The Rosary

[Dusty Fro]

I've read a little bit about praying the rosary, but I still have questions:

What are the prayers of the rosary? Are there different ways to pray it for different situations? What is its purpose? What are the mysteries? Why so much hailing of Mary? Do Catholics ever have trouble remembering it all?

[cmotherofpirl]

Welcome to phatmass.

THe rosary is a scriptural prayer to God, focusing on parts of the Gospel, thru the events in Mary and Jesus life.

We say the rosary for various reasons. Phatmassers are saying it daily during Lent for various intentions. Some people have made lifelong vows to say it everyday of their lives. I say the online virtualrosary which is linked to prayer requests from all over the world.

I sometimes lose count of the beads when i am meditating on the sorrowful mysteries but I am sure God dioesn't mind because I am thinking of Him.

Here is a post on the history beautifully written on the rosary by one of our members Adeodatus:

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?a...posts&hl=&st=25

Here is a link to saying the Rosary.

http://www.udayton.edu/mary/questions/faq/faq07.html

Here is the online program I use: virtualrosary.org

I shows the beads on the screen and lists the prayers, posts a scripture verse to meditiate on, and has a prayer request from somewhere in the world.

It even plays Ave Maria in the background.

[Dusty Fro]

The link to the post doesn't seem to be working...

[the_rev]

It's a great prayer, pray it once, and you will want to conitnue to pray it forever. If you ever get the opportunity, pray it with a group, more powerful

Prayers go up, blessings come down!

[Dusty Fro]

But I'm not Catholic and I don't understand what it means. I'm not going to pray something if I don't know what it means, that would just be an empty prayer. People tell me it's not just an empty recitation, so I really want to understand.

[the_rev]

O.K. Your not catholic... let me explain it then!!!!!!

The rosary has 4 mysteries

The Joyful, these reflect on Christs birth, the annunciation, the viistiation to mary from elizabeth, the birth of christ, the the presentation of christ in the temple, and the finding of Jesus in the Temple.

Those mysteries of the rosary are meant to reflect on Christ's childhood.

The second the Sorrowful which contains the Agony, the scouraging, the crowing of throns, the carrying of the cross, and the crucifixion

these help us to reflect on how much Love Jesus had for us.

Then the glorious, which are the resurrection, the ascencion, the decent of the holy spirit (Pentecost), the Assumption of Mary, (In one of the prophetic books of the bible it states, Enoch was raised into heaven in his full body, and God will do the same likewise with his mother.) and finally the Cornation of Mary as the queen of heaven and earth. (Psalm 35, the queen sits at your right hand arrayed in Gold)

These help us reflect on what happened after the crucifixion, how we will live on after death, and one day join with Mary and Jesus, and to truly understand the great mystery set forth before us.

Then the lumnious, but I don't know those well so I'm not gonna explain them.



Now the prayers of the rosary, you first state your beliefs, the apostle creed or the Nicene Creed which was created at the council of Nicenia

Then the our father which is from scripture.

the haily mary also comes from scripture, the Angel Gabriel first prayed Haily Mary, and the rest was the greeting from Elizabeth. And the council of Ephesis stated Holy mary the mother of God, made it known as Mary's divinity. And then pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, just asking her to pray for us, since she is in heaven, and were down here!

And the Glory be just says Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end amen.

Just saying we will praise God forever


Finally O my jesus forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell lead all souls to heaven especially those in most need of thine mercy.

Why not ask Jesus for mercy!

It is repetition, but repetiion is good!!!!!!

Pray the rosary, don't say it, pray it!

[Archangel]

Here are some instructions: [url="http://www.newadvent.org/faq/rosary.pdf"]http://www.newadvent.org/faq/rosary.pdf[/url]

[Brother Adam]

Dusty Fro,

Welcome to Phatmass. I'm not Catholic either- I'm Baptist. I've been studing Catholicism for over a year now and have made alot of friends here. It's a great place to be and to study.

I found a really awesome website called Catholic Answers at www.catholic.com which has helped answer a ton of my questions. Here is what they said on the Rosary:


The Rosary


The word rosary comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary. If you were to ask what object is most emblematic of Catholics, people would probably say, "The rosary, of course." We’re familiar with the images: the silently moving lips of the old woman fingering her beads; the oversized rosary hanging from the waist of the wimpled nun; more recently, the merely decorative rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.

