Because we were asked to!
By:
Our Lady Herself
St. Louis de Montfort
St. Alphonsus Ligouri
St. Francis de Sales
St. Padre Pio
Pope Adrian VI
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Paul V
Pope St. Pius V
Pope Pius IX
Pope St. Pius X
Pope Pius XII
Pope John XXIII
Pope John Paul II
...and many, many more
The Rosary is perhaps the most popular non-liturgical prayer in the Catholic faith. It has appealed to people of all stations in the Church, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, religious or laity. It has been recommended by recent Popes as far back as Leo XIII, and by saints including St. Peter Canisius (1521-1597), St. Louis Marie de Montfort (1673-1716), and St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787). Aside from the spiritual benefits, its appeal no doubt lies with its ease of recitation, its soothing repetitiveness, and its intimate connection with Scripture and the events in the life of Christ.
The word "rosary" is derived from the latin rosarium which literally means "of roses" when used as an adjective, i.e. a modifier. If the context is of a location the translation becomes such that you find phrases like a "garden of roses" or "room of roses". When rosarium is referring to an object you can find references to a "garland of roses", "circle of roses" or "crown of roses".
In their writings various saints have taught that each prayer can be thought of as a single rose in a garden or a single rose in a bouquet we give to Mary, our Mother. Or that each rose is a prayer. A set of decades make up our Rosary, and every full rosary is a new crown of roses we give Her.
One saint likened the rosary to a chain drawing mankind up to heaven, or like a sweet cord drawing God and Mary down to us!
The entire message from Mary on May 12, 2004 was devoted to the Rosary. She makes its blesings very clear. It's worth reading and re-reading.
This is only a partial list of the rosary's history... I'm sure that a theologian could cite many more...
Tradition (mainly in the Dominican order) says that in 1208 Mary appeared to St. Dominic (born in 1170, ordained priest in 1194) and told him to "preach my Psalter composed of 150 Angelic Salutations and 15 Our Fathers". He did, until he died in 1222. In 1460 Blessed Alan de la Roche, a Dominican friar, reestablished the devotion of the rosary and called it the Psalter of Jesus and Mary. The term "Psalter" refers to the Book of the Psalms of David in the bible, and there are 150 of them. As such, calling the rosary the Psalter of Jesus and Mary makes sense, as there are the same number of Hail Marys in a full (15 decade) rosary as there are psalms.
In 1569, Pope Pius V (whom was later canonized) officially approved the 15 decade form of the Rosary we have today, starting with the Apostles Creed (a summary of the great mysteries and events of our Catholic Faith). Four years later in 1573 he instituted the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7th (some local liturgical calendars have it on the 6th, some on the 8th). Many rosary/prayer groups consider that feast as a special day... Holy Hour, Mass, and ending with a full fifteen decade rosary.
"After the Divine Office and the Holy Mass, no homage is as agreeable to Jesus and His Divine Mother as the fervent prayer of the Holy Rosary, since the work of salvation began with the Angelic Salutation (Hail Mary) the Salvation of each one of us in particular is attached to this prayer." -- St Dominic
"Say the Rosary every day, to obtain peace for the world." -- Our Lady of Fatima, May 13 1917, June 13 1917 and September 13, 1917
"The Rosary and the Scapular are inseperable" -- Sister Lucia dos Santos (Fatima visionary)
"The Rosary is the prayer of the poor and the rich, of the wise and the ignorant. To uproot this devotion from souls is to deprive them of their daily spiritual bread. The Rosary helps to preserve that flickering flame of faith that has not yet been completely extinguished from many consciences. Even for those souls who pray without meditating, the simple act of taking the beads in hand to pray is already a remembrance of God - of the supernatural." -- Sister Lucia dos Santos
"The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, wheter temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families...that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary." -- Sister Lucia dos Santos
"One day through the Rosary and the Scapular I will save the world." -- Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Dominic
"A powerful means of rendering our courage will undoubtedly be found in the Holy Rosary". -- Pope Leo XIII (who wrote seven Encyclicals on the Rosary in September 1883, Aug 1884, Sep 1887, Sep 1891, Sep 1892, Sep 1893 and Sep 1894)
"The rosary is the scourge of the devil" -- Pope Adrian VI
"The rosary is a treasure of graces" -- Pope Paul V
"We are confident this prayer, so conducive to giving honor to the Blessed Virgin in all places and at all times, will not only continue to spread more and more everywhere because of its simplicity, but also because made more powerful by so close a union among those who pray, it will be most favorably accepted by God." -- Pope Gregory XVI, 1831
"The Rosary is THE WEAPON that will defeat satan" -- Saint Padre Pio the stigmatic priest (the ALL CAPITALS is his emphasis)
"Pray the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war for she alone can help... ...When you say the Rosary, say after each mystery: 'O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need.'" -- Our Lady of Fatima, July 13, 1917 (at that time the first World War was in progress). Some translations have the last phrase as "most in need of thy mercy".
