Reflection: Discovering the Rosary

Pope Frances praying Rosary in Lourdes - image Vatican News

During this month of May the Holy Father has encouraged us to pray the Rosary daily for an end to the pandemic. He has also inaugurated a Rosary marathon whereby a different Marian shrine is livestreaming the recitation of the Rosary each day of the month.

My first encounter with the Rosary was through the lenses of literature and cinema. I remember the opening scene of both the novel and movie version of Lampedusa's 'The Leopard' in which the Sicilian prince and his family recite the daily Rosary together. There were frequent reference to Rosary beads in Graham Greene's novels or the 'beadsman' in John Keats' poem 'The Eve of St Agnes'.

I only started practicing this devotion, however, at my university's chaplaincy when I was discerning my vocation to be a Catholic (having been raised Anglican). Once a week fellow students and a handful of local parishioners would gather in the chapel to pray the Rosary together. When a Lay Dominican became our university chaplain, the Rosary became an especially important part of the week's spiritual schedule and I began to take an interest in the historical connection between the Rosary and the Dominican Order.

The pious tradition is that Our Lady gave the Rosary to St Dominic, who founded the Dominicans, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Since then, this devotion has always been synonymous with the Dominican Order. Indeed, every Dominican friar recites five decades of the Rosary daily in accordance with their statutes and normally only a Dominican friar can enrol somebody into the Rosary Confraternity.

As the month of May is Our Lady's month and because this year marks the 800th anniversary of the Dominican Province of England, it seems an appropriate moment to dwell on the place this Dominican and Marian devotion has in our lives.

Maria Carvalho, who blogs at: www.arepentantcatholic.com, says that within the past five years she has started to take the Rosary "more seriously." It began with a "sincere intent of wanting to love God and needing words to say that would give that love to Him." She told me that she "cannot help but feel like Mary, cherishing these mysteries in my heart. And this is the power of the Rosary - our Mother brings us to contemplate Jesus, to cherish Him in our hearts as she did."

Recently I spoke with Fr Lawrence Lew OP, Rector of the Rosary Shrine in London. He also serves the Dominican Order worldwide as its Promoter General of the Rosary. He told me the Rosary "enables us to concentrate on what God has done for us." He explained how "very often in our prayer life we are so concerned about what we want to tell God and what we think God should do for us, but (as St John tells us) God has first loved us so that we can love God. The Rosary focuses on the essentials of what God has done for us in Christ to stir up a greater love for Him and a desire for the sacraments by which we can be inserted into the paschal mystery of Christ."

Unfortunately, there are some who look down upon the Rosary and see it as out-dated or even childish. But as Fr Lawrence explained, "The child can approach it at one level, but as you grow with the Rosary it grows with you. And as your knowledge of the mysteries of Christ's life and death and resurrection increase, so your appreciation of those mysteries that you meditate on in the Rosary also increases. It deepens because it is a living relationship. It is a contemplation of Jesus's life through the eyes of Mary; it is a compendium of the Gospel." He added that the Rosary is not to be denigrated as a "childish prayer at all, because to say that would be to say Christ's life, death and resurrection is for children, which it is not. It occupies the minds of the world's greatest thinkers, philosophers, and theologians."

Personally, I have never seen the Rosary as a childish prayer (quite the opposite in fact). Nevertheless, I must confess to having had struggles with it. In this I am surely not alone and my biggest struggle in praying the Rosary is fighting distractions. I have addressed that struggle by following the advice given by St Louis-Marie de Montfort, Pope St Paul VI, and Pope St John Paul II of adding a word or two to the name of Jesus in each Hail Mary to remind me which mystery I am supposed to be meditating upon. A practice which brings together both my vocal prayer and mental prayer so that they act in unison with each other.

Another practice which has deepened my experience of praying the Rosary is that of asking for the grace of a specific virtue relating to the mysteries prior to beginning each decade. This is a means by which our meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary can empower us, through God's grace and Our Lady's intercession, to lead virtuous lives modelled on the example set us by Jesus and His Holy Mother in the mysteries of the Rosary, and thus become the saints we are called to be. It brings to fruition the fine words of that liturgical prayer which urges us to meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary so that "we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise."

The Rosary is a wonderfully adaptable and flexible prayer that can just as easily be recited individually as well as collectively in a group setting. I personally find that praying the Rosary with others to be preferable, not least because of the promise of Our Lord that "where two or three are gathered in my name" He is there amongst them (Matthew 18.20). Furthermore, we are social animals and those who follow Christ and His Church are likely to be drawn together in a particularly close kind of fellowship (what St Aelred of Rievaulx calls 'spiritual friendship'). The friendships that I have made through being part of a group that regularly prays the Rosary together are especially strong because they are rooted in Christ who is our ultimate end. Undoubtedly the same can be said of the faithful gathered at Mass, but all too often I find that I am an atomised individual who has no knowledge of the other Mass-goers beyond the fact they go to the same Mass. Small-group gatherings of the faithful, such as a parish Rosary group, make up for that social deficit; such groups help to foster and nourish in real social terms that spiritual fellowship which is implied in the communal reception of the Blessed Sacrament at Mass, which is the source and summit of our spiritual lives.

As if the above were not reason enough to take up this devotion, the Vatican have promulgated a decree which promises a plenary indulgence to all families and betrothed couples who during this year recite the Rosary together (subject to the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Holy Communion, and prayer for the Pope's intentions). Because this year is dedicated to St Joseph, guardian of the Holy Family of Nazareth, it is hoped that through the family Rosary "all Christian families may be inspired to recreate the same atmosphere of intimate communion, love and prayer that was lived by the Holy Family."

Finally, if you pray at least fifteen decades of the Rosary a week then I urge you to join the Rosary Confraternity. The Rosary Confraternity is a spiritual communion of Catholics who pray the traditional fifteen decades of the Rosary during the week and by so doing pray with and for each other. That is the only obligation (and failure to fulfil it does not constitute a sin). There are no dues to pay, no meetings to attend, and fifteen decades a week is by no means onerous. Because of the Confraternity's connection to the Dominicans, Fr Lawrence explained to me that all "members receive graces and riches from the spiritual treasury of the Dominican saints and those merits and graces are directed towards members of that confraternity."

For more information on the Rosary Confraternity see: https://rosaryshrine.co.uk/rosary-shrine/rosary-confraternity/

Whether you choose to join the Confraternity or not, the Rosary is a prayer which has been of great spiritual benefit not only to me but to many others (including countless saints) throughout the ages and this should be encouragement enough to pick up those beads and pray.