Megan McKenna - Praying the Rosary: A Complete Guide to the Worlds Most Popular Form of Prayer

Table of Contents

With gratitude and love to the Maryknollmissionaries of Bolivia and Peru, and theirfriends for their hospitality, their dedication tojustice and mercy, and their compassionateresistance to injustice and violence. You live thestories that I tell and share your lives with me.

Steve Judd, MM
Jim Madden, MM
Steve DeMott, MM
Jerry McCrane, MM
Larry Kenning, MM
Tom Burns, MM
Maribeth, Steve, and Reiner Bathum
Victor Maqque
Birgit Weiler, MMS
Paul Newpower

ONE

Praying the Rosary withMary as a Believer

Jesus Chris should be as a book always opened before us from which we are to learn all that is necessary to know.

CATHERINE MCAULEY

FOR CHRISTIANS in the new millennium, the rosary or prayer beads are familiar aids to prayer. Originally all forms of beadsropes with knots, cords tightly twisted around ones fingers or wrist or kept hidden in a pocket or under a surplice or apronserved as a reminder to follow the exhortation to pray constantly. Stories are told of the desert fathers and mothers beginning their day by collecting stones, counting them out in sevens, and filling their pockets with them. Then, as the day unfolded and they went about their duties they would finger a stone, pray, and then drop the stone as they walked to their next task; when all the stones were gone, they would stop and once again collect more. These prayers werent meant to be finished, but were never-ending, a way of praying that was a way of life, drawing the observers daily into a deeper consciousness of being followers of the way (the first name for those who followed Jesus Christ).

With the advent of Western monasticism in the fourth century, members of the community were encouraged to learn all one hundred and fifty psalms that were prayed during the seven hours of the Office, the public prayer of the Church meant to draw all of creationall of time and all the peoples of the worldinto an endless prayer from East to West. This was the idea of ringing the world and encircling it, making all one in Christ. Since many could not read or found the task of memorizing the psalms a daunting proposition, they were allowed to substitute the Our Father Paters instead, and the recitation of one hundred fifty Our Fathers became a paternoster. In the Eastern tradition the prayer that was recited was called the Jesus Prayer from the Scriptures: Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. This prayer was chanted slowly, carefully, silently or very softly over and over again, filling the one who prayed with a sense of the presence of God everywhere at all times. John Paul II refers to this tradition of prayer in his recent Apostolic Letter On the Most Holy Rosary when he writes: The Rosary belongs among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation. Developed in the West, it is a typically meditative prayer, corresponding in some way to the prayer of the heart or Jesus prayer which took root in the soil of the Christian East. (p. 12, #5)

Just as the Jesus Prayer centered the believer on the person of Christ, so the praying of the Rosary is intended to center the believer on a commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery. (ibid.) The heart and fullness of the Christian mystery is, of course, the person of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh of Mary, the Theotokis (she who bore the Word into the world). Jesus is a singular human being in history and then the Christ of the Word of God (the Scriptures) where this presence of the Risen Lord is given to the Church for all believers to ponder and to incarnate into their own lives now.

John Paul II refers to the Rosary as a compendium of the Gospel (On the Most Holy Rosary, p. 25, #18). And he quotes Paul VI to describe how the Rosary is a Gospel prayer and a Christological prayer.

As a Gospel prayer, centered on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, the Rosary is a prayer with a clearly Christological orientation. Its most characteristic element, in fact, the litany-like succession of Hail Marys, becomes in itself an unceasing praise of Christ, who is the ultimate object both of the angels announcement and the greeting of the mother of John the Baptist: Blessed is the fruit of your womb (Luke 1:42). We would go further and say that the succession of Hail Marys constitutes the warp on which is woven the contemplation of the mysteries. The Jesus that each Hail Mary recalls is the same Jesus whom the succession of mysteries proposes to us now as the Son of God, now as the Son of the Virgin. (#28 Apostolic Exhortation Marials Cultus [February 2, 1974], 46: AAS 6 [1974], 155)

Again, there is that image of the loom, and the warp describing how the singular thread of the Hail Marys is meant to disappear into the other threads, the mysteries of the Word of God in the Scriptures. Always the unifying element is the Word of God. Again John Paul II writes: The Rosary is also a path of proclamation and increasing knowledge, in which the mystery of Christ is presented again and again at different levels of the Christian experience. Its form is that of a prayerful and contemplative presentation, capable of forming Christians according to the heart of Christ. (p. 23, #17)

It is with this in mind that John Paul II decided to add to the traditional mysteries of the Rosary. As the Rosary developed in the Middle Ages, much of the core of the Scriptures, the life and teachings of Jesus, was omitted, with concentration on his birth, and sufferings, death, and resurrection. Since many could not read, emphasis was placed upon events and moments that had been described in the Gospels while neglecting the teachings, parables, and prayers of Jesus. What was left out was the heart of the Good News, the mysteries of Christs public ministry between his Baptism and his passion. (p. 26, #19) Even with the insertion of these five new mysteries of light, or luminous mysteries, only a tiny portion of the Word of God in the Gospels is highlighted for reflection. The five mysteries of light are turning points, or large theological concepts that are found fleshed out in the Gospels. They are, as it were, jumping-off places, catalysts for entering into the depths of the Word of God in the Scriptures. The moments of light that have been singled out are: I. Jesus baptism in the Jordan, 2. his self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana; 3. his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, with his call to conversion, 4. his transfiguration; and finally, 5. his institution of the Eucharist, as the sacramental expression of the Paschal Mystery. RVM, Each of these mysteries is a revelation of the Kingdom now present in the very person of Jesus. (pp. 2829, #21)

In some ways the inclusion of these five luminous mysteries is an attempt to introduce major themes of the entire Gospels. The focus is to be on Jesus and only secondarily on Mary as believer, who with us seeks to follow the commands of Jesus, walking in his way, his truth and life, toward the Father, in the power of the Spirit. John Paul II explains how Mary is found in these mysteries.