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Rosary Resources
Contents . . .
| "This devotion, so great and so confident, to the august Queen of Heaven, has never shone forth with such brilliancy as when the militant Church of God has seemed to be endangered by the violence of heresy spread abroad, or by an intolerable moral corruption, or by the attacks of powerful enemies." |
| Supremi Apostolatus Officio Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII On Devotion of the Rosary September 1, 1883 |
| "May you be sustained by Mary, the Protector of families. Turn to her as often as you can. Say the Rosary." |
| Pope John Paul II During a Pastoral Visit to Poland June 7, 1997 |
Pope Announces 5 New Mysteries of Rosary, Year of the Rosary
VATICAN CITY, OCT 16, 2002 (VIS) - During today's weekly general audience held in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul signed an apostolic letter dedicated to the Rosary, announced that he had added five new mysteries to this eight-century old prayer and said that October 2002 to October 2003 would be the Year of the Rosary. Today also marked the 24th anniversary of the election of Pope John Paul to the papacy.
Tradition has it that St. Dominic spread the practice of praying the Rosary as a devotion to Mary in the 13th century. The image of Our Lady of the Rosary from the shrine of the same name in Pompeii was brought to Rome for today's audience by 1,500 pilgrims from this Italian town near Naples.
At the start of his catechesis today, the Holy Father repeated words he spoke last August during a trip to his native Poland: "Most holy Mother, ... obtain for me strength of body and spirit so that I may fulfill to the end the mission entrusted to me by the Risen One. To you I give the fruits of my life and my ministry; to you I entrust the destiny of the Church; ... In you I trust. ... 'Totus tuus, Maria! Totus tuus!' Amen."
"Very shortly," announced the Pope, "I will sign the Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (The Rosary of the Virgin Mary). In addition, together with this document, dedicated to the prayer of the Rosary, I am proclaiming the year that goes from October 2002 to October 2003 the Year of the Rosary."
John Paul II then asked: "For the demanding, but extraordinarily rich task of contemplating the face of Christ together with Mary, is there a better instrument than the prayer of the Rosary? ... Repeating the invocation 'Ave Maria', we can more deeply reflect on the essential events of the mission of the Son of God on earth, which have been transmitted to us by the Gospel and Tradition. In order for this synthesis of the Gospel to be more complete and to offer greater inspiration, in the Apostolic Letter 'Rosarium Virginis Mariae', I proposed adding five more mysteries to those currently contemplated in the Rosary, and I called them 'the mysteries of light'."
These mysteries, he underscored, focus on Jesus' public life:
"Mary, Queen of the Rosary," the Holy Father concluded his catechesis, "whom we see here in the image venerated in Pompeii, lead the children of the Church to the fullness of union with Christ in His glory!"
The Pope them summarized his catechesis and announcements in French, English, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and greeted the numerous pilgrims present in Dutch, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovakian, Romanian, Italian and Polish.
The Prayers of the Rosary
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THE PRAYERS OF THE ROSARY The complete Rosary is a form of prayer in honor of Our Lady, consisting of fifteen decades, each composed of one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and one Gloria. Our Lady of Fatima said ".. . say five decades of the Rosary every day..." A third of the Rosary, or a chaplet of five decades, is our usual understanding of the term Rosary. It is customary to begin the Rosary with the following introductory prayers: Sign of the Cross In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Apostles Creed I believe in God the Father almighty. Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and life everlasting. Amen. Our Father Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen Hail Mary Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary. Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Glory Be Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Fatima Prayer O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy. The Rosary proper is the five decades — each decade consisting of one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Gloria. While reciting the prayers of each decade, you think about some truth (mystery) of the redemption, as it applies to you. Before beginning each decade then, you recall or name the proper mystery for meditation. The mysteries are divided into three groups: Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious. There are five of each as follows:
Joyful
1st -- The Annunciation, of the Angel Gabriel to Mary
Sorrowful
1st -- Christ's Agony in the Garden
Glorious
1st -- The Resurrection of Christ |
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How to Say the Rosary
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HOW TO SAY THE ROSARY
Hail Holy Queen Hail Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears! Turn then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us; and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
V. Pray for us, Holy Mother of God. Let us pray. O God, whose only-begotten Son, by his Life, Death and Resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech you, that we who meditate on these mysteries of the most holy Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, may both imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen |
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Knights of Columbus Rosary Program
The Knights of Columbus is consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Order fosters devotion to Our Lady and, in particular, encourages its members and their families to pray the rosary as often as possible.