After Vatican II the rosary fell into relative disuse. The same is true for Marian devotions as a whole. But in recent years the rosary has made a comeback, and not just among Catholics. Many Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the Bible.

The rosary is a devotion in honor of the Virgin Mary. It consists of a set number of specific prayers. First are the introductory prayers: one Apostles’ Creed (Credo), one Our Father (the Pater Noster or the Lord’s Prayer), three Hail Mary’s (Ave’s), one Glory Be (Gloria Patri).


The Apostles’ Creed


The Apostles’ Creed is so called not because it was composed by the apostles themselves, but because it expresses their teachings. The original form of the creed came into use around A.D. 125, and the present form dates from the 400s. It reads this way:

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."

Traditional Protestants are able to recite the Apostles’ Creed without qualms, meaning every line of it, though to some lines they must give meanings different from those given by Catholics, who composed the creed. For instance, we refer to "the holy Catholic Church," meaning a particular, identifiable Church on earth. Protestants typically re-interpret this to refer to an "invisible church" consisting of all "true believers" in Jesus.

Protestants, when they say the prayer, refer to the (lower-cased) "holy catholic church," using "catholic" merely in the sense of "universal," not implying any connection with the (upper-case) Catholic Church, which is based in Rome. (This is despite the fact that the term "Catholic" was already used to refer to a particular, visible Church by the second century and had already lost its broader meaning of "universal").

Despite these differences Protestants embrace the Apostles’ Creed without reluctance, seeing it as embodying basic Christian truths as they understand them.


The Lord’s Prayer


The next prayer in the rosary—Our Father or the Pater Noster (from its opening words in Latin), also known as the Lord’s Prayer—is even more acceptable to Protestants because Jesus himself taught it to his disciples.

It is given in the Bible in two slightly different versions (Matt. 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4). The one given in Matthew is the one we say. (We won’t reproduce it here. All Christians should have it memorized.)


The Hail Mary


The next prayer in the rosary, and the prayer which is really at the center of the devotion, is the Hail Mary. Since the Hail Mary is a prayer to Mary, many Protestants assume it’s unbiblical. Quite the contrary, actually. Let’s look at it.

The prayer begins, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee." This is nothing other than the greeting the angel Gabriel gave Mary in Luke 1:28 (Confraternity Version). The next part reads this way:

"Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." This was exactly what Mary’s cousin Elizabeth said to her in Luke 1:42. The only thing that has been added to these two verses are the names "Jesus" and "Mary," to make clear who is being referred to. So the first part of the Hail Mary is entirely biblical.

The second part of the Hail Mary is not taken straight from Scripture, but it is entirely biblical in the thoughts it expresses. It reads:

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Let’s look at the first words. Some Protestants do object to saying "Holy Mary" because they claim Mary was a sinner like the rest of us. But Mary was a Christian (the first Christian, actually, the first to accept Jesus; cf. Luke 1:45), and the Bible describes Christians in general as holy. In fact, they are called saints, which means "holy ones" (Eph. 1:1, Phil. 1:1, Col. 1:2). Furthermore, as the mother of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Mary was certainly a very holy woman.

Some Protestants object to the title "Mother of God," but suffice it to say that the title doesn’t mean Mary is older than God; it means the person who was born of her was a divine person, not a human person. (Jesus is one person, the divine, but has two natures, the divine and the human; it is incorrect to say he is a human person.) The denial that Mary had God in her womb is a heresy known as Nestorianism (which claims that Jesus was two persons, one divine and one human), which has been condemned since the early 400s and which the Reformers and Protestant Bible scholars have always rejected.


Another Mediator?


The most problematic line for non-Catholics is usually the last: "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." Many non-Catholics think such a request denies the teaching of 1 Timothy 2:5: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." But in the preceding four verses (1 Tim. 2:1-4), Paul instructs Christians to pray for each other, meaning it cannot interfere with Christ’s mediatorship: "I urge that prayers, supplications, petitions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone. . . . This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior."

We know this exhortation to pray for others applies to the saints in heaven who, as Revelation 5:8 reveals, intercede for us by offering our prayers to God: "The twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.


