On the rosary

I'd not had a good relationship with the rosary until about two years ago. When I was a boy, my parents were very enthusiastic about the family rosary. My father still is. But I had been raised in the catechetical stupor of the last few decades and was never taught about the history of the rosary at church or in school. And it was long and boring, of course, despite my mother calling for it, it was a chore for a child. 

Imagine my surprise when, having acquired an interest in theology and on the way to seminary, I discovered that many priests had the same ideas that I did as a child. The rosary was long, boring, not for them. One priest even told me at length that he didn't consider the rosary to be necessary to his personal spirituality, and that he recited the Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours) regularly anyway. That arguments refers to the old story that the rosary was the preoccupation of the laity at monasteries, who could not follow the Latin of the monks' daily prayer (the Divine Office). But this argument has been drawn out for some time now and ends up saying that the rosary is puerile and made for simple-minded people. The effect of this attitude has been to take the rosary of the hands of the people and give them nothing in return, for the Divine Office is still rather too much for the ordinary person in the pew. Many other Catholic devotions also suffered a similar decline, alongside the rosary. And now people often don't know how to pray. They want to, but they don't know how.

I think we need to pick up our rosaries again. Once, while making my regular confession, the priest confessor asked me to say such-and-such a prayer along with my daily rosary, and took me by surprise. My daily rosary? I'd never been encouraged to take up the rosary by anybody but my parents, certainly not in seminary, except by one or two fellow students over eight years. Then, a little over two years ago, I attended a silent retreat, and a priest put a book in my hand called Champions of the Rosary. I didn't have the time then to read that book, but I fell into the arms of our Lady. Every day since then, except for a day or two (I can remember exceptions), I have said the daily Rosary. And there's nothing puerile about it. It is more effective than the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours). And I'll tell you why. The Divine Office is composed of a generous dose of the Book of Psalms and various readings from Scripture and the writings of holy men and women throughout our history. It is therefore verbose and very tiring. The few members of the laity who busy themselves with it, as was desired by the Second Vatican Council, are to be greatly commended. Many clerics and Religious find it a toil, and it is a duty for us to fulfil.

The rosary is meditative. Fewer words, all of them repetitive allow one who uses it to actually pray. After a while, you are able to move beyond the words to the themes presented, those of the important events in the life of Christ, as seen through the eyes of His mother. As a student at seminary I once met a community of Religious sisters who made rosaries, and they made up the one in the picture above for me. It has all fifteen decades of the rosary on it and is over long, so I rarely use it, but it reminds me to say the whole rosary every day. That daily rosary takes me through all the mysteries of the rosary, usually the joyful mysteries in the afternoon, the sorrowful in the early evening and the glorious later on. I do this for the same reason that I recite the prayers and psalms and readings of the Divine Office. I know that the people of the parish, for whom I am responsible, cannot do this themselves regularly. It takes too long. But I can do it for them and on their behalf.