mary as Mother of God and our mother and ask her to join us in our prayer to the Father as we recite the Our Father, and to the Most Holy Trinity as we recite the Glory Be. We ask her to help us to meditate and contemplate the mysteries of the life of her Son, our older brother and Savior, of which she is also a part.

In Fatima, as in the other Marian apparitions, Mary does not draw attention to herself, but exclusively to her Son. Her contentment comes not from us praising her, but from us praising her Son. As the proverb says, "Whoever my son kisses, my mouth sweetens."

While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’  Luke 11:27

You can’t love the son without loving the mother, so all the love directed to the child is indirectly directed to the mother. Just as all the praises given to the mother is directed to the son, as happened to that woman who, among the crowd, raised her voice to say to Jesus, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!"

The Rosary is not a prayer of thanksgiving, nor a prayer of petition, it is not even a prayer of lamentation like some psalms in the Bible. The Rosary is basically a prayer of meditation and contemplation. In fact, we proclaim and enunciate each Mystery by saying "in this Mystery, we contemplate..."

The story goes that one day someone confessed to Pope John XXIII his difficulty in praying the Rosary because he often gets distracted by the mechanical and repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys, to which the Pope replied, "What good is the Rosary if it is not to distract us?" (Distraction in neo-Latin languages has also the meaning as amusement).

Being a contemplative prayer, the repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys in the Rosary has the same purpose as the mantras in Buddhist spirituality: they occupy the mind, preventing it from jumping from one thought to another, thus allowing and facilitating contemplation of the Mysteries of the Lord's life. 

Hail Mary as a mantra
Contemplative prayers were fashionable in the sixties, just as Lectio Divina is today. Well-known figures of monastic life, such as Thomas Merton, traveled to the Far East, while others, like the Indian Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello, tried to bridge the gap between Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, and Christianity.

To attain contemplation at the technical level, we can certainly learn from Buddhism. However, contemplation has always existed in the Church from the desert fathers, the Benedictine monks, the Carmelites, Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and even at the level of diocesan clergy at all times, like the Holy Curé of Ars exemplifies so well.

After exchanging beautiful words and poetry with each other, the lovers remain silent for hours on end, holding each other, saying nothing, doing nothing. In silence, contemplating a beautiful ecstatic landscape, both are examples of contemplation.

In a contemplative prayer there are no words and no thoughts. There is a feeling of emptiness of mind, a realization of self, a heightened sense of being present in oneself, centered in one's own body, without ramblings of the mind. This mind, which St. Teresa of Avila calls the madwoman of the house, is like a monkey that jumps from branch to branch.

To prayer through silence, to silence through prayer. It takes time and a lot of practice to be able to silence the mind. It is achieved by not consenting to thoughts the moment we are aware of them; in this way, little by little, we reach the emptiness of mind that reaches a high degree of self-awareness. It is at this moment that we open ourselves to the divine and experience His presence. Deus intimior intimo meo. God is nearer to me than my innermost being. In fact, in contemplation we seek union with God, the beatific vision, Heaven on Earth.

In the initial states of contemplation, to silence the discursive, imaginative and fanciful mind, the mantras are used, which are short phrases that are repeated continuously to entertain the mind with something and prevent it from wandering from thought to thought. The Russian pilgrim even repeated his mantra hundreds of times a day to achieve continuous prayer, the dream of all hermits.

In the Most Holy Rosary, the Hail Mary prayer repeated 50 times, 10 times for each mystery, is intended to keep the mind from being distracted from contemplation of the mystery. The purpose, therefore, is not to put our attention on each Hail Mary and Our Father that we pray, but to occupy the mind with these prayers as if they were mantras and thus jump into the contemplation of the divine.

How to pray the Rosary
Because it is a contemplative prayer, we must enunciate each mystery by inviting the faithful who pray it with us to contemplate that Mystery; for example, in the first Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Annunciation of the angel to the Blessed Virgin. The phrase "we contemplate" in the proclamation of each Mystery is important and should always be said, never omitted or implied precisely because the Rosary is a contemplative prayer; it is the contemplation on the mysteries of our salvation from the hands of Mary, praying with Mary as her son's disciples prayed with her on the night before Pentecost. (Acts 1:12-14)

For each day of the week, we meditate on different mysteries. Thus, on Mondays and Saturdays we meditate on the Joyful Mysteries, on Tuesdays and Fridays the Sorrowful Mysteries, on Wednesdays and Sundays the Glorious Mysteries, reserving the Luminous Mysteries for Thursdays.

