A symphony of doctrine and contemplation
By Fr Serafino Maria Lanzetta | 23 October 2024
The Most Holy Rosary is a doctrinal prayer that paves the way for our contemplation of Jesus in his mysteries. For its profound Christological nature, it disposes to know the faith and to practise it as one prays. It’s a compendium of faith and spirituality. It unravels as a pathway through the life of Our Divine Saviour in company with Our Lady. There is a double movement in this blessed prayer: it brings us close to the mystery of Our Lady as Mediatrix of Grace and, through Mary’s mediation, it reveals to us the mystery of Jesus our divine Saviour. Mediation and Redemption go together. As the Rosary reveals to us Our Lady’s contribution in our Redemption, she, on her part, leads us to Jesus, the only source of grace and peace, our Redeemer.
Let us reflect more on these two characteristics of the Holy Rosary. The first: it leads us to a clear understanding of Mary’s role in salvation history as Mediatrix. We turn to the magisterium of a pope who has devoted a great effort to explaining the importance of the Rosary, Leo XIII, who wrote twelve encyclical letters on this blessed Marian prayer. In the encyclical letter Iucunda Semper (8 September 1894), he states:
“The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven.”
Leo XIII goes on and invokes Our Blessed Lady in this way:
“[W]e fly to thee, we miserable children of Eve, O holy Mother of God. To thee we lift our prayers, for thou art the Mediatrix, powerful at once and pitiful, of our salvation. Oh, by the sweetness of the joys that came to thee from thy Son Jesus, by thy participation in His ineffable sorrows, by the splendours of His glory shining in thee, we instantly beseech thee, listen, be pitiful, hear us, unworthy though we be!”
With this invocation our pathway is soundly laid out: in the company of our celestial Mediatrix we come to Jesus in order to know him and to love him. Then we come to the second characteristic of the Rosary: to nurture our faith. Brought close to Our Lady, through her and in her, we contemplate the mysteries of our salvation. There is even more. By the intersection of Hail Marys with the meditation on the mysteries of Our Lord’s life, we come to know better our faith and consequently we put it into a prayerful action. Again a double movement: as faith nurtures contemplation, contemplation of Our Lord’s life nurtures faith. The Catholic paradigm of lex orandi, lex credendi is represented, on a smaller scale, as we pray the Rosary. The more we believe the more we pray, and the more we pray the more and the better we believe. We start with a clear faith and we pray the Rosary. Conversely but symphonically, we pray the Rosary to know better our faith and to grow in it. After the liturgical prayer and strictly depending on it, the Rosary best fulfils all requirements for a good and intentional Christian life.
In another Encyclical on the Rosary, Adiutricem populi (5 September 1895), Leo XIII, after recalling the great titles attributed by Tradition to Our Lady, such as “our Mediatrix”, “the Reparatrix of the whole world” and “the Dispenser of all heavenly gifts” (titles that would shake up contemporary minimalism), teaches thus:
“[N]ot least among the advantages of the Rosary is the ready and easy means it puts in his hands to nurture his faith, and to keep him from ignorance of his religion and the danger of error. The very origin of the Rosary makes that plain. When such faith is exercised by vocally repeating the Our Father and Hail Mary of the Rosary prayers, or better still, in the contemplation of the mysteries, it is evident how close we are brought to Mary. For every time we devoutly say the Rosary in supplication before her, we are once more brought face to face with the marvel of our salvation; we watch the mysteries of our Redemption as though they were unfolding before our eyes; and as one follows another, Mary stands revealed at once as God’s Mother and our Mother.”
Salvation is displayed and given to us as we pray the Rosary, Leo XIII highlights. This is extraordinary indeed, a first-class grace received from the Our Lady, the Mediatrix of salvation. Furthermore, with the Rosary, we contemplate Jesus in His mysteries. Mary’s mediation leads us to a full Christocentric understanding of this grace-filled Marian prayer. When we pray it, we contemplate Jesus with Our Lady’s own eyes, as if his mysteries were unfolding right then when we pray. With our mind and heart absorbed in contemplation, we hear Jesus teaching, we see him suffering, rising, and so on. The Rosary is to contemplate Jesus with Our Lady. This thought was also dear to Pope John Paul II. He wrote the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, in which he exhorted to contemplate Jesus with Our Lady’s eyes, turned to him since the Annunciation, and remained fixed on him throughout all his earthly life and after:
“Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word: ‘She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart’ (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). The memories of Jesus, impressed upon her heart, were always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her Son’s side. In a way those memories were to be the ‘rosary’ which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life.”
Have you ever thought of this? Our Lady herself recited the holy Rosary, though in a very unique manner: the memories of her Son were so impressed in her Immaculate Heart as to become her daily prayer, a spiritual journey of faith and love through Jesus’ life. Mary’s life was an uninterrupted Rosary of love and contemplation. She was with Jesus as all his salvific mysteries took place. Once again a dual situation: she was present in the unravelling of the mystery, and at the same time, she prayed it in contemplation. With a prayerful maternal gaze, she fixed all mysteries in her Heart. She kept and pondered in her Heart all these words (cf. Lk 2:19,51). Presence and prayer were mingled so as to be one.
In the same letter, John Paul II also wrote that “in the recitation of the Rosary, the Christian community enters into contact with the memories and the contemplative gaze of Mary”. Therefore, we too are present in the mystery as it unfolds in prayer. Presence and prayer become one experience for us too as we pray with this blessed chain of grace. Let us conclude this reflection with Blessed Bartolo Longo’s final lines of his Supplication to Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompei:
“O Blessed Rosary of Mary, sweet chain which unites us to God, bond of love which unites us to the angels, tower of salvation against the assaults of Hell, safe port in our universal shipwreck, we will never abandon you.”
In three lines, Bl Bartolo Longo synthesises why we should be attached to Rosary. May it be our favourite prayer. We should say it day after day, until that day when we will close our eyes to this world to reopen them in our contemplation of Our Heavenly Mother in paradise. And with her we will see Jesus, the blessed Fruit of her womb. Amen.