597. October 7, Our Lady of the Rosary

Meditations no. 524 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Our Lady dearly loves the rosary.

Few devotions are as pleasing to our heavenly Mother as the praying of the rosary. She herself has recommended it, and so too have the Roman Pontiffs on many occasions. It truly reaches her heart, as we see from the many graces Christians have received when they have recited this prayer.

In keeping with this traditional Christian practice, our Father from the start taught us that the rosary is the best way to draw close to our Lady as a small child. Do you want to love our Lady? Well then, get to know her. How? By praying her rosary well.

Paul VI teaches that, through the rosary, we try to pay our Lady the honour that is her due in accord with the excellence of her being and mission: a singular, surpassing honour, though we regret never being able to equal the honour God has shown her nor the honour deserved by the divine plan, which also depended on her. We render her an honour that she herself foretold when she prophesied that all generations would call her blessed. As Mary’s favourite prayer, the rosary unfailingly reaches her motherly heart, and wins for us abundant graces. Don’t fail to foster the praying of the rosary, said Paul VI. It is a prayer so pleasing to our Lady. … and enables the faithful to comply effectively and pleasingly with our divine Master’s command, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Mt 7: 7).

Your rosary is like a ladder that you climb together, step by step, drawing closer to our Lady, which means finding Christ. For the most important and beautiful feature of the rosary is that, through Mary, it leads us to Christ. Christ is the goal of this long, repeated invocation to Mary. We speak to Mary in order to reach Christ. She is our Lord’s mother and brought him into the world. And she brings us to him if we are devoted to her?

How pleasing is the rosary to our Lady! Pope Pius XII tells us that according to the etymology of the word, it signifies a crown of roses, which represents a joyful offering of love. It is the best form of meditated prayer, a mystical crown in which the angelic salutation, the Our Father, and the doxology to the Most Holy Trinity are intertwined with meditation on the greatest mysteries of our faith. Through many scenes, it places before our eyes the drama of our Lord’s incarnation and the redemption.

Vocal prayer and meditation on the mysteries make up the elements of the rosary. This kind of prayer requires a particular and explicit attention, since it not only involves an elevation of our soul to God but also reflection upon the realities contemplated, so as to draw out consequences for our life and nourishment for our piety.

Moved by love, we always repeat the same things in the rosary.

In the rosary we practice vocal prayer. What prayers could be found that would be more fitting and divine? The first is the prayer our divine Redeemer himself pronounced when his disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” It shows us the way to render God glory and addresses all the needs of our body and soul. How could the eternal Father refuse to come to our aid when we employ the very words of his Son? We can ask for whatever we want: for an apostolic work, for a friend, for a personal need. And while we recite the Our Father and the Hail Mary with our lips, we can join our heart to the intentions of the Father.

Pius XI continues: The second prayer is the angelic salutation, which begins with the eulogies of the archangel Gabriel and of St Elizabeth, and which ends with that pious supplication in which we beg our Lady’s help now and at the hour of our death.

Our love for our Mother leads us to pray each Hail Mary attentively, eager to render her honour. Our Father urges us to think about what you are saying, who is saying it, and to Whom. Because talking fast, without pausing for reflection, is only noise-the clatter of tin cans.

Along with St Teresa I will tell you that however much you move your lips, I do not call it prayer.

Then vocal prayer will never become a routine repetition of the same words. Indeed, they wander from the path of truth who consider this devotion merely a boring formula repeated with monotonous intonation… Piety, like love, never tires of breathing forth the same words, since the fire of charity instils into them ever-new meaning. Though it is true that we always say the same things in the rosary, don’t people in love always say the same things to each other… ? Might it not be that you find the rosary monotonous because, instead of pronouncing words like a man, you mumble noises while your mind is very far from God? Moreover, listen: before each decade we are told the mystery to be ‘contemplated.’ Have you ever contemplated these mysteries?

We contemplate our Lord’s life and that of his holy Mother in the mysteries of the rosary.

You should realize, my sons and daughters, that in Opus Dei we practise few acts of piety together and have few vocal prayers prescribed for all. This is so because we avoid anonymity like the plague and want to deal with God directly, face to face, without fear. Such prayer is not expressed in many words. It is the conversation of a son, a brother, a friend.

It is prayer that is frequently expressed in a glance. We look at him and know that he is looking at us. At other times we will consider God’s greatness and our littleness. Still other times it will mean telling him, in detail, things that he knows so well, things which may and even ought to overwhelm us, things that are for his glory and not for our interest, since he is more concerned about them than we are.

Our contemplation of the mysteries of the rosary should also be something very personal. Therefore our Father only set some general guidelines for us: It’s a matter of saying ten aspirations, one for each mystery, preferably five in the morning and Jive in the afternoon. A brief consideration of each mystery is enough. This will give rise to some internal words in our heart: some words from Scripture, an aspiration we know, or anything else that comes to our mind and heart in that moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s always the same. What’s important is that we pray briefly each day about the mysteries of the rosary.

Contemplation of the mysteries is what gives life to the rosary. It enables each of us. using the same words, to express our own intimate feelings. The holy rosary is like a handshake, a greeting. The strength of the handshake depends upon the affection one has for the other person. It’s something personal, said our Father. Though the external gesture is always the same, the meaning differs. In the same words, each tells our Lady his most intimate thoughts and his personal, child-like affection.

The rosary is a God-given opportunity to grow in our contemplative life in the middle of the world. At the same time it is another sign of the spirit of freedom that pervades the entire life of the Work. Each of us can decide how he wants to live this norm of piety. The important thing is to contemplate the events in the life of our Lord and his Mother. John XXIII wrote: In contemplating them, our mind and our affections enter into intimate communion with the life and teaching of Jesus, Son of God and son of Mary, who lived on earth in order to redeem, instruct and sanctify. We accompany him in the silence of his hidden life, made up of prayer and work, in the sufferings of his blessed Passion, in the triumph of his Resurrection, and in the glory of heaven where he is now seated at the right hand of the Father, ever assisting the Church he founded and vivifying her through the Spirit.

The rosary is a brief but light-filled contemplation of the life of our Lord and our Lady, a contemplation that is always very personal. We shall hear their family conversation. We shall see the Messiah grow up. We shall admire his thirty years of hidden life. We shall be present at his Passion and Death. We shall be amazed at the glory of his Resurrection. In a word: carried away by Love (the only real love is Love), we shall contemplate each and every moment of the life of Christ.