THE ROSARY

Mark Biolo

How did the rosary come into being??

The word rosary comes from the Latin rosarium which means "garland of roses", the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary ("Mystical Rose"). The rosary as we now know it hails from the High Middle Ages where it came into being as a substitute for the Divine Office on the part of those devout lay persons who did not know how to read.

The Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours as it is more commonly known today, remains the official daily liturgical prayer by which the Catholic Church sanctifies the hours of the day. It is required prayer for clergy and religious but is somewhat abbreviated compared to the prayer services of the Middle Ages. When monastic life became popular in the 5^th century, monks assembled 7 times each day for prayer services consisting of Scripture readings, singing of psalms and hymns, and prayers. During the course of several assemblies monks would recite all 150 psalms on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, known as the conversi should have some form of prayer of their own. They were distinct from the choir monks and a chief distinction was that they were illiterate. Since they couldn’t read the psalms they could not recite them with the monks. They needed an easily remembered prayer.

The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, and depending on circumstances, it was said either 50 or 100 times. These conversi would use beads to keep count and the beads were known then as Pater Nosters ("Our Fathers").

(As an aside, in England there arose a craftsmen’s guild of some importance, the members of which made these beads. In London you can still find a street named Pater Noster Row, which preserves the memory of the area where these craftsmen worked.)

With the growth in popularity of Marian devotion, the rosaries that were originally used to count Our Fathers came to be used, in the 12^th century, to count the more simple Hail Marys. Ten Hail Marys are spaced with meditations on mysteries related to Jesus and Mary. Each decade or cycle of ten Hail Marys is introduced with an Our Father and ended with a Glory Be.

The meditations are the key! When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary, they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade. If they merely recite the prayers, whether vocally or silently, they’re missing the essence of the rosary. It is not just a recitation of memorized prayers, but a meditation on the grace of God. The prayers of the rosary become a "mantra", leading one into contemplation. It is the meditation on the mysteries that gives the rosary its staying power. These mysteries were, until recently, divided into three groups of five each: The Joyful Mysteries (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation in the Temple, and the Finding of the Child in the Temple); the Sorrowful Mysteries (Agony in the Garden, Scourging, Crowning With Thorns, Carrying of the Cross, and Crucifixion); and the Glorious Mysteries (Resurrection, Ascension, Decent of the Holy Spirit, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and Coronation of Mary). In October of 2002, to mark the beginning of The Year of the Rosary, Pope John Paul II promulgated his Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, which added the five Luminous Mysteries ( Baptism in the Jordan, Miracle at the Cana Wedding, Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, the Transfiguration, and Institution of the Eucharist).

St. Dominic, founder of The Order of Preachers (Dominicans), is often associated with the rosary as he was instrumental in generating the popularity of this devotion through his preaching.

Today only one third of the rosary, five decades, is usually prayed at any one time. The five-decade rosary is sometimes called a "chaplet", coming from the French word meaning wreath or crown, and refers to the set of beads strung together for counting the prayers.

Down through the ages this prayer, so apparently simple and disarming, has become the focal point of a whole series of values that are symbols, not only of Marian devotion but of Catholicism itself. The rosary is a prayer loved by rich and poor alike, the unlettered as well as the highly educated. It has inspired poets, saints, and martyrs. Many have given their lives for Christ clutching the beads of the rosary in their hands. The rosary is a beautiful prayer! To paraphrase an old television commercial, "Try it, you’ll like it!"