Vigils Reading – Our Lady of the Rosary
THE PRAYER OF MARY
From the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II on the rosary
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The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second
millenium under the guidance of the Spirit of God… still remains, at the dawn of
this third millenium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a
harvest of holiness. It…has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels
drawn by the Spirit of God to set out into the deep…in order once more to
proclaim, and even to cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and
Savior, the way, and the truth and the life, the goal of human history and the
point on which the desires of history and civilization turn.
The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a
Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the
Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium. It is
an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the
redemptive Incarnation that began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the
Christian people sit at the school of Mary and are led to contemplate the beauty
of the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary
the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the
mother of the Redeemer…
The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary. In a
unique way, the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ
was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance that points to an even
greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted themselves to the
contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart
already turned to Him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the
power of the Holy Spirit.
Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring His every word: She
kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. The memories of Jesus…were
always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her
Son’s side. In a way those memories were to be the rosary that she recited
uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life.
Even now, amid the joyful songs of the heavenly Jerusalem, the reasons
for her thanksgiving and praise remain unchanged. They inspire her maternal
concern for the pilgrim Church, in which she continues to relate her personal
account of the Gospel. Mary constantly sets before the faithful the mysteries of
her Son, with the desire that the contemplation of those mysteries will release
all their saving power. In the recitation of the Rosary, the Christian community
enters into contact with the memories and the contemplative gaze of Mary.