The beauty of the Rosary

The rosary is central to Catholic prayer life. Dominican BROTHER DAMAZIO NGOMA explains the benefits of praying the rosary, its mysteries and why the rosary must not be a source of division among Christians.

Several religious congregations worldwide have taken their names after the rosary, many incorporating the rosary as part of their official religious habits. Every day millions of people wear the rosary as part of their ordinary daily routine code of dress, in different colours, sizes, blessed and unblessed.

The terminology "mysteries of the rosary" implies a hidden reality...it exceeds human comprehension.

Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Marialis Cultus (1974) defined the rosary as a gospel prayer. He understood the rosary as an orderly and gradual unfolding of the Gospel message based on the life-story of Jesus Christ. In this sense the rosary reflects the very way in which the Word of God mercifully enters into human affairs and brings about our salvation. This is very biblical in the sense that we see the unveiling of the whole mystery of the Incarnation.

The rosary is holy in that it is a medium through which God unveils the mysteries of his existence in our lives. Whenever we recite the rosary, we are simply living out the mysteries of God’s existence. We are actually witnessing to the Incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension and glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ who is God. This is our Christian belief emanating from our baptism.

The rosary is one of the para-liturgies and falls under the realm of sacramentals. Through it, Christians receive graces and meet God on a personal basis.

The Church promulgated the rosary at the Council of Trent for  Christians to be able to live-out the Christian mysteries on a day to day basis. It is therefore one of the sacramentals that unite Christians with God at a personal level. Through the rosary, our Mother Mary intercedes for us. She therefore plays a vital role in our Christian life so that we can enter into the gracious band of the chosen people of God and attain salvation.

The terminology of the “mysteries of the rosary” implies a hidden reality, a truth that cannot be discovered except through revelation. It exceeds human comprehension.

In the case of the rosary, we are actually looking at how the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus into heaven became phenomenological tools that lead us to attain salvation. The mysteries on the life and death of Jesus Christ are expressed and lived according to the liturgical celebrations which are compiled in accordance to the life of Christ. The mysteries are beyond human understanding hence they require a mature faith in order to be fully meaningful to someone.

When we recite the rosary, do we really know what we are actually doing? Is it an empty Catholic practice or there is something serious about it? This is a question which we still need to re-consider.

The rosary comprises the following mysteries:

The Joyful Mysteries
In these mysteries, the word joyful already indicates something good. Here, the joy comes due to the event of the Incarnation: God becoming man and enters into human history. The good news is that salvation is accessible to humanity through Jesus Christ who came as a saviour of the world.

Through the joyful mysteries, we are actually entering into the ultimate causes and the deepest meaning of Christian joy, as Bl John Paul II put it. As Christians we have enough reasons to be joyful for the so many graces we have received.

The Mysteries of Light
Christ is the light of the world (Jn 8:12). He comes to us in several ways in order to give us light in our Christian life. This light is directly emanating from the day to day public life of Jesus.

As a human, Jesus encountered several experiences and his response and guidance to life issues become the Christians’ basic criteria. He is the yardstick by which we gauge our actions. Therefore he is our light.

Today, the people of God are being challenged by so many contemporary issues that sometimes put them in a situation of dilemma, leaving them uncertain and sometimes they might even question God’s providence and love. These are the moments when we need Jesus as our light to give us guidance and direction.

The Sorrowful Mysteries
We all experience sorrow. We bury people we love, or get divorced, or struggle with physical or mental illness, or live in a situation of poverty, or live a life of despair. We see hatred, crime, abortion. Most of us, especially here in Africa, have grown up in dehumanising situations which bring us sorrow.

It is in this context that the sorrowful mysteries assist us to focus on the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross. This is the only physical expression of God’s love for us all. When we suffer unjustly, God suffers with us and accompanies us, hence our suffering leads us to be in union with our God the Father.

The Glorious Mysteries
In the glorious mysteries we reflect on the superlative events in the life of Jesus Christ. Christ who rose from the dead!

In our lives there are moments when life seem to stop being meaningful and we start despairing. Then, all of a sudden, something happens and life becomes something worth living again.

The glorious mysteries remind us of such shifts in life. There are moments when things seem not to work. This is the right moment to turn to the glorious mysteries. There are religious tools to change our lives. How wonderful it is to regain confidence in life.

Value of the rosary
The Church encourages the faithful to pay attention to the rosary. Obviously, there are plenty of graces we obtain from it.

The most important of all the benefits is the knowledge of God, Jesus Christ, the Church and, above all, the attainment of one’s salvation. There are also plenty of individual benefits that can be achieved.

Most people of other Christian faiths have no problems with the rosary. They too acknowledge the power that comes with the devotion to the rosary. On the other hand, the rosary has also been a cause for division in the Christian family.

How is this possible? The issue is that most other denominations do not acknowledge the mediatorship of Mary, mother of Jesus, in the whole economy of human salvation.

The Jesuit scholar Fr John A Hardon believes that Mary is becoming increasingly honoured in Christian churches of every tradition, but divisions occur when Catholics imprudently push their devotion to the rosary beyond the limit of sound Church doctrine and tradition.

“Let the faithful remember that true devotion consists neither in sterile or transitory affection nor in a certain vain credulity, but proceeds from the true faith by which we are led to know the excellence of the Mother of God and we are moved to a filial love towards our Mother and to the imitation of her virtues,” Fr Hardon wrote in The Catholic Catechism (1977).

Our devotion to the rosary must not alienate our Christian brothers and sisters. Rather it ought to be a tool for our unity as Christians. We must embrace the devotion to the rosary with humility.

The final point is that when we recite the rosary, the ontological nature of our prayers should be meditative in character. Let us give space to God and his son Jesus to talk to us. This is a special moment given to us so that God may find room and come to us.

Let God come and talk to us through the rosary.