The Glory Be


The fourth prayer found in the rosary is the Glory Be, sometimes called the Gloria or Gloria Patri. The last two names are taken from the opening words of the Latin version of the prayer, which in English reads:

"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." The Gloria is a brief hymn of praise in which all Christians can join. It has been used since the fourth century (though its present form is from the seventh) and traditionally has been recited at the end of each Psalm in the Divine Office.


The Closing Prayer


We’ve covered the opening prayers of the rosary. In fact, we’ve covered all the prayers of the rosary except the very last one, which is usually the Hail Queen (Salve Regina), sometimes called the Hail Holy Queen. It’s the most commonly recited prayer in praise of Mary, after the Hail Mary itself, and was composed at the end of the eleventh century. It generally reads like this (there are several variants):

"Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary."

So those are the prayers of the rosary. Between the introductory prayers and the concluding prayer is the meat of the rosary: the decades. Each decade—there are fifteen in a full rosary (which takes about forty-five minutes to say)—is composed of ten Hail Marys. Each decade is bracketed between an Our Father and a Glory Be, so each decade actually has twelve prayers.

Each decade is devoted to a mystery regarding the life of Jesus or his mother. Here the word mystery refers to a truth of the faith, not to something incomprehensible, as in the line, "It’s a mystery to me!" The fifteen mysteries are divided into three groups of five: the Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious. When people speak of "saying the rosary" they usually mean saying any set of five (which takes about fifteen minutes) rather than the recitation of all fifteen mysteries. Let’s look at the mysteries.


Meditation the Key


First we must understand that they are meditations. When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary, they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade. If they merely recite the prayers, whether vocally or silently, they’re missing the essence of the rosary. It isn’t just a recitation of prayers, but a meditation on the grace of God. Critics, not knowing about the meditation part, imagine the rosary must be boring, uselessly repetitious, meaningless, and their criticism carries weight if you reduce the rosary to a formula. Christ forbade meaningless repetition (Matt. 6:7), but the Bible itself prescribes some prayers that involve repetition. Look at Psalms 136, which is a litany (a prayer with a recurring refrain) meant to be sung in the Jewish Temple. In the psalm the refrain is "His mercy endures forever." Sometimes in Psalms 136 the refrain starts before a sentence is finished, meaning it is more repetitious than the rosary, though this prayer was written directly under the inspiration of God.

It is the meditation on the mysteries that gives the rosary its staying power. The Joyful Mysteries are these: the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), the Visitation (Luke 1:40-56), the Nativity (Luke 2:6-20), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-39), and the Finding of the child Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51).

Then come the Sorrowful Mysteries: the Agony in the Garden (Matt. 26:36-46), the Scourging (Matt. 27:26), the Crowing with Thorns (Matt. 27:29), the Carrying of the Cross (Luke 23:26-32), and the Crucifixion (Luke 23:33-46).

The final Mysteries are the Glorious: the Resurrection (Luke 24:1-12), the Ascension (Luke 24:50-51), the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4), the Assumption of Mary into heaven (Rev. 12), and her Coronation (cf. Rev. 12:1).

With the exception of the last two, each mystery is explicitly scriptural. True, the Assumption and Coronation of Mary are not explicitly stated in the Bible, but they are not contrary to it, so there is no reason to reject them out of hand. Given the scriptural basis of most of the mysteries, it’s little wonder that many Protestants, once they understand the meditations that are the essence of the rosary, happily take it up as a devotion. We’ve looked at the prayers found in the rosary and the mysteries around which it is formed. Now let’s see how it was formed historically.


The Secret of Paternoster Row


It’s commonly said that St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans), instituted the rosary. Not so. Certain parts of the rosary predated Dominic; others arose only after his death.

Centuries before Dominic, monks had begun to recite all 150 psalms on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, known as the conversi, should have some form of prayer of their own. They were distinct from the choir monks, and a chief distinction was that they were illiterate. Since they couldn’t read the psalms, they couldn’t recite them with the monks. They needed an easily remembered prayer.

The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, and, depending on circumstances, it was said either fifty or a hundred times. These conversi used rosaries to keep count, and the rosaries were known then as Paternosters ("Our Fathers").

