Padraig, I hope you decide to continue posting on the mysteries of the Rosary. I don't know anyone who has been taught by the Blessed Virgin to say the Rosary properly - I have terrible trouble with saying it correctly and could do with guidance. Since you know how I think you should help the rest of us who don't, so long as you are comfortable with doing this. I hope you keep going.
The following are two prayers that we as a family offer before we commence the Rosary maybe someone may find them helpful in setting the stage for the recitation of the Holy Rosary. The first prayer was given in prayer about 30 years ago and the second prayer was composed by St Louis Mary De Montford and we paired both together as our introduction to our family Rosary. Dear Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus, Our Queen and our Mother, Given to us as our mother by our Lord Jesus. We come before you sinful and sorrowful and we ask you to hear our prayers, and to take our prayers, burdens and petitions to God where we trust that they will be accepted in your pure hands. Dear Mary we ask you to pray with us and for us and that others will be inspired to participate in the Rosary. Dear Heavenly Father we ask you to hear our prayers in the name of your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Dear Jesus we claim your promise that where two or three are gathered in your name, you are in our midst. Dear Holy Spirit come and fill us and guide us in all our prayers and in all our actions today. We now offer this Rosary, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, in Praise Honour and Thanksgiving to our God. We unite with all the saints in Heaven, with all the just on earth, with all the faithful here present and with all the Holy souls in purgatory. I unite with Thee my Lord Jesus in order to praise worthily Thy Holy mother and to praise Thee in her and by her. I renounce all distraction which may come upon me while saying this Rosary, as I wish to say it with attention and devotion as if it were the last of my life. I offer thee, Oh most Holy Trinity, the creed in which we are about to say, in honour of all the mysteries of our faith. The Our Father and the three Hail Marys, in honour of the unity of Being and the Trinity of Thy persons. We ask of Thee, a lively faith, a firm hope and an ardent charity. Amen I believe in God............
I will get back to them , thanks for the kind words! Actually the Holy Father put in a nutshell recently all that Mary taught me concerning the rosary : http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/santa-marta-34121/ Pope Francis explained that we need to open three doors in order to know Jesus: “The first door is praying to Jesus. You must realize that studying without prayers is no use. We must pray to Jesus to get to know him better. The great theologians did their theology while kneeling. Pray to Jesus! By studying and praying we get a bit closer… But we’ll never know Jesus without praying. Never! Never!” “The second door is celebrating Jesus. Prayer on its own is not enough, we need the joy of celebration. We must celebrate Jesus through his Sacraments, because these give us life, they give us strength, they nourish us, they comfort us, they forge an alliance with us, they give us a mission. Without celebrating the Sacraments, we’ll never get to know Jesus. This is what the Church is all about: celebration.” “The third door is imitating Jesus. Take the Gospel, what did he do, how was his life, what did he tell us, what did he teach us and try to imitate him.” View attachment 1981 “Entering via these three doors, the Pope went on, means entering into the mystery of Jesus and it’s only in this way that we can get to know him and we mustn’t be afraid to do this. During the day, today, we can think about how the door leading to prayer is proceeding in our life: but prayer from the heart is not like that of a parrot! How is prayer of the heart? How is the Christian celebration in my life proceeding? And how is the imitation of Jesus in my life proceeding? How must I imitate him? Do you really not remember! The reason is because the Book of the Gospel is full of dust as it’s never opened! Take the Book of the Gospel, open it and you will discover how to imitate Jesus! Let’s think about how these three doors are positioned in our life and this will be of benefit to everybody.”
Sixth Rose Mary's Psalter Ever since Saint Dominic established the devotion to the Holy Rosary up until the time when Blessed Alan de la Roche reestablished it in 1460 it has always been called the Psalter of Jesus and Mary. This is because it has the same number of Angelic Salutations as there are psalms in the Book of the Psalms of David. Since simple and uneducated people are not able to say the Psalms of David the Rosary is held to be just as fruitful for them as David's Psalter is for others. But the Rosary can be considered to be even more valuable than the latter for three reasons: Firstly, because the Angelic Psalter bears a nobler fruit, that of the Word Incarnate, whereas David's Psalter only prophesies His coming; Secondly, just as the real thing is more important than its prefiguration and the body is more than its shadow, in the same way the Psalter of Our Lady is greater than David's Psalter which did no more than prefigure it. And thirdly, because Our Lady's Psalter (or the Rosary made up of the Our Father and Hail Mary) is the direct work of the Most Blessed Trinity and was not made through a human instrument. Our Lady's Psalter or Rosary is divided up into three parts of five decades each, for the following special reasons: To honor the three Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity; To honor the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ; To imitate the Church Triumphant, to help the members of the Church Militant and the lessen the pains of the Church Suffering; To imitate the three groups into which the Psalms are divided: a) The first being for the purgative life, b) the second for the illuminative life, c) and the third for the unitive life; And, finally, to give us graces in abundance during our lifetime, peace at death, and glory in eternity.
