Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
In today’s Gospel we meet Jesus’ encounter at the home of his dear friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Mary and Martha embody two key dimensions of our prayer life - contemplation (pondering, reflection) and action (expressing our faith in actions of service, care and justice).
Today is also the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, a prayer form that invites our contemplative reflection. The prayer was instituted to encourage our ongoing prayer with Mary as we ponder how Mary accompanied the mysteries of Jesus’ life in the gospel stories and our Catholic tradition. In praying the rosary, we are invited to unite ourselves with the gospel experiences of Mary and Jesus, being aware that they understand all the moments, challenges and feelings that are part of our lives today. We can ask them to help and companion us, and form us as disciples.
The Marian psalter (which came to be known as the rosary) was instituted by St. Dominic in the late 12th and 13th century to invoke the assistance of Mary’s prayers with us. It was a way for laity (who did not know Latin), and those who lacked literacy to be able to also pray and ponder and be in union with what was being prayed in the liturgy of the hours and studied by clergy and in monasteries - e.g. the complete 150 psalms and Gospels. The rosary circle has 50 beads (five decades of 10). The themes of joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries (each having 5) then makes up a full 150. In this century, St. Pope John Paul II added a fourth set of mysteries - the luminous mysteries that highlight key moments of Jesus’ life not found in the others. The word rosary, from rosario, rose garden - like a bouquet of prayers. The root of the word bead, means prayer. Prayer beads are a meditation practice found in several world religious traditions.
The US Bishops website has a helpful guide explaining how to pray the rosary along with Scriptural references/meditations for each mystery as well as the fruit of meditating on each. https://www.usccb.org/how-to-
The rosary is meant to be prayed reflectively and contemplatively, individually or in groups. Today we are invited to ‘choose the better part’ - to take some time to ponder Mary’s life of faithful following of Jesus, and to listen to Jesus words. Let us invite Mary to walk with us and form us as disciples in the way that she nurtured and companioned Jesus through his life in being faithful to God’s call. Let us bring the questions and wonderings of our own lives into conversation with Jesus and Mary, and listen in the quiet to the guidance and renewed strength they bring.
—Sr. Leanne Jablonski, FMI