Our Lady of the Rosary

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Our Lady of the Rosary

October 7, 2022

From the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II on the Rosary [1]

 The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millenium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless saints and encouraged by the magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millenium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which after 2,000 years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to set out into the deep (duc in altum!) 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@ (Jn.14:6), 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 Rosary, reclaimed in its full meaning, goes to the very heart of Christian life; it offers a familiar yet fruitful spiritual and educational opportunity for personal contemplation, the formation of the people of God, and the new evangelization. But the most important reason for strongly encouraging the practice of the Rosary is that it represents a most effective means of fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery that I have proposed as a genuine training in holiness. What is needed is a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer. Inasmuch as contemporary culture, even amid so many indications to the contrary, has witnessed the flowering of a new call for spirituality, due also to the influence of other religions, it is more urgent than ever that our Christian communities should become a genuine schools of prayer.

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, that took root in the soil of the Christian East.

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 (Lk 2:19). The memories of Jesus, impressed on her heart, 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.

[1] Rosarium Virginis Mariae of Pope John Paul II – The Pope Speaks – vol. 48, #2, March, April, 2003

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October 7, 2022
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