Origin Of The Rosary Saint Dominic This shrine depicts several events in the life of St. Dominic. He is the son of Blessed Joan of Aza. When she was pregnant, his mother had a vision that her unborn child was a dog who would set the world on fire with a torch it carried in its mouth. A dog with a torch in its mouth became a symbol for the order which he founded, the Dominicans. Later in his life, he received from Our Blessed Mother the Rosary to combat the heresies of his time.
I heard some of this recently on the radio from a Marian priest and shared it in the Facebook group I run now as an answer to the a question as to how to properly pray the rosary but also wanted to share it here. Most of this is his insight but as I was thinking further on it the last couple of paragraphs are my own insight that came to me: I understand your question and where the responses come from. There have been mystics and visionaries both approved and pending who have said that the proper way to pray the rosary is to read scripture before each decade and then slowly recite each prayer focusing on both the prayer itself and the mystery. I think it is important to remember why and how the rosary came about. The rosary has been around or at least the meditations since the earliest days of the church even before the gospels were put together in the known bible today. The formal 5 decade rosary today which was really 15 decades and now 20 decades per St. John Paul2 adding of the Luminous Mysteries, was given to St. Dominic in the 1200's. Keep in mind that the world like today was not educated or literate for hundreds if not 1000 years after the rosary was given. Education was for the rich and wealthy. Since many could not read the gospels the rosary was the way to meditate on they mysteries of the faith and in a sense read the scriptures. It was also a way to read all 150 (or 153 depending on the translation you use) Pslams. Each Hail Mary took the place of a Psalm in the old days. The original rosary had 15 decades or 150 Hail Mary's to recite. This reciting of these 150 Hail Mary's in the original full rosary while contemplating the mysteries of faith was the gospel reading, was the faith and was the Psalms of David for the illiterate. I learned recently that the rosary is also not strictly used in Catholic Church but also in some Protestant beliefs as well per a Marian priest I heard in the radio last week. The rosary today in the more modern, educated, literate world is far more than just a way to remember, teach and spread our faith, but the weapon against evil! I don't think either way you mentioned to pray the rosary is right or wrong. It is the fact that you pray it and the intention behind it that counts!! You can even take this a little deeper for now and I am sure much much deeper than even my little knowledge of it. The prayers of the Rosary are right from the Gospels. The Our Father we know from several Gospels and the Hail Mary from Luke. The Hail Mary prayer itself is 3 parts. The first comes at the Annunciation as St. Gabriel addresses Mary. The second part comes at the Visitation as Mary goes to Elizabeth as Elizabeth praises her and her child knowing who her cousin Mary now was and who she carried in her womb. The third part we honor Mary as both Gabriel and Elizabeth did and ask her to pray for us for she is the living witness and testament to the mysteries of the gospels in which we meditate on. It is Mary's sorrow we feel and see through her eyes as she witnessed and felt the greatest during her sons passion in the sorrowful mysteries. It is all Mary's joy and happiness we see and feel through her eyes and experience of living with Jesus in the Joyful Mysteries. It is Mary's experience she witnesses in the Glorious Mysteries and it is her honor and place in heaven we must remember as God gave to her by assuming her into heaven and coronating her as Queen. The rosary that we meditate on is the life and meditations and prayers of Mary herself. It is through Mary that Jesus came into the world to save us and now it is through the rosary that we remember this and ask our wonderful Mother to pray for us and help us to get to heaven. The rosary is not only our prayers to Mary but it is her prayers and her life with her son and Our Lord. We become greater connected to Mary and thus Jesus through the rosary. Our Mother lived the rosary and gave us this wonderful tool and weapon for us to use to help her save the world. Pray it often at least some decades every day for she needs us to and asked us to. "One day through the rosary and scapular I will change the world!" -Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Pray for us O Holy Mother of God that we may be made worthy of the promises of Jesus Christ, your son.
Well said Andy3 I once heard the Rosary described as the; "Gospel on it's Knees" I think 'gospel on it's knees' is so fitting. It is humble and sweet and protective, Just like Our Blessed Mother.
One day the King fell seriously ill and when he was given up for dead he found himself, in a vision, before the judgement seat of Our Lord. Many devils were there accusing him of all the sins he had committed and Our Lord as Sovereign Judge was just about to condemn him to hell when Our Lady appeared to intercede for him. She called for a pair of scales and had his sins placed in one of the balances whereas she put the rosary that he had always worn on the other scale, together with all the Rosaries that had been said because of his example. It was found that the Rosaries weighed more than his sins. Looking at him with great kindness Our Lady said: "As a reward for this little honor that you paid me in wearing my Rosary, I have obtained a great grace for you from my Son. Your life will be spared for a few more years. See that you spend these years wisely, and do penance." When the King regained consciousness he cried out: "Blessed be the Rosary of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, by which I have been delivered from eternal damnation!" After he had recovered his health he spent the rest of his life in spreading devotion to the Holy Rosary and said it faithfully every day.
