Homily for Rosary
This coming Tuesday will be the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and this Sunday is celebrated in our Dominican churches as “Rosary Sunday,” since our Order was entrusted with promoting the Rosary as a Christian way of prayer from very early times. So today, I shall dispense with the readings appointed for this Sunday to speak to you instead about the Rosary.
It is a way of Christian prayer. This little string of beads is what we call a “sacramental,” which means a holy tool, to be used by Christians as an instrument of prayer. You see, we Catholics pray not only with our minds and hearts but with our bodies and their senses too. We stand or kneel to pray; we bow and genuflect; we make the sign of the Cross; we pray before pictures and statues; we wear vestments, light candles, burn incense, and make music; in the principal sacraments we are washed, anointed with oil, and fed. All the senses of the body are caught up in the raising of our hearts and minds to God—and that is as it should be, since God created us with bodies.
The Rosary involves the most intimate and personal of all our senses, that is the sense of touch: we hold the rosary; our fingers move along the fifty beads. On the beads, we repeat the most familiar of all Christian prayers—the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. We can pray the Rosary alone or with others; in churches or in cars; on sidewalks or in subways; sitting at home or lying down. The rosary is eminently portable. In our pockets or our handbags, it reminds us that our God is always with us. It can help in times of trouble.
I have an amusing example of that. A brave and strong young man I know one night intervened to break up a nasty fight that had started outside a bar that he was passing on the sidewalk of a run-down neighborhood. He was successful, but the police arrived and they arrested him along with the drunken hoodlums, despite his protestations that he was not part of the problem, but trying to be part of the solution. Then, as he was being booked and emptying his pockets, instead of a weapon the police found this young man’s rosary, on the strength of which they believed him and he was released.
Well, obviously that’s not the reason for carrying a rosary. The reason is to pray with it. Personal prayer, in the Catholic tradition, is threefold: it is vocal (using words); meditative (using thoughts); and contemplative (resting in God).
The familiar vocal prayers of the rosary are meant to instill a rhythmic beat to the activity of prayer, which is really not a matter of the lips or voice, but of the mind and heart. Repeating the sacred words, while moving fingers along the beads, has the effect of steadying and balancing the mind, to help it focus on the mysteries that correspond to each successive decade. These mysteries—the sorrowful, the joyful and the glorious (“5 for sorrow, 10 for joy,” in the phrase of an excellent book about the rosary)—are to be meditated on. They are to be food for mind and heart.
The mysteries are, as it were, mental snapshots of the Word of God: they show God speaking to us through his Son, as he was seen through the most pure, most faithful and attentive eyes of Mary. Guided by her view of him, we follow Jesus through the scenes that brought her joy, or sorrow, or ecstatic bliss; with her mind, we ponder the mighty works of God our Savior; and with her heart, we rest in his love.
Of course, our minds and hearts are very prone to wandering. The repetitive rhythm of the vocal prayers does help somewhat to steady them, but to really focus mind and heart upon the mysteries is often very difficult.
I use a method that was taught by a great apostle of the rosary, St. Louis Grignon de Montfort. He suggested that at each Hail Mary, we stop with the words, blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus, and at the Name of Jesus add a phrase that focuses one aspect of the mystery. For example, in the first joyful mystery, the Annunciation, one might say, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus who received his human life from you. Or in the last glorious mystery, the Coronation of the Virgin, one might say, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus who made you our Advocate in Heaven.
This method has brought me some success in focusing my mind, so that my rosary becomes a way of meditation. But something more is needed for the rosary to be a way of contemplation, leaving words and thoughts behind to bring our hearts to rest in God. For that to happen, God himself, the Holy Spirit, has to take us from our vocal prayers and thoughts, and lift us up beyond ourselves. That’s not something we can do, but we can dispose ourselves to let God do it for us, through the rosary.
The end of prayer is simply for our heart to rest in God and his love. From that hidden place, beyond ourselves, comes all the energy we need to live a life of faith, and hope, and charity—a holy life. Many, many of the saints have used the rosary, this simple, tactile sacramental, to let Mary lead them to a point from which the Lord could take them up to rest in him, and in his love; so why not you and me as well?
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