Mitch Finley - The Rosary Handbook: A Guide for Newcomers, Oldtimers, and Those in Between

THE

ROSARY

HANDBOOK

A GUIDE FOR
NEWCOMERS, OLD-TIMERS,
AND THOSE IN BETWEEN

REVISED AND UPDATED

THE

ROSARY

HANDBOOK

A GUIDE FOR
NEWCOMERS, OLD-TIMERS,
AND THOSE IN BETWEEN

REVISED AND UPDATED

MITCH FINLEY

Copyright 2017 by Mitch Finley
All rights reserved

Published by The Word Among Us Press

7115 Guilford Road

Frederick, Maryland 21704

www.wau.org

21 20 19 18 171 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-59325-321-9

eISBN: 978-1-59325-501-5

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture passages contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Quotations are taken from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America (indicated as CCC), Second Edition, copyright 1997 by the United States Catholic ConferenceLibreria Editrice Vaticana.

Unless otherwise noted, quotations from Vatican documents are from the Vatican website, Vatican.va.

Cover design by Faceout Studios

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other, except for brief quotations in printed reviewswithout the prior permission of the author and publisher.

Made and printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944418

CONTENTS

I dedicate this new edition to my wife and
dearest friend, Kathy Finley.

INTRODUCTION

THE ROSARY AND YOU: A PERFECT MATCH

My earliest memories of the Rosary are from the school year of 195354, when I was in the third grade. This was the first year that I attended a Catholic school, which happened to be Saints Peter and Paul School in the small north-central Idaho town of Grangeville. Benedictine Sisters from the Monastery of St. Gertrude, from nearby Cottonwood, Idaho, served as our teachers.

Our parents enrolled my younger sister and me in this little Catholic school even though we werent Catholic. Less than two years later, however, the four of us stood over the baptismal font in the back of Saints Peter and Paul Church, as the pastor, Fr. Thomas Lafey, poured the waters of baptism over our heads. For me, it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with Catholicism andI was soon to discoverwith the Rosary as well.

Some years ago, I returned to Saints Peter and Paul School, and I could still pinpoint the place in the schools gymnasium where I stood one May morningMay being the month of the Blessed Virgin Maryas a non-Catholic third grader, when one of the sisters designated me, along with some sixty other fidgeting kids, to represent one of the beads of a rosary. We were going to become, Sister said, a living rosary.

(Throughout this book, I capitalize Rosary whenever I refer to the prayer form that is called the Rosary. When I refer to a circlet of beads or other counter called a rosary, I spell rosary with a lowercase r.)

The idea was that each student would begin the prayer to be said for the bead that he or she represented, and then everyone would join in to complete the prayer until we had prayed all five decades of a complete Rosary. I was designated as a Hail Mary, but not being Catholic then, I had little clue as to how to recite one. As I recall, I represented one of the beads toward the end of the second or third decade. I listened closely as the kids before me prayed aloud, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. The entire assembly would then complete the prayer: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

I hadnt a clue what fruit of thy womb might mean, but it didnt seem to bother anyone else, so why should I let it bother me? When my turn came, I recited the opening words of the prayer correctlymore or less. To my relief, the Rosary continued with no major breakdown. The Rosary became part of my life from then onit was a taken-for-granted part of being Catholic.

Years later, after graduating from a Catholic high school in 1964, I joined the US Navy, and one of the everyday ways I stayed in touch with my religious roots was through the Rosary. During the last of my four years in the Navy, in January 1968, I took a weeks leave and flew from Norfolk, Virginia, where I was stationed at the naval air station, to Louisville, Kentucky. From there, by bus, I traveled to Bardstown, Kentucky, and then got a ride out to the famous Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, where I attended a weekend retreat. The white snows of winter lay all around, and the first day I was there, I bought a good, sturdy rosary in the monasterys gift shopone I have to this day.

During my years in the Navy, I formed the habit of taking long walks most evenings, around whatever naval air station I was attached to at the time. I walked with a rosary in my jacket pocket, and I prayed as my fingers moved slowly from one bead to the next. And so I managed to keep some semblance of a spirituality alive and kicking. Indeed, without being conscious of it, I became an amateur contemplative, for the Rosary is a prayer that lends itself to meditation on many levelssome of which we may be hardly aware of. But Im getting ahead of myself

Whats your story about the Rosary in your life? If youre a lifelong Catholic, you may have grown up in a family that prayed the Rosary together regularly at home or maybe during Advent or Lent. Perhaps you have been praying the Rosary faithfully for many years. Then again, you might be considering returning to the Rosary after not having prayed it for a long time. Or maybe you never really learned to pray the Rosary before, and now youre wondering whether its for you.

Maybe you grew up in the years right after the Catholic Churchs Second Vatican Council, in the mid-1960s, when the Rosary fell into disuse among many Catholics, and now you want to try it. If youve recently become Catholicor even if youre just thinking about ityou may want to find out what the Rosary is all about. Whatever place the Rosary has in your life, and whatever your reason for picking up this book, this is the book that will help you learn about, rediscover, or enrich your experience with the Rosary.

Why Another Book on the Rosary

If you look around for books on the Rosary, soon youll discover that there are more than a few available. Some are primarily devotional in nature. Others are semi-scholarly or popular studies of the Rosary. Some offer adaptations of the Rosary that incorporate Scripture into the prayer more than the conventional practice does. Others adapt the Rosary to a recovery-based spirituality.

There really isnt any wrong way to pray the Rosarybut if youre looking for frills, you wont find them here. Apart from a look, in the appendix, at some alternative ways to pray the Rosary or to pray other prayers using the beads of the rosary or similar beads, this book will focus on the standard, straightforward, no-frills prayer that has been used for generation after generation.

The Rosary Handbook isnt just another book on the Rosary. My first aim in writing it was to provide a fresh perspective on the Rosary by looking at this age-old devotional prayer through a thoroughly contemporary lens. I didnt want to merely repeat an understanding of the Rosary taken for granted by earlier generations. A great deal has happened in the Catholic Church since the mid-1960s. Significant theological discussions developed and continue to this day. In particular, Vatican II sparked a renewed Catholic understanding of the role of Mary in the Church and in salvation history, and this developing understanding sheds new light on the Rosary and other Marian devotions. This book will discuss the Rosary in the light of twenty-first-century Catholic perspectives on Mary.