Well the one great thing I believe Our Lady taught me in saying the rosary was to do so with loving attention. Which may sound easy and simple but perhaps is not. I used never to be overly fond of the rosary and I never realised it was because I was rhyming t of like a grocery list; or as the Holy Father said recently, 'Like a parrot'. Matthew 15:8 "'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Isaiah 29:13 The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. I think I picked this bad habit up from the group rosaries I grew up with here in Ireland. We tend to rattle through the rosary like a commentator at a horse race; at break neck speed. It is always as though there were a contest in who could be the fastest. But by doing this we miss meaning and meaning is everything. But the way Mary taught it is like this, when I say, 'Hail Mary' I am greeting Mary the Mother of God, these are not just words unless I want them to be just words. So when I think of this I do so with meaning and reverence. Slowly , thoughtfully , lovingly. Imagine you were walking along the street and suddenly you saw the Mother of God walking towards you. She greets you, you are awestruck astonished , full of reverent awe and love, now you reply, 'Hail Mary', think of what love and reverence and joy and deep prayer you would say, 'Hail Mary'. Like that....and the same for every other word and phrase you use in prayer. With meaning, with heart, with deepest awareness...and to do this it cannot be rattled off, it must be done slowly and carefully. Not to be slow and deliberate for the sake of being slow. No. Because we are talking to a great Queen we must act like we are talking to a Great Queen, not like we are talking to the cat when we are putting it out for the night.
St. Bernard had a deep devotion to our Blessed Mother and her rosary. I think he prayed the rosary almost constantly. One day, he passed by her statue and she said, "Hail, Bernard!"
Meditating Upon the Mysteries of Our Faith The great St. Bernard, Doctor of the Church, gives us the correct method of praying the Rosary and if adopted, surprising results will follow. He states in his writing on the subject: "While your lips pronounce the words let your mind 'picture' the Mystery-not as an event which took place centuries ago, but as events taking place NOW in your presence. In each mental picture thus formed, see also yourself there in the scene, studying the scene." St. Bernard warns us not to change the mental 'picture' but let it remain unchanged. He states that if the 'picture' is recalled without change, it will become more lifelike. During your course of coming to a deeper understanding of The Rosary, a clearer mental picture of each Mystery will be attained if only one meditation on a mystery is studied each day. Better effects may result, if someone would read aloud each of the meditations on the different mysteries while the others of the family listen. After several weeks, the various members of the family could take turns at reading the meditations so that all may share alike the opportunity to profit from the Scriptural promise: "Faith comes through hearing."
The Rosary Frees Austria from Communist Rule in 1955 For three years, Catholic Austria went under the tyrannical rule of communist Russia after World War II. A Franciscan priest named Father Petrus remembered the story of how Christians in the sixteenth century had defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto through the rosary, despite being greatly outnumbered. Father Petrus launched a rosary crusade and 70,000 people pledged to say the rosary daily for the intention of Austria becoming free from Russian rule. Although Austria was valuable to the Soviets because of its strategic location and rich resources, on May 13, 1955, the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, the atheistic Russian regime, in a completely unprecedented move, signed the agreement to leave Austria. Not one person was killed, and not even one shot was fired. Today, historians and Military strategists still cannot explain how or why the Russians pulled out of Austria. Those devoted to the rosary of Our Holy Mother know exactly the reason. Pray the rosary for world peace!
The Second Joyful Mystery. The Visitation Luke 1:39-56 The Visitation [39] In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, [40] and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. [41] And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit [42] and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! [43] And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? [44] For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. [45] And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." The Magnificat [46] And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, [47] and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, [48] for He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; [49] for He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. [50] And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation. [51] He has shown strength with His arm, He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, [52] He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; [53] He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent empty away. [54] He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, [55] as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever." [56] And Mary remained with her about three months, and returned to her home.
I love the Visitation - such beautiful prayers and expressions of love inspired by the Holy Spirit. And of course they have form the basis of the Hail Mary. Magnificat - my soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my saviour --- so beautiful one could pray this forever! I have reason to rejoice as today is my birthday on the feast of the Visitation but more importantly I got to confession yesterday and walking out felt ten times better than when I went in. What a great sacrament and great source of mercy and healing for us sinners.
To thee, O Virgin mother, never touched by stain of sin, actual or venial, I recommend and confide the purity of my heart. (An Indulgence of One Hundred Days, once a day, to all the faithful who, devoutly and with contrite heart, recite this ejaculation. Pius IX) My queen! my mother! remember I am thine own. Keep me, guard me, as thy property and possession. (An Indulgence of forty days, every time that, when tempted, they shall say, with at least contrite heart and devotion, this ejaculation. Pius IX 1851) The faithful who devoutly offer some prayers in honor of the Nativity, Presentation, Annunciation, Visitation, Expectation, Purification or Assumption of the B.V.M. at any season of the year, with the intention of continuing these prayers for nine days (novea) without interruption, are granted: An Indulgence of 5 years once on each day. Pius IX.
View attachment 1985 "She [Mother Mary] is an echo of God, speaking and repeating only God. If you say "Mary" she says 'God'." "If you put all the love of all the mothers into one heart it still would not equal the love of the Heart of Mary for her children." “Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day be led astray. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with my blood.”
