Praying the Rosary A Complete Guide to the World's Most Popular Form of Prayer

ONE Praying the Rosary with Mary as a Believer Jesus Chris should be as a book always opened before us rom 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 beads--ropes with knots, cords tightly twisted around one's fingers or wrist or kept hidden in a pocket or under a surplice or apron--served 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 weren't 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 creation--all of time and all the peoples of the world--into 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 angel's announcement and the greeting of the mother of John the Baptist: "Blessed is the fruit of youMcKenna, Megan is the author of 'Praying the Rosary A Complete Guide to the World's Most Popular Form of Prayer', published 2004 under ISBN 9780385510820 and ISBN 0385510829.