Rosarium Virginis Mariae: In Which The Rosary is Awesome

Hey all! I'm popping back in just for a moment to do the Papal Document Linkup for May! I am, indeed, drowning in finals (my Islamic Gardens and Architecture final in particular is a literal beast with an absurd amount of memorization. Think thirty-five sites which need to be recognized from architectural plan alone, and about which I need to know name, date, location, dynasty, and three pertinent facts about its design & cultural significance, plus sixty or so vocabulary words, plus recognition of design features, plus three essays which I have to be prepared to write with no notes, each with examples that also need to be memorized). But hey, that's enough complaining (possibly more than enough), so let's move on to happy Papal stuff! XD

Our papal document for May is Rosarium Virginis Mariae, published October 16, 2002, by Pope St. John Paul II, pope from 1978 to 2005. 

If you'd like to join in, please drop a link to your post in the comments of Megan's or my post! :)

Summary: The rosary, a prayer which has been around since the Middle Ages when it was popularized by the Dominicans, and which has been praised by many popes, is a prayer which is needed all the more in this day and age, and should be encouraged, taught to children, etc.

It's a way in which we can join Mary in her intimate knowledge and contemplation of Jesus, in addition to asking her for her intercession. It's the Catholic path to contemplation and meditation, and a way of engaging in the art of prayer. 

Through this prayer, we come to know Christ and become more and more conformed to him. It's a compendium of the Gospel, the meditation of which will bear fruit.

The Pope then goes over all three of the old sets of Mysteries (events to contemplate), and explains why he is adding a fourth set, the Luminous Mysteries. 

He finishes with some suggestions on how prayer of the rosary, especially in public, can be made even more fruitful, while meditating on the importance and beauty of each part of the rosary. 

For those who aren't Catholic: The rosary is a Catholic prayer, made of up of four sets of five "mysteries", or events from Christ's life to be meditated on. Each set of mysteries is a complete rosary, although some religious will (I believe) say all four sets every day. 

The four sets of mysteries are the Joyful (centered around Christ's Birth), the Luminous (His ministry), the Sorrowful (His passion), and the Glorious (His resurrection). 

The entire rosary begins and ends with a set of specific prayers (which vary depending on who you're saying the rosary with...most people do it a certain way, and then the Dominicans have their own way of doing it, which is the way I use). The five decades/mysteries which make up the rosary are said between the brief beginning and ending prayers.

Each mystery of the rosary is contemplated on while saying a "decade" of the rosary, meaning ten Hail Marys. Each decade consists of one Our Father, ten Hail Maries, the Glory Be, and the Fatima Prayer, during which the person praying meditates on the assigned mystery of the decade. 

The goal of the rosary is to contemplate the life of Jesus with Mary--through her eyes--while also asking for her intercession. 

(More information can be found here, because the Dominicans are awesome. If you ever wanted to learn how to pray the rosary in Gaelic, or Tagalog, or Latin, or Turkish...they're your people, apparently.)

This month's thoughts may be a little different, because I want to talk about my own journey with the rosary, as well as what Papa JP said about it. :)

A couple of things about this encyclical make it especially special to me:

1. It established the Year of the Rosary, which I was born in...which I didn't know until I read this encyclical on Monday and went, "huh, I was born in the Year of the Rosary!"

2. My parents were actually at the papal audience where this encyclical was promulgated! They were on their honeymoon in Italy and went to that audience for a blessing from the Pope on their marriage--an amazing thing on its own! We have the best picture of my parents in their wedding garb getting blessed by a literal saint. But then it turned out that Pope JPII was also promulgating this document and establishing the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, so it was cool upon cool.

As one then might infer, it seems a bit like I was destined to love the rosary, especially when you factor in the fact that I also grew up in a Dominican parish, and the Dominicans are where the rosary in its current form originated (more or less. It's a bit fuzzy.) 

(Pope JPII acknowledges this: "this prayer was used in particular by the Dominicans at a difficult time for the Church due to the spread of heresy". Oh yeah it was!)

And I do love the rosary now, although I didn't always. When I was a child, it seemed Absolutely Interminable, with allllll those Hail Marys in each mystery, and five whole mysteries to get through! 

My family practiced the First Saturday devotion with several other families, and so once a month, we'd get together with three or four other families, eat dinner together, and pray the rosary. (The rosary was, shall we say, not the children's favorite part of proceedings. There were always groans when we were called up from running in a pack doing whatever to pray.) My family would bring a projector and screen, and we'd project art onto it for each mystery, and I'd often be in charge of moving the art along as we moved through the Hail Marys. That was my favorite, because it made the rosary feel like it was moving along for me. 😅

Overall, though, my parents did the wise thing and didn't try to "push" the rosary on us kids. More on that in a moment... 

I started praying it regularly on my own in my junior year of high school, when I would bike to community college every day. The bike ride there and back was just the right length of time for all five mysteries. I didn't use an actual rosary--though I had several, as most Catholic kids do, because apparently rosaries are the perfect gift--because I had to have my hands on my handlebars, so I simply used my fingers, which works nicely. (Our Dominican priests like to say that God gave us ten fingers so that we can pray the rosary anywhere and anytime.) But then COVID hit, and I no longer had the commute, and I stopped.

