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The Rosary
The word rosary comes from Latin and means a garland
of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin
Mary. If you were to ask what object is most emblematic of Catholics, people
would probably say, "The rosary, of course." We’re familiar with the images:
the silently moving lips of the old woman fingering her beads; the oversized
rosary hanging from the waist of the wimpled nun; more recently, the merely
decorative rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.
After Vatican II the rosary fell into relative
disuse. The same is true for Marian devotions as a whole. But in recent
years the rosary has made a comeback, and not just among Catholics. Many
Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form
of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the
Bible.
The rosary is a devotion in honor of the Virgin
Mary. It consists of a set number of specific prayers. First are the introductory
prayers: one Apostles’ Creed (Credo), one Our Father (the Pater
Noster or the Lord’s Prayer), three Hail Mary’s (Ave’s), one
Glory Be (Gloria Patri).
The Apostles’ Creed
The Apostles’ Creed is so called not because it
was composed by the apostles themselves, but because it expresses their
teachings. The original form of the creed came into use around A.D. 125,
and the present form dates from the 400s. It reads this way:
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator
of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was
conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The
third day he arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is
seated at the right hand of the Father. From thence he shall come to judge
the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic
Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection
of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."
Traditional Protestants are able to recite the
Apostles’ Creed without qualms, meaning every line of it, though to some
lines they must give meanings different from those given by Catholics,
who composed the creed. For instance, we refer to "the holy Catholic Church,"
meaning a particular, identifiable Church on earth. Protestants typically
re-interpret this to refer to an "invisible church" consisting of all "true
believers" in Jesus.
Protestants, when they say the prayer, refer to
the (lower-cased) "holy catholic church," using "catholic" merely in the
sense of "universal," not implying any connection with the (upper-case)
Catholic Church, which is based in Rome. (This is despite the fact that
the term "Catholic" was already used to refer to a particular, visible
Church by the second century and had already lost its broader meaning of
"universal").
Despite these differences Protestants embrace the
Apostles’ Creed without reluctance, seeing it as embodying basic Christian
truths as they understand them.
The Lord’s Prayer
The next prayer in the rosary—Our Father or the
Pater Noster (from its opening words in Latin), also known as the
Lord’s Prayer—is even more acceptable to Protestants because Jesus himself
taught it to his disciples.
It is given in the Bible in two slightly different
versions (Matt. 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4). The one given in Matthew is the one
we say. (We won’t reproduce it here. All Christians should have it memorized.)
The Hail Mary
The next prayer in the rosary, and the prayer which
is really at the center of the devotion, is the Hail Mary. Since the Hail
Mary is a prayer to Mary, many Protestants assume it’s unbiblical. Quite
the contrary, actually. Let’s look at it.
The prayer begins, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the
Lord is with thee." This is nothing other than the greeting the angel Gabriel
gave Mary in Luke 1:28 (Confraternity Version). The next part reads
this way:
"Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the
fruit of thy womb, Jesus." This was exactly what Mary’s cousin Elizabeth
said to her in Luke 1:42. The only thing that has been added to these two
verses are the names "Jesus" and "Mary," to make clear who is being referred
to. So the first part of the Hail Mary is entirely biblical.
The second part of the Hail Mary is not taken straight
from Scripture, but it is entirely biblical in the thoughts it expresses.
It reads:
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
Let’s look at the first words. Some Protestants
do object to saying "Holy Mary" because they claim Mary was a sinner like
the rest of us. But Mary was a Christian (the first Christian, actually,
the first to accept Jesus; cf. Luke 1:45), and the Bible describes Christians
in general as holy. In fact, they are called saints, which means "holy
ones" (Eph. 1:1, Phil. 1:1, Col. 1:2). Furthermore, as the mother of Jesus
Christ, the Incarnate Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Mary was certainly
a very holy woman.
Some Protestants object to the title "Mother of
God," but suffice it to say that the title doesn’t mean Mary is older than
God; it means the person who was born of her was a divine person, not a
human person. (Jesus is one person, the divine, but has two natures, the
divine and the human; it is incorrect to say he is a human person.) The
denial that Mary had God in her womb is a heresy known as Nestorianism
(which claims that Jesus was two persons, one divine and one human), which
has been condemned since the early 400s and which the Reformers and Protestant
Bible scholars have always rejected.
Another Mediator?
The most problematic line for non-Catholics is
usually the last: "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."
Many non-Catholics think such a request denies the teaching of 1 Timothy
2:5: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus." But in the preceding four verses (1 Tim. 2:1-4),
Paul instructs Christians to pray for each other, meaning it cannot interfere
with Christ’s mediatorship: "I urge that prayers, supplications, petitions,
and thanksgivings be made for everyone. . . . This is good, and pleasing
to God our Savior."
We know this exhortation to pray for others applies
to the saints in heaven who, as Revelation 5:8 reveals, intercede for us
by offering our prayers to God: "The twenty-four elders fell down before
the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which
are the prayers of the saints.
The Glory Be
The fourth prayer found in the rosary is the Glory
Be, sometimes called the Gloria or Gloria Patri. The last
two names are taken from the opening words of the Latin version of the
prayer, which in English reads:
"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to
the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen." The Gloria is a brief hymn of praise in
which all Christians can join. It has been used since the fourth century
(though its present form is from the seventh) and traditionally has been
recited at the end of each Psalm in the Divine Office.