"I am the Lady of the Rosary, I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and ask for pardon for their sins. They must not offend Our Lord any more, for He is already too grievously offended by the sins of men. People must say the Rosary. Let them continue saying it everyday." -- Our Lady of Fatima, October 13, 1917
"If you say the Rosary faithfully until death, I assure you that in spite of the gravity of your sins, you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory. Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in Hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practice black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and save your soul, if and mark well what I say -- if you say the Holy Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon of your sins." -- St. Louis de Montfort
"The rosary is the most powerful weapon to touch the Heart of Jesus, Our Redeemer, who so loves His Mother." -- St. Louis de Montfort
"The Holy Rosary is not just a conglomeration of our Fathers and Hail Marys, but on the contrary it is a Divine summary of the Mysteries of the Life, Passion, Death, and Glory of Jesus and Mary." -- St. Louis de Montfort
"Praying the Rosary is made up of two things: mental prayer and vocal prayer. The mental prayer is done by meditating on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the humbleness and fidelity of His Blessed Mother. The vocal prayer consists in saying one Our Father and ten Hail Marys per decade. The vocal prayer should be accompanied by contemplation of the mysteries." -- St. Louis de Montfort in The Admirable Secret of the Rosary
"A mystery is a sacred thing which is difficult to understand. The works of Our Lord Jesus Christ are all sacred and divine because He is God and man at one and at the same time. The works of the Most Blessed Virgin are very holy because she is the most perfect and the most pure of God's creatures. The works of Our Lord and of His Blessed Mother can be rightly called mysteries because they are so full of wonders and all kinds of perfections and deep and sublime truths which the Holy Spirit reveals to the humble and simple souls who honor these mysteries." -- St. Louis de Montfort in The Secret of the Rosary
You can download the book "The Admirable Secret of the Rosary" by Saint Louis Montfort as a 75kb zip file. It expands to 201kb of plain text."The Hail Mary puts the devil to flight and causes Hell to Tremble with terror." -- Saint Bernard
"The Holy Rosary is to me the most beautiful of all devotions, as it contains all in itself." -- Saint John Neuman, 1860
"The Holy Rosary was given to the Faithful in order that they might have spiritual peace and consolation more easily." -- Pope St Puis V
"Those who say the Rosary daily and wear the Brown Scapular and who do a little more, will go straight to Heaven." -- St. Alphonsus Ligouri
"The Blessed Virgin, through Her Rosary is the Treasure of Grace...that gently leads us to her Son." -- St. Alphonsus Ligouri, in his book Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary"Among all the devotions approved by the Church none has been favored by so many miracles as the devotion of the most Holy Rosary. " -- Pope Pius IX, 1849
"If there were one million families praying the Rosary every day, the entire world would be saved." -- Pope Saint Pius X
"The Rosary is the most beautiful and richest of all prayers to the Mediatri of all Grace; it is the prayer that touches most the heart of the Mother of God. Say it each day." -- Pope Saint Pius X
"There is nothing more excellent, it seems to us, than that numerous voices are uninterruptingly and from namy parts of the world simultaneously lifting supplications to the Blessed Virgin Mary as they meditate on the Christian mysteries, so that the blessings of her maternal goodness may not cease to descend upon the Church." -- Pope Saint Pius X, 1903"There is no surer means of calling down God's blessing upon the family than the daily recitation of the Rosary." -- Pope Pius XII
"We put great confidence in the Holy Rosary for the healing of evils which afflict our times." -- Pope Pius XII
In his encylical Ingruentium Malorum (15 Sep 1951) Pope Pius XII urges us to "fly with greater confidence to the Mother of God. There, the Christian people have always sought chief refuge in the hour of danger, because she has been constituted the cause of salvation for the whole human race."
