The Virgin Mary and The Rosary
In 1569, the papal bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices established the devotion to the rosary in the Catholic Church. The Christian victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 was attributed to the praying of the rosary by masses of Europeans based on the request of Pope Pius V and eventually resulted in a feast day for Our Lady of the Rosary (originally Our Lady of Victory). In 2002, Pope John Paul II introduced the Luminous Mysteries – based on a compilation by George Preca, the first Maltese saint – as an option in an apostolic letter on the rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae.
The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn”.
The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sit at the school of Mary and are led to contemplate the beauty of the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary, the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carney, James L. Mystery Stories: A Journey Through the Rosary. Madison, WI: Crown of Mary Publishing 2000.
Groeschel, Fr. Benedict. The Rosary: Chain of Hope. San Francisco: CA Ignatius Press 2003.
Harty, Gabriel. The Riches of the Rosary. Dublin, Ireland: Veritas Publications 1997.
Harty, Gabriel. Rediscovering the Rosay. Dublin, Ireland: Veritas Publications 1983.
Johnson, Kevin Orland. Rosary Mysteries, Meditations, and the Telling of the Bead. Dallas, TX: Pangaevs Press 2007.
Llewelyn, Robert. The Doorway to Silence: The Contemplative use of the Rosary. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press 1986.
Pope Paul VI, Pope John XXIII, Pope Leo XIII. 17 Papal Documents on the Rosary. Boston, MA: Daughters of St. Paul 1980.
Rees, Ruth. Rosary in Space and Time. Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications 2004.
Vereb, Jerome M. Pope John Paul II and the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. Totowa, NJ: Catholic Book Publishing Co. 2003.