Remember The Rosary

The Rosary, The Mysteries, The Prayers.

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The Workshop ~ The spoken portion of the Rosary

The spoken Rosary

The structure of the Rosary, its very foundation, is the Prayers.  I encourage you to review them, and even paraphrase them to think about and understand what each sentence means.  From there, consider whether the prayer is one of adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and / or supplication.

The Rosary was given to St. Dominic over 800 years ago to combat a common practice of merely repeating prayers and it did this in a unique way.  The Rosary includes stories from the life of Christ in addition to the prayers. When you realize that this was prior to the printing press and therefore before each of us was able to have our own copy of the Bible to study, it helps explain its long tradition of teaching the faithful.  Today each of us has access to the Bible and most Rosary instructions provide references to chapters that will help expand your Bible study of Jesus’ life to improve your own understanding of His experiences and what He has revealed to us about how to live.  Bible passage links are included with the prayers on this website.  Between studying the life of Jesus through the mysteries and the prayers, it’s a brief, but thorough, catechism.

The sequence of the prayers

The sign of the cross and the Apostles’ Creed are prayed on the crucifix.  On the first bead, pray The Lord’s Prayer. The next three beads, pray three Hail Mary’s, then The Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer.  We then begin incorporating the life of Jesus into our thoughts by announcing each mystery and with that story firmly in mind, pray 1 Our Father on the large bead, 10 Hail Mary’s on the smaller beads, and then the Glory Be and the Fatima prayer. That completes one decade of a Rosary which takes about 5 minutes. Praying 5 decades meditating on a set of mysteries is one Rosary which may take you 15-20 minutes. Pray all 4 sets of mysteries and you may spend all of an hour.

Continue to Part 2 of The Workshop. . . [

The Workshop ~ The interior portion of the Rosary

Meditating on the Mysteries

The 20 mysteries contained in the Rosary are Bible stories that everyone is familiar with from the life of Jesus and Mary and are chronological. With the Rosary, we focus on Him and we meditate on His life in order to apply those life lessons to our own lives; we strive to imitate Him.

The word ‘meditation’ implies emptying your mind with the intent of becoming one with God, but the Rosary does not approach us that way. Praying the Rosary well means that all aspects of our humanity, including our thoughts, our desires and our will become involved. And that makes so much sense because God created humans as ‘thinking’ people. We aren’t meant to ‘empty’ our minds. Our minds are what separates us and makes us different from other creatures. The Rosary is geared to who we are as humans.

The original 15 mysteries are sorted into groups of five under three headings — Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious. The first two are easy enough to understand and relate to in our own lives since we all have happy and sad times. The Glorious portion of the Rosary may be harder to relate to initially though, because it deals with our eternal selves that can’t be seen or experienced now, on this earth, but is believed through faith.  Through these meditations, by bringing the Glorious mysteries to our attention, we are assured and reminded us that we are created as eternal beings. The 4th set of mysteries was added in 2002 are called the Luminous mysteries. They deal with the sacraments and the public life of Jesus — those years when He began to reveal Himself as the truth and the way – our light.

Resolutions and Thanks statements

To personalize the Rosary for yourself, review the bible passages with each mystery, put yourself in the scene and craft your own statements starting with “I desire to…” or “I resolve to… ” and “I thank you for…”

Intentions

With each Rosary, decade or prayer, state an intention for yourself, your family, leaders, the innocent and jaded, the souls in purgatory, the world.

Contact Me

About Me

Hi, my name is Lisa and I'm passionate about helping others learn to love the rosary.

I prayed the Rosary for years, as if a child. I only grasped what it was meant to do when I came across an old booklet, probably from the 1950’s, that connected the bible passages to my life with resolutions.

I'd love to get a thorough description of what the Rosary really is to each of you.