"The Rosary is a school for learning true Christian perfection." -- Pope John XXIII
"The Rosary is my favorite prayer. A marvelous prayer! Marvelous in its simplicity and in its depth... Against the background of the words "Hail Mary" there pass before the eyes of the soul the main episodes in the life of Jesus Christ. They are composed altogether of the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries, and they put us in living communion with Jesus through, we could say, His Mother's heart. At the same time, our heart can enclose in these decades of the Rosary all the facts that make up the life of the individual, the family, the nation, the Church, and all humankind. They include personal matters and those of our neighbor, and particularly those who are closest to us. Thus in the simple prayer of the Rosary beats the rhythm of human life." -- Pope John Paul II
"No one can live continually in sin and continue to say the Rosary. Either he will give up the sin or he will give up the Rosary" -- Bishop Patrick Boyle
"Those who say the Rosary frequently and fervently will gradually grow in grace and holiness and will enjoy the special protection of Our Lady and the abiding friendship of God." -- Bishop Hugh Boyle
"The greatest method of praying is to pray the Rosary." and in other writings "The best method of prayer is the Holy Rosary if you say it well." -- St. Francis de Sales
"If families give Our Lady fifteen minutes a day by reciting the Rosary, I assure them that their homes will become, by God's grace, peaceful places." -- Father Patrick Peyton (who coined the phrase "The family that prays together, stays together." He returned to God on June 3, 1992, R.I.P. but his group still exists at http://www.FamilyRosary.org. Saint Anthony Messenger magazine did a very informative piece on Father Peyton and his group in June of 1997 and the article is here.)
"The Heart of Mary is the door which leads us directly to Jesus. She is the gate through which we enter His Sacred Heart. Each 'Hail Mary' we pray opens our heart to His love and leads us into a deeper union with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus." -- Mother Teresa of Calcutta (from the book Rosary Meditations: Loving Jesus With the Heart of Mary)
And please read Cardinal Newman's own sermon on the Holy Rosary (hosted by the EWTN web site)
... And if the above isn't enough convincing, how about the promises that Mary Herself made to us ?
The Fifteen Promises Of Mary To Those Who Pray The Rosary
Tradition says that these promises were given to St. Dominic (1170-1221AD) and we find them in the writings of Blessed Alan de la Roche (1428-1475AD) also known as Alanus de Rupe, one of the Dominican Fathers at the monastery at Dinan, in Brittany, France. Alan was an eminent theologian and a famous preacher in that period.
The exact words above vary from book to book depending on the different French to English translations. For example, #1 is in some books as "Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary shall receive signal graces", while #6 appears as "Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune: if he be a sinner, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God. He shall become worthy of eternal life" and #14 is translated as "All who recite the Rosary are my sons, and brothers of my only son, Jesus Christ".
Can we refuse our most loving Mother her request that we daily pray the rosary?
In the book of Matthew, Chapter 6 verse 7, Jesus warned us not to pray vain repetitions, like pagans who multiply empty words, and many non-Catholics have often charged Catholics with violating this divine command, especially in the Rosary.
These accusers do this without thought: if you stop and think about it, there is nothing essentially vain about the repetition of prayers (assuming your prayers are not empty words). It only becomes vain if the internal acts of the mind and heart oppose the external act. Repetition is simply a way of engaging the body in a subconscious habit of prayer while the higher powers of the soul concentrate freely and consciously on the mysteries of salvation. Now, of course, everyone gets distracted at one point or another, so as long as you have the mental discipline to bring yourself back to the prayers God understands your intention to meditate with some discipline. And if you were distracted during a particular Hail Mary, what is preventing you from adding an extra one at the end of the decade to make up for it?
Repetitious prayer is meant to lead to a restful and peaceful reflection on the mysteries in the life of Jesus. The gentle repetition helps us to peacefully enter the silence of our heart where the spirits of Jesus and His mother dwell. So the Rosary is not just a thoughtless mantra, it is a contemplative prayer, a prayer of the heart focused on the Savior and His Mother.
...From another email to the webmaster... this one from a grade school child...
Can you explain why the "Hail Mary" prayer starts out with "Hail" ??? What does "Hail" mean?
My response (suggestions welcome for a future rewrite of this web page) was:
The history of the Hail Mary prayer is not very clear, as the words are taken from several places in Scripture and it is difficult to ascertain when the complete prayer as we know it today was first used.