In England there arose a craftsmen’s guild of some importance, the members of which made these rosaries. In London you can find a street, named Paternoster Row, which preserves the memory of the area where these craftsmen worked.

The rosaries that originally were used to count Our Fathers came to be used, during the twelfth century, to count Hail Marys—or, more properly, the first half of what we now call the Hail Mary. (The second half was added some time later.)

Both Catholics and non-Catholics, as they learn more about the rosary and make more frequent use of it, come to see how its meditations bring to mind the sweet fragrance not only of the Mother of God, but of Christ himself.

[cmotherofpirl]

Here is the post written by Adeodatus on FEb 22.
Sorry the link didn't work.


I wrote a pamphlet on the history and development of the Rosary some years ago. I'm attaching it below. It doesn't say much about the Franciscan, Carmelite rosaries, but many different kinds of rosaries evolved in the middle ages. It really is a matter of personal reference. I prefer the standard Rosary, because it's the one I grew up with and its the so-called 'Rosary of St Dominic'. You'll see in the history below that I believe the Rosary is the fusion of 3 elements of piety.



THE ROSARY
‘OUR SACRED HERITAGE’


The Rosary is a devotional exercise which combines elements of three older kinds of meditations to create a new, more engrossing prayer. It fuses the imitation of (1) monastic chanting of the Psalter with (2) the desire to praise Our Lady and (3) meditations on the life of Christ. Its effect on Catholic piety is far-reaching, and it remains a powerful and popular devotion of the Christian faithful. Pious legend relates that the Rosary was given in a vision to St Dominic by Our Lady. Certainly, the Rosary as it exists today is known as ‘the Rosary of St Dominic’. Rosary-like devotions, associated with other saints including St Francis, never became as popular, although many have survived. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the Rosary was shaped and popularised by the Dominicans. It is particularly apt for Dominicans because it focuses on the central themes of the gospel: the incarnation, death and resurrection of Our Lord, and Mary’s pre-eminent role in all this as the disciple par excellence.

(1) Reciting the psalms has always been a Christian devotion, and the early monks began to sing the entire psalter at least weekly. At Tallaght the Irish monks recited all 150 psalms daily in three groupings called na tri coicat (the three fifties). For the sake of the more or less illiterate laity, the psalms were substituted by short antiphons which interpreted each psalm as a reference to Christ. As these were too difficult to remember, the Irish monks, around AD 750, substituted the 150 antiphons with a simple biblical prayer, the Our Father (Pater Noster). This paternoster form of the Psalter was called the ‘Little Psalter’.

People naturally had recourse to simple mechanisms of keeping track of these prayers, rather than relying on their fingers. As early as the third century Christians began using pebbles and knotted cords to count their prayers. Later they began to use pebbles, berries or discs of bone threaded on a string. The famous Lady Godiva of Coventry (d. 1041) left to a statue of Our Lady ‘the circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly’. Such strings of beads were named after the prayer said on them and known as paternosters. Paternoster Row in London preserves the memory of where the craftsmen who made these cords congregated. The everyday term ‘beads’ is simply the Anglo-Saxon word bede (prayer) transferred to the instrument used in reciting prayer. The old phrase ‘to tell one’s beads,’ which refers to the Rosary, means ‘to count (or tally) one’s prayers’. By the thirteenth century these cords were called chaplets (wreaths of flowers) or coronas (crowns).

It was not until the mid-twelfth century that paternoster beads were used to count Hail Maries (Aves). St Aybert (d. 1140) used to genuflect or prostrate 150 times a day, while repeating at each gesture, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’. This form of the Ave, with only the biblical portion, is found in the Liturgies of St James and St Mark, which go back to the fourth or fifth century. In the sixth century, the Coptic form has the addition, ‘Because you have conceived Christ, the Son of God, redeemer of our souls’. The name ‘Jesus’ is said to have been added to the salutation by Pope Urban IV (1261-4). The second part of the prayer, prompted by the need to join petition to praise, may have been influenced by the Litany of Saints (from the seventh century), which has the invocation ‘Holy Mary, pray for us’. By the fifteenth century this petition became ‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen’, possibly through the effects of the horrors of the Black Death.

