How can I pray the Rosary?
For me the Rosary is the prayer of the Incarnation.
It is the prayer for all those who believe that God became man and lived amongst us, becoming a baby born to a seemingly ordinary girl in first century Palestine.
Far from being an activity for old women in black, bent over like ‘old Peg on the Basket Islands’ who mumbles something inaudible while chewing polo-mints at the back of the church; the rosary is a home-movie, a picture album of a loved-one that you flick through leaving your finger prints on the photos as you pass.
Some of those key moments of the life of the God-man, his life, death and resurrection have been identified by secular culture and are visible in greeting cards at Christmas and Easter, but events of loved ones aren’t resigned to a birth, graduation, and death. If you really believe that Jesus Christ is God and became man to show us the path to freedom, happiness, and fulfilment by forgetting ourselves and living for others, then it is worthwhile to really think about his life, how He worked, what He said, how He reached out to those around Him.
I can’t imagine that life in first century Palestine was easy, and the world I live in has every conceivable convenience. Yet I’m constantly busy and easily distracted falling into a myriad of rabbit holes such as online-shopping, Facebook, or Netflix. The rosary grounds me because I consider the reality of Jesus Christ, and I bring with me the concerns big and small of friends and family and leave those concerns with Him. In these times of Lockdown, I can also reflect on the people in my life that I am grateful for – the postman, the bin-man, and my local butcher, those who are prepared to forget themselves for others, for us all.
The rosary itself is comprised of five ‘mysteries’ or events being remembered through a decade of ten vocal prayers - one ‘Our Father’, ‘ten ‘Hail Mary’s’ and one ‘Glory Be’. Each mystery contemplates an event, for example the childhood of Jesus focussing on the joyful events such as the visitation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary in Nazareth, Mary’s subsequent visitation to her own cousin who was also expecting, the birth of Jesus Christ, his presentation in the Temple as prescribed under Jewish law, and all parents’ worst nightmare, the loss of the child Jesus and his ‘finding’ in the temple after an absence of three days. The ‘mysteries’ of the rosary bring us through the teaching of Our Lord in Galilee through the Mysteries of Light, His agony and crucifixion through the Sorrowful Mysteries and His resurrection and ascension through the Glorious Mysteries.
The vocal prayers prayed during the rosary and in particular the ‘Hail Mary’ focuses on the scriptural words of the Angel Gabriel to Mary of Nazareth: “Hail full of Grace; the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and Blessed is the fruit of your womb.” It is very fitting that as we contemplate the events in Jesus’ life and through every ‘Hail Mary’, we pay tribute to the woman who made the incarnation possible by saying ‘yes’.
Through these strange days’ of Covid 19 I am aware of how much my own Mother means to me and how often she thinks of me. Though I haven’t been lucky enough to have children myself, I am truly grateful when I’ve been so busy that I haven’t phoned home and yet still get a text at 11.30pm asking “are you ok today? Love Mum.” The Catholic Church has tapped into this reality that we all live, with a sense of gratitude for being loved, especially when that someone loves each of us uniquely as our Mother.
Mary, our Mother is unique in the gospel because she acts unselfishly seeking only to do what God asks of her without trying to evaluate if she could make a better bargain elsewhere and trying to live her life for others. It turns out that she is no ordinary girl from first century Palestine.