One source attributes the first use of the first half to a bishop in 7th century, and more commonly in the 11th and 12th centuries, although the first half only was regarded as the 'Hail Mary'. If you do some research you will find that the first part is based on the first chapter of Luke around the 28th verse: "Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with thee." Since Mary was the only one there, Gabriel didn't have to say "Hail, Mary..." - the church added that.
The middle part is also from the first chapter of Luke, around the 42nd verse: "Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb", with the word "Jesus" added by Pope Urban the fourth in the year 1261.
The last part, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death" appeared in the mid-15th century, and seems to be based on a declaration of the Council of Ephesus in 431. It was "cast in concrete", so to speak, by the Council of Trent in 1568 and approved by Pius the Fifth in 1569. Think about it: a prayer composed by a Papal Council for the common man calls Mary holy, it calls her the Mother of God, and asks to pray for us at the two most important times in our lives: NOW and at the hour of our death! Amen!
So you have this prayer, the heart of the Rosary, being "assembled" across over 700 years, by many people. In those days the common greeting wasn't "Hello", "Hi there", or "Yo !", it was "Hail". And the tone of voice and how it was used gave the indication as to if it was with joy, with sadness, or just normal conversation. So when the Angel Gabriel greeted Mary at the event we now call the Annunciation, we can safely assume that it was with the equivalent of "Rejoice, Mary, full of grace...". Try saying the prayer that way, with "Rejoice, Mary, full of grace" instead of "Hail, Mary, full of grace" and see if it doesn't make a little more sense.
... Whenever I Say "Hail Mary"...
Whenever I say "Hail Mary"
The court of heaven rejoices
And the earth is lost in wonderment
And I despise the world
And my heart is brim full
Of the love of God.
When I say "Hail Mary";
All my fears wilt and die
And my passions are quelled.
If I say "Hail Mary";
Devotion grows within me
And sorrow for sin awakens.
When I say "Hail Mary"
Hope is made strong
In my breast
And the dew of consolation
Falls on my soul
More and more
Because I say "Hail Mary".
And my spirit rejoices
And sorrow fades away
When I say
"Hail Mary".
---Blessed Alan de la Roche
Another Fact of the Miracle of the Rosary:
During World War II Hitler loaned a number of scientists to the Japanese military. A small community of eight Jesuit Fathers were missionaries to the Japanese people and to those German scientists. The Jesuits were non-military, but because Germany and Japan were allies during WW II they were permitted to live and minister within Japan during the war. They lived in a rectory next door to the Jesuit Church of Our Lady's Assumption in Hiroshima.
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945 the atomic bomb exploded eight city blocks (about one kilometer) away from from the church. Over 500,000 people in a radius of approximately one and a half kilometers (almost 1 mile) from the center were killed. The church and every other building within 6 kilometers was completely destroyed, but the rectory and the eight Jesuit fathers were unharmed. Nine days later on August 15, the feast of Our Lady's Assumption, all U.S. forces were ordered to cease fire.
Not only did every single one of the eight priests survive with no more than minor injuries, but they all had no radiation sickness, no loss of hearing, or any other visible long term defects or maladies despite being less than one mile from the detonation. Four of the priests were Fathers Hugo Lassalle, Hubert Shiffer, Kleinsorge, and Cieslik. Father Shiffer was 30 when the atomic bomb exploded at Hiroshima and lived another 33 years in good health. He recounted his experiences during the Eucharistic Congress held in Philadelphia (USA) in 1976. He commented then that the other seven were still alive and in good health.
Father Shiffer related how the priests were examined and questioned by more than 200 scientists who were unable to explain how they had survived in the midst of over half a million dead. The priests attributed it to the protection of the Madonna. Father Schiffer declared: "I was in the middle of the atomic explosion and I am still here alive and well. I was not struck down by its destruction." Fr. Schiffer attributes this to devotion to the Blessed Mother, and his daily Fatima Rosary.
Furthermore, Father Shiffer maintained that for several years hundreds of experts and investigators continued to study and investigate the scientific reasons as to why them and the rectory were not affected. He explained that there was just one thing that was different: "in that house the Holy Rosary was recited by us together every day."
Of course the secular scientists were and still are speechless and incredulous at this explanation - and they are sure there is some "real" explanation - but at the same time over fifty years later the scientists are still absolutely bamboozled when it comes to finding a plausible scenario to explain why any, much less all eight missionaries and the rectory building survived when everything around was flattened and dead. Fr. Shiffer replies "we believe that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the rosary daily in that home."
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