(2) Devotion to Mary goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. The earliest forms of the Ave were designed as salutations: to praise Our Lady for the honour God had bestowed upon her. The Akathistos (literally ‘not-sitting’, i.e. standing) is a long hymn sung in Our Lady’s honour which is part of the Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox divine office and dates from 626. It has twenty-four stanzas, half of which are composed of 13 lines beginning with ‘Hail’. As its name implies, it is sung while standing.

The first stanza narrates the mission of Gabriel to Mary; and his astonishment at the condescension of the Almighty is so great that he bursts forth into: ‘Hail, for through thee joy shall shine forth!/Hail, for through thee the curse shall cease!/Hail, recalling of fallen Adam!/Hail, redemption of Eve’s tears!’ The second stanza gives the questioning of Mary; the third continues it and gives the answer of Gabriel; the fourth narrates the Incarnation; the fifth the visit to Elizabeth, with a series of ‘Hails’ conceived as being translations into words of the joyful leapings of the Baptist; the sixth, Joseph’s trouble of mind; the seventh, the coming of the shepherds, who begin their greetings very appropriately: ‘Hail, Mother of the Lamb and Shepherd!/Hail, Sheepfold of rational sheep!’ In the ninth stanza the Magi, startled, cry out in joy: ‘Hail, Mother of the unwestering Star!/Hail, Splendour of the mystic Day!’ The eleventh recounts the Flight into Egypt with allusions to the Exodus: ‘Hail, Sea that didst overwhelm the wise Pharaoh!/Hail, Rock that gavest life to the thirsty!’ with other references to the cloud, the pillar of fire, the manna, etc. The twelfth and thirteenth deal with Simeon; and the rest are more general in character.

A Latin Akathistos was produced around 1050, which inspired a whole genre of rhythmic Marian greeting hymns. Marian litanies also developed at this time, inspired in part by the Litany of Saints. The most famous, the Litany of Loreto (twelfth century), which is still in use, is heavily influenced by the Akathistos.

(3) The idea of meditating on the life of Christ seems to come from two monks in Yorkshire. Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1167) describes a method of meditation similar to the modern Rosary. For example, when reflecting on the Annunciation one should enter Mary’s chamber together with the angel and salute the sweetest Lady with him, frequently repeating his Ave Maria. One should enter into Mary’s feelings on hearing the greeting, follow her when she visits Elizabeth and when she gives birth to Jesus at Bethlehem; at the Passion one should unite one’s own tears to those of the sorrowful Mother. Another Yorkshireman, Stephen of Salley (d. 1252), popularised a devotion made up of 15 meditations grouped into three sections of five meditations each, divided into joyful, sorrowful and glorious. The meditations are simple, and each ends with an Ave. Mary is seen almost entirely in her role as mother of Christ.

St Dominic and the first brethren of the Order of Preachers were accustomed to recite Aves on their knees, a practice going back to the eleventh century. They genuflected with each Ave, just as the angel Gabriel did in ancient depictions of the Annunciation. By 1266 the Dominican lay brothers were praying 150 Our Fathers and Hail Marys, like David’s Psalter. This became known as the Marian Psalter. Blessed Romée of Livia, a companion of St Dominic’s, and prior of Lyons in 1223 and later provincial of Provence, was said to have died clutching the knotted cord on which he counted his Aves. This is the Rosary in embryonic form. Before 1235, the ‘Militia of Jesus Christ’, a lay group associated with St Dominic which later became the Third Order, were praying the Marian Psalter daily.

Thus all the elements of the modern Rosary were in place in St Dominic’s time, and came together around his lifetime. Indeed, the earliest forms of the modern Rosary are associated with his companions and associates. Considering the targets of St Dominic’s preaching, his emphasis on the Incarnation, and his well-known devotion to the Blessed Virgin, it does appear that the embryonic Rosary is somehow connected with St Dominic himself, or his earliest companions. The Marian Psalter declined in the period following, and was revived by two Dominicans, Blessed Alain de la Roche, who established the ‘Confraternity of the Psalter of the Glorious Virgin Mary’ at Douai in 1470 to promote this devotion, and Jakob Sprenger, who founded the ‘Confraternity of the Rosary’ at Cologne in 1475. Both of them sincerely believed that they were merely re-establishing an old tradition of prayer, and references to St Dominic and the Marian Psalter pre-date both of them.