The Closing Prayer
We’ve covered the opening prayers of the rosary.
In fact, we’ve covered all the prayers of the rosary except the very last
one, which is usually the Hail Queen (Salve Regina), sometimes called
the Hail Holy Queen. It’s the most commonly recited prayer in praise of
Mary, after the Hail Mary itself, and was composed at the end of the eleventh
century. It generally reads like this (there are several variants):
"Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our
sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.
To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and
after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary."
So those are the prayers of the rosary. Between
the introductory prayers and the concluding prayer is the meat of the rosary:
the decades. Each decade—there are fifteen in a full rosary (which takes
about forty-five minutes to say)—is composed of ten Hail Marys. Each decade
is bracketed between an Our Father and a Glory Be, so each decade actually
has twelve prayers.
Each decade is devoted to a mystery regarding the
life of Jesus or his mother. Here the word mystery refers to a truth of
the faith, not to something incomprehensible, as in the line, "It’s a mystery
to me!" The fifteen mysteries are divided into three groups of five: the
Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious. When people speak of "saying the rosary"
they usually mean saying any set of five (which takes about fifteen minutes)
rather than the recitation of all fifteen mysteries. Let’s look at the
mysteries.
Meditation the Key
First we must understand that they are meditations.
When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary,
they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade. If they merely
recite the prayers, whether vocally or silently, they’re missing the essence
of the rosary. It isn’t just a recitation of prayers, but a meditation
on the grace of God. Critics, not knowing about the meditation part, imagine
the rosary must be boring, uselessly repetitious, meaningless, and their
criticism carries weight if you reduce the rosary to a formula. Christ
forbade meaningless repetition (Matt. 6:7), but the Bible itself prescribes
some prayers that involve repetition. Look at Psalms 136, which is a litany
(a prayer with a recurring refrain) meant to be sung in the Jewish Temple.
In the psalm the refrain is "His mercy endures forever." Sometimes in Psalms
136 the refrain starts before a sentence is finished, meaning it is more
repetitious than the rosary, though this prayer was written directly under
the inspiration of God.
It is the meditation on the mysteries that gives
the rosary its staying power. The Joyful Mysteries are these: the Annunciation
(Luke 1:26-38), the Visitation (Luke 1:40-56), the Nativity (Luke 2:6-20),
the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-39), and the Finding
of the child Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51).
Then come the Sorrowful Mysteries: the Agony in
the Garden (Matt. 26:36-46), the Scourging (Matt. 27:26), the Crowning with
Thorns (Matt. 27:29), the Carrying of the Cross (John 19:17), and the
Crucifixion (Luke 23:33-46).
The final Mysteries are the Glorious: the Resurrection
(Luke 24:1-12), the Ascension (Luke 24:50-51), the Descent of the Holy
Spirit (Acts 2:1-4), the Assumption of Mary into heaven (Rev. 12), and
her Coronation (cf. Rev. 12:1).
With the exception of the last two, each mystery
is explicitly scriptural. True, the Assumption and Coronation of Mary are
not explicitly stated in the Bible, but they are not contrary to it, so
there is no reason to reject them out of hand. Given the scriptural basis
of most of the mysteries, it’s little wonder that many Protestants, once
they understand the meditations that are the essence of the rosary, happily
take it up as a devotion. We’ve looked at the prayers found in the rosary
and the mysteries around which it is formed. Now let’s see how it was formed
historically.
The Secret of Paternoster Row
It’s commonly said that St. Dominic, the founder
of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans), instituted the rosary. Not
so. Certain parts of the rosary predated Dominic; others arose only after
his death.
Centuries before Dominic, monks had begun to recite
all 150 psalms on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the
lay brothers, known as the conversi, should have some form of prayer
of their own. They were distinct from the choir monks, and a chief distinction
was that they were illiterate. Since they couldn’t read the psalms, they
couldn’t recite them with the monks. They needed an easily remembered prayer.
The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, and,
depending on circumstances, it was said either fifty or a hundred times.
These conversi used rosaries to keep count, and the rosaries were
known then as Paternosters ("Our Fathers").
In England there arose a craftsmen’s guild of some
importance, the members of which made these rosaries. In London you can
find a street, named Paternoster Row, which preserves the memory of the
area where these craftsmen worked.
The rosaries that originally were used to count
Our Fathers came to be used, during the twelfth century, to count Hail
Marys—or, more properly, the first half of what we now call the Hail Mary.
(The second half was added some time later.)
Both Catholics and non-Catholics, as they learn
more about the rosary and make more frequent use of it, come to see how
its meditations bring to mind the sweet fragrance not only of the Mother
of God, but of Christ himself.
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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Interested in reading more about Mary and the Saints?
Check out these wonderful titles from the Mary and the Saints section of our online Catalogue
(links open in a new window):
Mary
Refuting the Attack on Mary, Father Mateo
Mary, the Second Eve, John Henry Newman
True Devotion To Mary, St. Louis De Montfort
Mary, Our Jewish Mother - Audio, Rosalind Moss
Mary, the Mother of God - Video, Stephen Ray
Mary and The Saints - Video, Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Rosary
A Young Person's Guide To The Rosary And Confession, Catholic Answers
Saints
Relics, Joan Carroll Cruz
The Many Faces of Virtue, Donald Demarco
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