Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, therefore, let me introduce a question about Rosary:Why Catholics pray 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
-Catholic Answer-
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