When I got to college, (in addition to finding the Catholic friend group I'm part of through the rosary) I was reintroduced to the Fifteen Promises of Mary to those who pray her rosary faithfully (which is generally interpreted as daily). And while these promises were amazing, they mostly intimidated me. What if I didn't see those promises manifesting in my life? Would that mean I wasn't doing it correctly? How could Mary promise those things? (The answer to that one is that when someone is praying the rosary every day, it changes them. It's not a way of changing God's mind...it's a promise that the rosary will change you.) What if I turned it into a scrupulous/OCD thing, where I Couldn't Miss A Day Of The Rosary?

But finally, after feeling like I should be praying the rosary for most of fall semester, I began to pray it every day this spring semester. I do miss days sometimes, and I'm able to give myself grace for that, which in itself might be a signal grace from Our Lady... I usually get in a few mysteries in each of my walks to and from classes, making a whole rosary each day.

I also started using an actual rosary, which I had honestly looked down on for years--why use a rosary when you could just use your fingers?--and I discovered why people use them. Just picking up my rosary makes me feel calmer, more connected with God. It's like an adult Catholic pacifier, almost. XD 

And while when I started praying it every day, it did sometimes feel interminable, with more practice, it really doesn't anymore. It seems just the right length, or sometimes even a little too short. I do think, though, that the rosary can be more of an adult prayer, because of the length, and because it calls for meditation on the mysteries while saying the prayers, which can be tricky for kids. Heck, it's still tricky for me!
My parents did a good job with the rosary and us, I think...they taught it to us, had us pray it about once a month, made rosaries accessible to us, and then modeled rosary praying for us--they pray it every day together, and make that visible to us. If I ever have kids, I think I'll approach it that way. 

Some of my favorite parts from the encyclical discussed how we should approach praying the rosary. As I said, I still sometimes have trouble remembering to meditate on the mystery...my mind will wander, and I'll find myself--while still praying the Hail Marys--meditating on what I'm having for lunch instead of the Scourging at the Pillar, for instance. And Papa JP reminded me not only that I need to strive for more than that...

"Without this contemplative dimension, it would lose its meaning, as Pope Paul VI clearly pointed out: “Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ: 'In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words' (Mt 6:7)."

...but also that the repetition and meditation are not interminable but joyful, even on their own...

"It is a method based on repetition. This applies above all to the Hail Mary, repeated ten times in each mystery. If this repetition is considered superficially, there could be a temptation to see the Rosary as a dry and boring exercise. It is quite another thing, however, when the Rosary is thought of as an outpouring of that love which tirelessly returns to the person loved with expressions similar in their content but ever fresh in terms of the feeling pervading them."

...and then he gave ideas about how to approach the meditation so that it doesn't stagnate. 

"In the spiritual journey of the Rosary, based on the constant contemplation – in Mary's company – of the face of Christ, this demanding ideal of being conformed to him is pursued through an association which could be described in terms of friendship. We are thereby enabled to enter naturally into Christ's life and as it were to share his deepest feelings."

 

"The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary's side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth."

 

"Anyone who contemplates Christ through the various stages of his life cannot fail to perceive in him the truth about man...believers come face to face with the image of the true man. Contemplating Christ's birth, they learn of the sanctity of life; seeing the household of Nazareth, they learn the original truth of the family according to God's plan; listening to the Master in the mysteries of his public ministry, they find the light which leads them to enter the Kingdom of God; and following him on the way to Calvary, they learn the meaning of salvific suffering. Finally, contemplating Christ and his Blessed Mother in glory, they see the goal towards which each of us is called, if we allow ourselves to be healed and transformed by the Holy Spirit. It could be said that each mystery of the Rosary, carefully meditated, sheds light on the mystery of man."

 

"In effect, the Rosary is simply a method of contemplation. As a method, it serves as a means to an end and cannot become an end in itself...there is a risk that the Rosary would not only fail to produce the intended spiritual effects, but even that the beads, with which it is usually said, could come to be regarded as some kind of amulet or magic object, thereby radically distorting their meaning and function."

There are so many more things I could talk about with this encyclical--and the rosary--but just one more point (okay, maybe two...)

I love how JPII also points out that, while the liturgy (i.e. the Mass) is AWESOME, we need more than just the liturgy. We need private prayer, and the rosary is an excellent private prayer to adopt. 

"The Rosary, in its own particular way, is part of this varied panorama of “ceaseless” prayer. If the Liturgy, as the activity of Christ and the Church, is a saving action par excellence, the Rosary too, as a “meditation” with Mary on Christ, is a salutary contemplation. By immersing us in the mysteries of the Redeemer's life, it ensures that what he has done and what the liturgy makes present is profoundly assimilated and shapes our existence."

One more thing: today I had the privilege of praying the rosary with about 25 other young people (including all the Catholics in my major! that was incredible) in front of a statue of the Pieta for the intention of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. It was a beautiful and moving experience, meditating on Jesus's Passion in that context. And it reminded me that besides being an excellent way to grow in personal holiness...the rosary is also a weapon. The Dominicans wear their rosaries on their left hips literally because that's where a sword would be hung. That's the reason. The rosary is a powerful sword, so get out there and practice with your weapon! 

Do you pray the rosary? Which are your favorite mysteries? Do you have a favorite mystery overall? Did you know the Luminous Mysteries are new? Tell me all the things!