In a rich conversation about the importance of Pope St John Paul II’s
leadership in promoting women and what he called “the Culture of
Life,” a Christian friend told me how much the Pope’s moral clarity, his
devotion to Jesus Christ and his life of prayer and action meant to her.
As much as she said she honoured and appreciated these things, she
added with a voice of regret, “but…. I just don’t get his Rosary thing!”

For many good Christians and indeed many Catholics today the long
Western devotion to the Rosary seems an unwitting and primitive
practice best relegated to Granny’s mothballs.

For Pope John Paul II, the Rosary was however central not only to the
defense of human dignity and human life but also an important flesh-
and-blood process of deepening our relationship with Jesus Christ the
Redeemer. It was also something which patterns our minds and our
hearts into what he called “the logic of the Incarnation.”

The Pope insists that “The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is
at heart a Christocentric prayer.” We are just half through our special Anima
Rosary month of Reflection and it is time for us to rediscover the teachings
and tips from Pope John Paul, the great modern-day Master of the Rosary.

Sixteen years ago on October 16th , Pope John Paul II issued an Apostolic
Letter which was particularly close to his heart because it was about what
he called “my favourite prayer”, the Rosary – Rosarium Virginis Mariae. 

In this Letter, the Pope ties together many strands of the Christian tradition of prayer and the call to Christian discipleship which he says strongly supported by the Rosary. He calls it a “Compendium of the Gospel” (RSV no. 18).

The Pope also reminds us that there is no one way to recite the Rosary but he offers in this Letter some methods which he finds can deepen the involvement and transformation of our entire selves- hearts, minds and bodies while saying the Rosary.

So confident is the Pope about his experience of the Rosary and his deep and almost mystical affinity with Our Lady, he offers in this Letter an entirely new extension to the Rosary, the addition of five decades
devoted to mysteries called the Luminous Mysteries, those scriptural
accounts which capture how each of these mysteries is “a revelation of the
Kingdom now present in the very person of Jesus.” (RVM no. 21)

While the Holy Rosary is not a liturgical prayer as is the celebration of
Mass or the celebration of the Divine Office, it can serve to quieten and
orientate us towards these central aspects of the Church’s life: “If the
Liturgy, as the activity of Christ and the Church, is a saving action par excellence,
the Rosary too, as a “meditation” with Mary on Christ, is a salutary
contemplation.” (RVM no. 13)

There is a rhythm and tangibility about both the saying of the Rosary
and the mysteries we enter into. John Paul notes we have a theology of
life and of the body in which “God communicates himself to us respecting our
human nature and its vital rhythms.” (RSV no. 21)

During the Rosary we run our “fingers” over the beads, we close our eyes to spark our imaginations, we quieten our anxious emotions with the soothing murmurings to the Mother of Jesus and of the Church.

There is nothing airy-fairy about the Rosary; as we meditate upon the human journey of our God through his life, death, resurrection and
glorification we repeat the pithy words which name both the “womb” of Mary and our own “deaths.”

The Rosary “engages the whole person in all his complex psychological, physical and
relational reality” (No. 27). As David Werner writes, there are three strong Christian practices
wrapped into the practice of reciting the Rosary: “… the need for concreteness, the need to listen to the word of God and the need for silence.”

The Pope suggests we build into our Rosary not sprints to get to the end, but the creation of space to listen: “it is fitting to pause and focus one’s attention for a suitable period of time on the mystery concerned, before moving into vocal prayer.” (RVM no. 31)

Pope John Paul II gives practical advice that makes the Rosary the prayer we need right now in our noisy distraction, our culture which has lost sight of the gift and vocation to glory which is planted in the lives and bodies of every member of the human family- from womb until “the hour of our death”. Amen.

~ Anna Krohn  

Further ReadinG:

Stratford Caldecott – “The Mysteries of the Rosary”

David Werner – “Contemplating the Rosary Through John Paul II’s Method.