7 one hundred and fifty is not without significance, since it corresponds to the number of psalms recited by monks and priests throughout the week. In this, the rosary is linked to the official prayer of the Church, to liturgical prayer. The rosary has matured in various times and places, but it is the Dominican Order that has been its most ardent promoter. It existed before Saint Dominic or Saint Catherine of Siena, but these two saints are indissociable from it. Contemplating Christ with His Mother Over the course of the centuries, the rosary was further enriched by the meditation upon the mysteries of Christ. Each set of ten beads corresponds to moments in the life of Christ, from his Incarnation to his glorification. A mystery is not an enigma but a reality charged with meaning and life. Because he is the eternal Word and because he is risen, each moment in the life of Christ, each “mystery,” is not simply something in the past. Jesus was born under Herod the Great; he died and rose again under Pontius Pilate: this happened once and for all in the past. But these events still remain sources of grace. This is why we celebrate them in the liturgy. At Christmas Mass, we say: “Today a great light has shone upon the earth.” In God, nothing is ever past or surpassed. All popes of recent centuries have written about the rosary. Leo XIII published numerous encyclicals on the subject. Blessed John Paul II was the most bold of all. At the end of the Great Jubilee of 2000, he asked the Church to “start again from Christ” and to become above all a “school of prayer.” Two years later in 2002, in an Apostolic Letter on the rosary, he wrote that reciting the rosary is a school of popular prayer where we learn to contemplate Christ in the company of Mary, his mother and our Mother. This letter gives very useful advice for the fruitful praying of the rosary, which John Paul II said was his favorite prayer. Before him, the rosary was composed of three cycles of mysteries: the joyous, the sorrowful, and the glorious. Pope John Paul II had no hesitation in adding the luminous mysteries, taken from the years of Jesus’ public ministry. He wished in this way to accentuate the Christological character of the rosary. He had learned from Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort that true devotion to Mary—Totus tuus—is devotion to Christ. The pope wished it to be clear that, in reciting the rosary, it is the person of Christ who has primacy of place. The pope’s boldness was twofold. First, he added a series of mysteries, feeling unconstrained by the number of one hundred and fifty, despite the long tradition. And then, he made a proposal to the Church in a domain that was not strictly within his authority, given that the rosary is not a liturgical prayer like those of the sacraments or of the divine office. The pope acted in the role of a spiritual father seeking to help those who trusted in him along the path of faith. Enter into the Splendors of the Rosary The Catholic world has embraced these luminous mysteries. On the other hand, many of the pope’s other recommendations were not put into practice. One of them concerns the meditation upon the Gospel which should accompany the praying of the rosary: the following pages are an example of this. The artwork illustrates these splendors of the rosary. But the history of the rosary itself is magnificent—it demonstrates how the Holy Spirit enriches the spiritual legacy of the Church. In Lourdes, the Virgin gave Bernadette a prayer that was for her alone. What a privilege! Bernadette never revealed its contents. She said it every day. And yet, each day, she also said the rosary. And when she prayed the rosary, she became almost as beautiful as she was during the apparitions of the Virgin. What an encouragement to us!
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