There are several ways of praying the Rosary, but most people begin with the sign of the cross, followed by the Creed, one Our Father, three Hail Marys and one Glory Be. After these introductory prayers, the first mystery is announced accompanied or not with a short meditation, and followed by one Our Father and one decade of Hail Marys.

After the tenth Hail Mary of each decade, the Glory Be is prayed, followed by several interjectory prayers, depending on the place and the people praying, ending with the prayer that Our Lady of Fatima recommended to the little shepherds to pray after each mystery: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need (of Thy mercy).”

In the original Fatima prayer, this final statement (of Thy mercy) is missing, therefore grammatically it is understood that all souls need heaven. All countries have added this final expression in the sense that those who are furthest from God are the ones who are in most need of his mercy.

Hell is eternal death not eternal fire, which means eternal torture. God created us out of nothing so that we could do something with the life He gave us; those who do nothing with it, those who do not use the talents received from God for the benefit of their brothers and sisters for the greater glory of God, return to nothingness from which they were taken, for their lives were nothing and many, in fact, do actually believe that they came from nothing and will return to nothing.

Why does hell appear in the Bible as eternal torture? Because we are naturally more afraid of suffering than of death itself. The one who dies no longer suffers, we say, and the one who is being tortured begs for death as mercy. So often the badly injured friend asks the other friend for death as mercy. The fear of God does not mean to be afraid of God, and we should not choose God for fear of hell. This was a childish pedagogy in which children were educated. But today not even children should be educated in this way; reason should be the basis of all education, not irrational fear.

It is for the simple reason that the little shepherds could not imagine hell in any other way that this prayer of Fatima and the vision of hell did indeed involve fire. Our Lady showed them see hell as they understood it, as they conceived it, not least because nothingness has no graphic representation.

Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur – This maxim from scholastic philosophy can explain this point: whatever is received, is received in the manner of the receiver. The sea has plenty of water to give, but my bucket is limited in its capacity to receive; the same goes for our mind. The little shepherds saw hell as the Bible represents it and according to their capacity to understand it.

Finally, three Hail Marys are prayed for the intentions of the Holy Father, so that we may be united to all Christendom represented by him, and it ends with the Salve Regina preceded or not, according to the time available, by the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Our Father — The Our Father, which intersperses each Mystery, is much more than a simple prayer the Lord has taught us to recite occasionally. It contains what is the most important of the Gospel in a summarized form; it is, in this sense, a complete pocket Gospel because it contains what we should know and practice.

Since it is made up of several statements, unrelated to each other, it can be viewed as a list, like the shopping lists we make so not to forget the most important things. This list concerns the protocol of our relationship with God, that is, how our prayer should be structured; how we should address God, how to praise Him, what we should ask for, in what order, when and how. Therefore, more than a prayer, it is fundamentally a practical guide to prayer and life.

The Hail Mary – It is divided into two parts: the first is biblical and is composed of the greetings from the Angel Gabriel and Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, and the second originates from the faith of the Church, it is not known how or when or where it began to be used. Consequently, the Hail Mary prayer represents the perfect union between the Bible as the Word of God and the Church as a community of believers.

In an ascending movement, the first part, taken from the Bible, consists of 5 stairs that go up to Jesus. In a descending movement, the second part also consists of 5 stairs but this time going down to human reality, our death.

It cannot be understood by the advocates of the "sola fide sola scriptura solus christus", because there is a harmonious union between the Scripture, the Word of God, described in the first part, and the Tradition, that is, the history of the faith of the Christian community down through the ages, shaped in the second part. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and the center of history, is the core that unites the two parts.

The Glory Be – This is the invocation of God as One and Triune. One divinity in three different persons united in a triangle of love. It is the solution in the light of the dialectic of Greek philosophy between the one and the multiple. This prayer also reminds us that, made in the image and likeness of God, the human person is also one and triune: he does not exist or subsist outside the family.

Conclusion: As the apostles prayed with Mary before Pentecost, the Rosary today, reunites us with Her in prayer and contemplation of the Mysteries of her Son's life.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC