The Use of the Rosary

HOLY CROSS TRACTS

March - 1918

The Use of the Rosary

By Father S. C. Hughson, OHC

PROBABLY no devotion has done so much to familiar­ize the minds and hearts of men with the Mysteries of the Gospel as the Rosary. When we consider its history and the universality of its use, it is difficult to imagine how without it the deep knowledge of the Faith which characterized the masses of the people in the Middle Ages could have been attained. But it has not been the unlettered only who have found it a means of drawing them into a holier walk of life. For many centuries the saying of the Rosary has been the daily practice of great scholars and divines, and many a Saint whose name is a household word among people of all forms of Christian thought, has attained much of his sanctity by pious meditation over his beads. Its very simpleness is what has attracted great souls to its use, and they have found it to be indeed one of the foolish things of the world which God has chosen to con­found the things which are mighty. A Bishop once gave a Rosary to a gentleman of great ability and shrewdness, saying: "Use this for three months and ask me no reason for it. After that you yourself will give me a good reason."

He complied good-humouredly, but before long it became a matter of more than mere polite compliance. "I understand now," he said. "You wanted to pull down my pride, to make me simple and childlike, and to get me into the habit of spiritual reflection. I shall never leave it off."
But a still better way is to regard the Rosary and its use with humility in the beginning. A priest of New Eng­land training wrote some years ago: "I have never used the Rosary regularly, but I have now begun. When I think of all the great teachers and Saints of the Church who have been so much helped by it in their spiritual life, I cannot but feel that it would be a dangerous presumption to imagine that it will not be a help to me."

The most common objection made to the Rosary is that it finds its origin in the Roman Catholic Church, but this arises from a lack of information regarding its history. Almost any encyclopedia will inform the reader that the use of beads in prayer is far older than Christianity itself, and belongs to almost every race which has any highly developed system of religion. They were probably used by our Anglo-Saxon fore­fathers long before they became common in the Church in other parts of Europe, and seem to have been a part of their most primitive religious exercises. So closely was the notion of prayer connected in their minds with some form of the Rosary that it became imbedded in their very language. It will be a surprise to many, no doubt, to know that our common English word bead is derived from the Saxon word bid, to pray, the derivation arising from the fact that our ancestors made common use of perforated pebbles, or beads, upon which to count their prayers. It will be news even to most Catholics to learn that instead of their Rosaries being spoken of as beads because of a resemblance to the common ornament of the name, the ornament takes its name from the Rosary.

The only other serious objection is that made to the use of the Hail Mary, which of course involves the whole of the great truth of the Communion of Saints. But even this objection is giving way before the steady pressure which the Catholic Faith has for a century been exerting on the mind of the English-speaking race.

Even among the most pronounced Protestants is to be seen a deep yearning for a closer communion with their beloved dead. Fantastic, and sometimes strangely beau­tiful, though erroneous, ideas of the other world come out in their teaching, all of which indicates a groping for the Faith of their forefathers, which though lost through cen­turies, has never ceased to appeal to the love of beauty and truth which burns in the bosom of every creature made in the image of God. We have no heart for controversy with such souls. God the Holy Spirit is leading them, and in His own time will guide into all truth those who are earnest in their search. When the true light breaks upon them they will understand these mysteries, and will rejoice to know of the blessedness of her whom the Holy Ghost thrice declared to be blessed among women.
Controversy rarely helps a soul on the way to truth, and should the objection be broached, the best answer will be to say that we use the Hail Mary simply because we are seeking in our meditations on the great mysteries of the Incarnate Life to join in the meditations of the Holy Mother of our Lord, the greatest of the Saints; and are asking her to pray for us that these truths which we see but dimly here might be revealed to us in glorious fulness in His Kingdom.

That this devotion has found a firm place in the Catholic piety of the American Church is proved by the frequent applications which come from all over the country for advice in regard to it.
Some have never used it, and have concluded that it would be wrong to hold out longer against a devotion which has for centuries had so prominent a place in the spiritual life of the faithful.
Others have difficulty with the meditations, and are seeking direction in order to make them more profitable. For the benefit of all these, we shall try to give in this Tract a simple answer to the question, "How should the Rosary be used?"

The ordinary Chaplet of our Lady as in use among Christians consists of fifty small beads, divided into "de­cades," or sets of ten, with a large bead between each set. The former indicate the Hail Marys and the latter the Our Fathers. Each decade is connected with one of the Mysteries of the life of our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and as there are fifteen of these, the beads must be said three times over to complete the entire Rosary. Only the members of a few religious communities make the complete devotion, how­ever. Devout persons who use the beads say the five decades, varying the Mysteries according to the day or season.

The Mysteries are in three groups of five each, one for every decade, as follows :

I. The Joyful Mysteries: 1. The Annunciation. 2. The Visitation. 3. The Nativity of our Lord. 4. The Purification. 5. The Finding of our Lord in the Temple.