In the 1480s Dominicans had begun preaching the Rosary, and the devotion spread rapidly, aided by the widespread diffusion of ‘picture Rosaries’—prints of the fifteen mysteries to aid meditation, which ordinary people displayed in their homes. The friars recited the Rosary in choir, side-against-side, splitting the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be in two halves. The Glory Be had been added as it was the normal ending to the psalms chanted in choir. A rosary book written by a Dominican in 1483, Our Dear Lady’s Psalter, contains 15 mysteries all of which, except the last two, correspond to the mysteries as they stand today. The Coronation of Our Lady was combined with the Assumption, and the last mystery was the Last Judgement. A vestige of this survives in Dominican rosaries, where the last mystery is commonly prayed as ‘The Coronation of Our Lady and the Glory of all the Saints’.

In 1569 the Dominican pope, St Pius V, officially approved the Rosary which had been completed with the addition of the second half of the Hail Mary (‘Holy Mary…’) and the Glory Be. The same pope instituted the Feast of the Holy Rosary in 1573, in thanksgiving for the Christian victory at Lepanto. Subsequent popes have richly indulgenced the Rosary devotion. The Rosary customarily concludes with the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen), which dates from the eleventh century and is probably the best-known Latin Marian hymn.

Each chaplet was called a ‘rosarium’ (a rose-garden), by the association of the rose with the Blessed Virgin, e.g. in her title Rosa Mystica (Mystical Rose). The rose was attributed with healing properties and associated with immortality, great beauty and fragrance, and quite naturally became a symbol of Mary. Our Lady was called the rosa pudoris (rose of modesty) and rosa e spinis (rose among thorns). The source of these images was the Old Testament Song of Songs, where the bride praises her beloved as the ‘rose of Sharon’ and he admires her as ‘a lily among thorns’. Mary herself was also called a rose-garden (rosarium), and ‘the name of the rose [she brings forth] is Christ’. A rose with five petals symbolised Christ’s five wounds, and a red rose (bleeding rose), his Passion. Indeed, some poems mention the ‘rose-tree of the cross’. A white rose symbolised Mary’s purity. In the thirteenth century, Aves themselves came to be seen as roses. The rose is Christ, and Christ is the Word, so the words of the Ave Maria (spoken to commemorate the Incarnation of the Word) are a ‘rose’. It has five phrases and five petals representing the name MARIA. Aves prayed by Christians were roses woven into a wreath (chaplet) by Our Lady to crown either herself or the Christian.The imagery of the rose and rose-garden became symbolic of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion and of Mary’s purity:

‘[Christ] followed the noble fragrance until he came to the beautiful rose… For the Son of the Most High saw this lovely, tender, fragrant rose blooming among the thorns of the sinful world and the sweet fragrance of her earnest desire wafted up to him unceasingly. He was caught up by her eager love and so enraptured that he leapt from his Father’s lap down to this rose among thorns and was so sorely pierced that his hands and feet bled’ (Our Lady Mary’s Rose Garden, c. 1430).

[Ellenita]

Dusty Fro, I'm not officially Catholic yet either (at Easter... ) and I started praying the rosary before my decision to become Catholic. I had been given a set of beads by my (non catholic!) Nan many years ago so when I found out how to pray it, I thought 'well, I'm not sure about this but why not give it a go?'.
I can honestly tell you that I had no understanding about the way it would impact on my life before I began praying it - I have learnt so much about Jesus and about faith and obedience and prayer and the love of God since I started praying it. Through meditating on the Mysteries, I have also begun to see the 'other characters' in the stories in a more real way which has made the bible become much more alive for me than ever before - and I've been a bible reading Christian for many years!
It has been the most wonderful thing, I truely believe praying the rosary is a real blessing. Why not give it a go?

[the_rev]

Great words Ellentia!!!!!!!! I thought your were catholic!!! It's a suprise to find out your not!

Secondly if you don't have a rosary, use your fingers! Apostles creed, our father, 3 hail mary's, glory be, announce mystery, 10 hail marys, glory be, and fatima prayer.

So easy, such a great PRAYER