Our Lady of the Rosary - 7 October

Reading: Acts of the Apostles 1.12-14; Luke 1.46-55; Luke 1:26.38

A story goes around among us that one of our younger and more traditional brothers, in response to John Paul II’s decision to introduce five luminous mysteries of the Rosary, placed a notice in the church where he was assigned. In one column he listed the twenty mysteries of the Rosary ‘as recommended by John Paul II’, the joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. In another column he listed the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary ‘as recommended by the Blessed Virgin Mary’, the traditional joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries without the modern addition of luminous mysteries.

Many preachers and teachers had probably worked out a rationale for the three sets of joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. From the joy of Galilee and the romantic preaching and healing ministry of Jesus, through the darkness of his passion and death in Jerusalem, to the glory of the resurrection and his return to Galilee, his return then to the Father from where he sends the Spirit to establish the Church and disseminate in the world the new and risen life of the Kingdom. It was a pleasing pattern, from joy to sorrow to glory.

Back to the drawing board then, to break open this pattern and include also five luminous mysteries. I suppose some people had already thought it strange that the traditional mysteries took us straight from the finding in the Temple, when Jesus was twelve years old, to the agony in the garden, on the eve of his death. Surely there were mysteries to be contemplated in the time between, in the public ministry of teaching and healing, of miracles and exorcisms.

Dominicans particularly, for whom today’s celebration of Our Lady of the Rosary is a major feast, should have been aware that Thomas Aquinas divided the mysteries of the life of Christ into four sets, the mysteries of his coming into the world, those of the progress of his life in this world, those of his departure from the world, and those of his exaltation after this life. Although not exact in every detail this general division corresponds with what we now know as the joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of the Rosary.

But ‘every action of Christ is for our instruction’ is a saying handed on in the tradition so that we could conceivably continue to gather sets of five mysteries. We could, for example, meditate on five great parables. Or on five remarkable healings. Or on five ways in which God is present to his people. Or on the actions of five characters in the passion of Christ. And so on.

The use of beads and repeated short prayers is found in most of the world’s religions and we could meditate on other sets of mysteries as we seek to enter more fully into the richness of Christ. What is absolutely sacred is the Lord whose life and light we receive through praying the Rosary.  It is a way of contemplating and it is a way of preaching. It is a way of contemplation and a compendium of Christian doctrine for everyone. We might be tempted to consider ourselves too sophisticated for something that is more at home in popular religious devotion. But it has made great contemplatives over the centuries, and it has made great saints.

We are in the company of Mary as we pray the Rosary, just as the apostles and disciples were in her company as the Church waited for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Mary participates in a unique way in the mysteries of her Son’s life, keeping all these things constantly in her heart as she shared personally in so many of them. She becomes a teacher of prayer for us, leading us into the mysteries of Christ, mysteries that are inexhaustible sources of life and light. She becomes a preacher of the Word for us, the one who first brought the good news of the gospel to another person when she visited her cousin Elisabeth. 

The Rosary is very near to us, as close as the fingers on our hands. It is a prayer that can be said anywhere. We can bring to it our own experiences of joy and learning, of sorrow and exaltation. And as we contemplate those mysteries of light in which we meditate on Jesus the teacher we place ourselves in the position of students and disciples, keen to learn what all these mysteries mean, keen to imitate what they contain and keen finally to obtain what they promise.