Every new member of the Knights of Columbus receives a rosary. Each month through this program thousands of rosaries, which have been blessed by the Order's supreme chaplain, Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, New York, are distributed. In addition, the Supreme Council office offers rosary prayer cards, audio cassettes featuring the praying of the rosary and booklets on this devotion.
The Rosary: Its History and Development
Legend has it that the Blessed Virgin gave the rosary to St. Dominic (1170-1221), the founder of the Dominican order. Charming legend, not so charming history. The story about St. Dominic serves this purpose: It communicates the truths that the Dominicans have been great promoters of the rosary down through history, and that the rosary is meant to nourish an authentic spirituality; it's not just a pious doo-dad.
The idea of using a string of beads to facilitate prayer and meditation is far from exclusive to Catholicism. Buddhists and Hindus use beads for prayer purposes. Indeed. David Burton Bryan, Ph.D,. explained in his book, A Western Way of Meditation: The Rosary Revisited: "Rosary meditation is really a mix of several ancient techniques...all of which have pre-Christian, even prehistoric antecedents."
The rosary, Bryan says. is rooted in the ancient Near East (where the Bible took shape), particularly in meditative traditions known as baqqesh (pronounced "bak-kaysh"). This term includes all the ideas we would make specific with words such as seek, search, await, expect, watch, hope, and petition.
Baqqesh, Bryan wrote, is what Jesus meant by "knocking on the door" (Lk 11:9).
The rosary as we know it today took several centuries to develop, and its route was nothing if not circuitous. The ultimate source of the rosary as a prayer form is the Book of Psalms in the Bible, wrote Dominican Father Frederick M. Jelly, in Madonna: In the Catholic Tradition The psalms have for centuries been at the heart of the Church's daily recitation of the Divine Office. The practice of praying an Our Father instead of a psalm caught on in the early medieval period, and in this practice the rosary began. "In order to keep count of the prayers," Father Jelly writes, "strings of beads were used, and these would gradually become our rosary beads." Toward the end of the 12th century, the first half of the Hail Mary, as we know it, began to take on an importance equal to that of the Our Father and the Creed. These were prayers that all Christians should know.
Soon, to each of the 50 Our Fathers people began to add a short phrase about Jesus and Mary Then, they substituted brief lives of Jesus and Mary that summarized the Gospel from the annunciation to the resurrection of Jesus and the assumption of Mary.
According to Father Jelly, in the early 15th century a Carthusian monk, Dominic of Prussia, helped to popularize this devotion by linking 50 Hail Marys with 50 phrases about Jesus and Mary "This is the origin of the word rosary, since the series of 50 points of meditation was called a rosarium (rose garden)." The rose, a symbol of joy, referred to Mary, and "rosary" came to refer to the recitation of 50 Hail Marys.
About the same time, another Carthusian, Henry Kalkar, contributed further to the development of the rosary by organizing the Hail Marys into groups of 10 (decades), with an Our Father before each.
By 1480, rosaries of 50 mysteries had been reduced to 15 mysteries, one for each decade. "In 1483," Father Jelly said, "Our Dear Lady's Psalter, a rosary book by a Dominican, makes mention of 15 mysteries, all of which are the same as we have today except the final two glorious mysteries." The anonymous Dominican author combined the assumption and coronation of Mary into one mystery and named the Last Judgment as the final glorious mystery.
In 1521, Alberto de Costello, another Dominican, was the first to use the term "mystery" to refer to the meditations for each decade of the rosary, and he attached a mystery to each of the 15 Our Fathers, keeping the 150 mysteries as sub-mysteries for each Hail Mary.
During the 16th century, the 15-decade rosary became quite popular, and in 1470 still another Dominican, Blessed Alan de la Roche, founded the Confraternity of the Psalter of Jesus and Mary, which contributed enormously to the rosary's popularity.
Finally, in 1569, Pope St. Pius V published a papal bull that is often called the magna carta of the rosary, Consueverent Romani Pontifices. In doing this, Pope St. Pius V established a prayer form that had developed over several centuries. "He made," Father Jelly wrote, "a lasting contribution to the real meaning of the devotion by requiring meditation on the mysteries for gaining the rosary indulgences."
The most significant event in the modern history of the rosary came in 1974 with the publication of the apostolic letter by Pope Paul VI. "Devotion to the Blessed Virgin." In his letter, the pope reminded the Church that the rosary is a "prayer with a clearly Christological orientation."
From Columbia, May 1992
Modern Papal Documents on the Rosary
Pope John Paul II
Pope Paul VI
Pope John XXIII
Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XI
Pope Leo XIII