The Humble Rosary Is Making A Comeback

By FATHER PETER J. DALY, CNS

Published: October 9, 2003

Sometimes we see them hung from rearview mirrors. At wakes we see them wrapped around the hands of the corpse. Nearly every Catholic has one somewhere. Many people carry one in their pocket or purse. They reveal their Catholic identity when they have to pull them going through metal detectors. Children often get one as a gift for first Communion. The media uses it as a symbol of Roman Catholicism. No doubt about it, the rosary is a cultural “icon” of Catholic life.

But in recent years it has been little more than a religious accessory. While many Catholics, myself included, may always have carried a rosary in our pockets, we hardly ever actually prayed it.

For a long time I stopped praying the rosary because I just didn’t like it. It seemed mindlessly repetitious. Its piety seemed excessively focused on Mary and much too little focused on Jesus. At a time when the church was rediscovering the Scriptures, the rosary seemed “unscriptural.”

That has begun to change. We have begun to appreciate again the rosary and its proper role in our prayer life. We don’t say it during Mass as in the old days (and shouldn’t), but more and more on Saturdays we are saying it together before or after Mass.

My uncle Bill, a priest for more than 50 years, prayed it when he was tired or distracted. He called it his “resting prayer.” It could be said without too much intellectual effort and without his glasses.

People have called the rosary the “simple psalter” or the “poor man’s office.” While the monks had the time and companionship to pray the psalms together every day, the ordinary person couldn’t do that. The rosary, however, could be a kind of “Liturgy of the Hours” for the layperson.

The rosary can be prayed privately, even in public. People pray it on the way to work, on buses or trains. It is a simple prayer for busy lives.

I pray the rosary while I am driving. It is an alternative to the irritation of the radio and an antidote to the irritation of the traffic. I leave a rosary in the car’s cup holder and can say a decade even on short trips.

The rosary is a community prayer. Families can say it together after dinner. People can pray it while walking on hikes and pilgrimages. Children and adults can say it together.

Pope John Paul II proclaimed this a year of the rosary, from October 2002 to October 2003. He says the rosary is “nothing other than to contemplate, with Mary, the face of Christ.”

The pope has changed things a bit to make the rosary more scriptural, just as he did with the Stations of the Cross. He has added five new “mysteries” for contemplation, which he calls the “luminous mysteries.” Now there are 20 mysteries of the rosary.

He suggested that the new mysteries of light be prayed on Thursdays, and the joyful mysteries now be said on Mondays and Saturdays. Each of these new “mysteries of light” reveals something about Jesus and his mission.

The five luminous mysteries are: 1) the baptism of the Lord in the Jordan; 2) the miracle at the wedding at Cana; 3) the proclamation of the kingdom and call to conversion; 4) the Transfiguration of the Lord; and 5) the institution of the Eucharist.

The rosary is making a comeback. Actually, it had never gone away. The grace was always at our fingertips; we just had to reach into our pockets and pull it out.