II. The Sorrowful Mysteries: 1. The Agony in the Garden. 2. The Scourging. 3. The Crowning with Thorns. 4. The Bearing of the Cross. 5. The Crucifixion.

III. The Glorious Mysteries: 1. The Resurrection. 2. The Ascension. 3. The Descent of the Holy Ghost. 4. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. 5. The Crown­ing of the Blessed Virgin in Heaven.

The Joyful Mysteries would naturally be used from the beginning of Advent until the Feast of the Purification, which is generally considered to end the season of devotion to our Lord's Childhood; the Sorrowful Mysteries from Septuagesima when the Church sets out on the way to Calvary, until Easter Eve; and the Glorious Mysteries from Easter until the Octave of Corpus Christi. During the rest of the year they may be varied as pious inclination may suggest.

Attached to the Rosary is a Cross, two large and three-small beads, which are used for the preparatory prayers. The Apostles' Creed is usually said on the Cross, the Our Father on the first large bead, three Hail Marys on the small beads, and the Gloria Patri on the second large one. Then follow the Mysteries in their proper order, each being pre­ceded by an Our Father, and followed by a Gloria. All these prayers and invocations are, however, only what has been called "the body of the Rosary." Its soul, that which gives the devotion a spirit and life peculiar to itself, is the accompanying meditation on the life of our Lord and His Blessed Mother. Without this it would be nothing more than the repetition of certain prayers, which, while good in themselves, would never bring home the Mystery to the heart as the serious pondering of each par­ticular truth will do.

The meditations are as a general rule quite informal, and are made while saying the prayers. A simple help is to insert in the Hail Mary after the Holy Name "Jesus," the announcement of the particular Mystery, or of some circumstance connected with it. For example, if one is meditating on the Nativity of our Lord, after the Holy Name might be said: "Who was born of a Virgin for love of me." This could be varied for each Hail Mary, as: "Who was laid in a manger for love of me," "Who "received the worship of the shepherds," etc.

Another method, which has been adopted by many, is to repeat between the Hail Marys a verse of Scripture illus­trative of the Mystery under consideration. Several manuals have been published in our Church giving a suitable text for each of the prayers throughout the entire fifteen Mysteries. Beginners will need to guard themselves in their choice of the subjects for meditation. Those who have a greater devotion to one or another phase of our Lord's Incarnate
Life will, of course, incline to the use of the corresponding group of Mysteries, which is quite proper; but it would be a great mistake to allow a mere natural aptitude for medita­tion on certain of them to lead to the neglect of the others. We should not let the sweet Mysteries of the Holy Childhood hold us back from entering upon those awful solemnities which culminated on Calvary; nor should these again keep us from pressing forward to the contemplation of the glorified Life of our Lord and His Saints, for which all else in His earthly career was but the preparation.


In conclusion, we would say a word about the regularity of its use. We hope that no one will be led by anything we have said to adopt the Rosary unless he has first very earnestly and prayerfully resolved to be regular. One finds occasionally a person who says, "I tried it, but it did me no good"; but further inquiry almost always brings out the fact that the trial was spasmodic, and therefore necessarily unfruitful. If we wish to use the Rosary, let us decide just how often we can say it, and then be very careful to be faithful. It is perhaps best, at first, not to attempt it every day. Twice a week, or on Sundays and festivals, would be a good beginning. Be very regular, letting nothing inter­fere unless charity positively demands that it be omitted.
And above all things else, let us not begin with the idea that we are testing it. The Rosary is not on trial; it was tested and its place as a Christian devotion assigned it many centuries ago by men and women immeasurably holier and wiser than we are. Our thought should be quite the reverse, namely, that we are on trial; that God is giving us a new opportunity to realize the great Mysteries of the Faith with a vividness which perhaps we never knew before, and that to endure the test successfully we have to improve this opportunity with all the powers of intellect, affections, and will.

If we are regular and humble, our case will surely be exceptional if it does not prove a great spiritual blessing.

Prayer for Blessing a Rosary:

Almighty and most merciful God, who, out of the wondrous love wherewith Thou hast loved us, that Thou mightest deliver us from the power of the devil, didst will that Thine only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, should come down upon earth, and at the message of an angel take flesh from the most sacred womb of our Lady, Blessed Mary, and undergo the death of the Cross, and the third day rise gloriously from the dead: We implore Thine abounding mercy that Thou wouldst bless + and sanctify + these Rosaries, dedicated by Thy faithful Church, to the honour and praise of the same Mother of Thy Son, and wouldst so abundantly pour forth upon them the fruit of the Holy Ghost that whosoever shall carry them about their persons, and shall reverently keep them in their houses; and shall devoutly pray unto Thee, contemplating the Divine Mysteries thereupon, may abound in sound and lasting devo­tion, may at all times, and in all places, be delivered from every foe, visible and invisible, in this present world, and may finally at the hour of death, full of all good works, be found worthy to be presented to Thee. Through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with Thee, and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen.