Sunday, June 17, 2007

Re-discovering the rosary as an aid to prayer

While the title of this article might be considered off-putting by some Anglicans, I trust that the reader will approach the subject with an open mind. In fact, the rosary should not be offensive to Anglicans, at least to those Anglicans who might admit that there was some good in the spirituality of the pre-reformation Church of England (some of us may regret the Romans winning out over the Celts in an early period of English history, but that is another story!). Those who have read Eamon Duffy’s marvellous book, The Stripping of the Altars (1992), will recall his description of the rich devotional life that existed in England before and at the time of the reformation. The rosary is part of this treasury of devotional practices that was buried by the reformers’ over-zealous desire to purify the church of “abuse” and “superstition.”

The custom of using some method to “tell” or count prayers is apparently quite ancient in Christian history. As one commentator tells us, as early as the fourth century there is an account of an anchorite who would collect stones in his lap and throw one away for each prayer he said. The tradition of repeating the Lord’s Prayer as a simple way for the (largely illiterate) laity to imitate the monastic recitation of the psalms was an early form of the rosary (the area in London, England, known as “Paternoster Row” recalls the guilds who made rosaries out of bone or other materials for this purpose). It is St. Dominic, however, in the 13th century, who seems to have been most influential in the development of the rosary into the form we know today. The Dominican rosary evolved into the present day Roman Catholic rosary: a set of beads divided into five decades, each beginning with an Our Father, followed by ten Hail Marys, and ending with the Gloria patri (Glory to the Father, etc). In this form of the rosary, there are three sets of “mysteries”: the Joyful or Lucan mysteries (the Annunciation; the Visitation; the Birth of Jesus; the Presentation; the Finding of Jesus in the Temple); the Sorrowful or Matthean mysteries (the Agony in the Garden; the Scourging; the Crowning with Thorns; the Carrying of the Cross; the Crucifixion); and the Glorious or Johannine/Lucan/”traditional” mysteries (the Resurrection; the Ascension; the Day of Pentecost; the Falling Asleep and/or Assumption of Mary; the Crowning of Mary amidst the glory of all the saints). A fourth set of mysteries, the “Luminous mysteries” (the Baptism of Christ; the Wedding at Cana of Galilee; the Proclamation of the Kingdom of God; the Transfiguration; and the Last Supper) was devised by the late Bishop of Rome, John Paul II, and is now commended to the (Roman) Catholic faithful as a fourth option in addition to the earlier sets of mysteries. Each group or set of mysteries contains, as we can see, five episodes in the life of Jesus. Saying the rosary involves meditating on one set (i.e., five) of these mysteries while using the repeated prayers as a kind of mantra.

While I initially started saying the rosary simply because I thought it was the right “Anglo-Catholic” thing to do, I have—despite my pompous self—found it a great help and real aid to prayer. For example, on the longish walk from my house to my place of work, I often say the rosary (simply counting the prayers on my fingers)—partially as a way of calming myself before the beginning of the daily grind; and partially as a way of praying with Mary, who—for any Christian—should be seen as the disciple par excellence.

I begin with the usual custom of saying the Apostles’ Creed on the cross at the end of the rosary. Beginning with the creed—which is our baptismal profession of faith—reminds me that all prayer and all ministry finds its source in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. After this, I make a specific intention, focusing this particular recitation on a particular concern expressed through petition or intercession (i.e., prayer for myself or for others). I make this intention while saying the first Lord’s Prayer and “little decade” of three Hail Marys. I then begin to meditate on each of the five mysteries that I have chosen, beginning with the Lord’s Prayer and then immediately saying ten Hail Marys for each of the mysteries in the set.

I find it is not enough to simply picture mentally each of the mysteries. I find that I need to return to the gospel or to use some kind of commentary to help me enter imaginatively into each mystery. Let me illustrate this with the so-called Joyful mysteries: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. In these mysteries, St. Luke stresses the importance of the ordinary life of human beings, especially those who have been amongst those most marginalized and oppressed by the powerful in human society. As one commentary has pointed out, Luke is not concerned with “good taste” or “high culture” (both very Anglican preoccupations); he is not concerned with theological or ethical systems; nor is he concerned with preserving privilege or hierarchy; rather, he is concerned primarily with Jesus’ solidarity with the poor and dispossessed. There is not space here to speak of each of these mysteries in detail, so let me focus on one only: the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. While saying the rosary, if I am able (i.e., if I am not walking and have access to a Bible), I try to re-read and briefly meditate on each of the mysteries as they are recounted in the gospel. Over time, I have found that I start to focus on different parts of the narrative, which leads me into a kind of conversation with the passage (it is more like gazing upon a painting or other work of art than like analyzing a text). I have also found various commentaries helpful in this process of sinking deeper into each mystery. Herbert O’Driscoll’s wonderful book, Portrait of a Woman (1996), I have found particularly helpful. There are, however, many other commentaries easily available on the internet. Here is a portion of a feminist meditation on the rosary that I have found very helpful and interesting. Here, as part of a larger meditation on all of the mysteries of the rosary, the author reflects on the fifth Joyful mystery:

Anyone who has ever lost a child in a department store can relate to the fifth joyful mystery—the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. Consider the situation: It is the time of the Passover festival. Mary, Joseph, and 12-year-old Jesus have traveled from tiny Nazareth to the bustling city. Mary turns around, the boy has disappeared. I think of the sweat pouring down her back and between her breasts as she runs up and down the strange streets, searching every face for a clue, unable to find her beloved child. I hear street music; smell the food being sold by the vendors, see the goods being hawked—the temple doves, the fruits of the sacrifice. He is nowhere. And then, she finds him calmly sitting amidst the rabbis, who are amazed at his learning. I feel her beating heart. And the moment of rage that comes so hard upon the moment of relief. “Why were you concerned? Did you not know I was about my father's business?” The impulse to strike the child for being what my mother would have called wise. The wise child, with a wise answer, in both senses of the term. It is an answer that does not take into consideration her terror, the possibility of her loss: I must be about my father's business. You, mother, are my past. She is silent, because of course there is nothing for her to say. She knows he is right. He is no longer her child. How as feminists do we understand this thoughtless child's rejection of the world and the way of the mother? Perhaps by accepting the terrible truth: that in creating strong children, we automatically deprive ourselves of their company; that in being strong, we test ourselves, challenge ourselves, set ourselves in the midst of the elders and claim our own wisdom. During this mystery I become a supplicant: Keep my children safe, keep my children safe, I pray over and over, with each Hail Mary. Perhaps by the eighth Hail Mary I am able to enlarge my supplication: Keep all children safe. And perhaps there is a little room here for gratitude—gratitude for our tradition, which is one of concern for the private anguish and the larger terror of being lost in the larger world. (Mary Gordon, “The Feminist Rosary,” Boston College Magazine, Fall 2003, http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/fall_2003)



This is part of a lengthy, but very interesting and useful, reflection on all fifteen mysteries of the rosary—where the author stresses the fact that the gospel is “good news” not because it props up the assumptions of the privileged castes in church or society (e.g., bishops and clergy) but because it privileges—like the Magnificat of Mary—the most marginalized group (which, for most of human history, has consisted largely of women). The author concludes by saying that “to be a feminist is to put oneself firmly, because one has experienced injustice, on the side of justice. And if one is on the side of justice, one is on the side of the afflicted” (Gordon 2003). Thus, the rosary—far from being captive to the hierarchy or patriarchy that is often associated with Catholic Christianity—is really a way of recalling and living the urgency of the gospel, which challenges all of our human divisions and neat categories.

In my own use of the rosary, I have started to appreciate Holy Scripture as mystery in a way that moves beyond my former approach to the gospel texts, which was primarily through the lens of historical-critical method. By consciously trying to meditate, regularly, on the gospel accounts which make up most of the rosary (one could argue that the fourth and fifth Glorious mysteries have no scriptural basis, but there are simple substitutions for them), I have, in a sense, started to live these holy mysteries in my own life. In this way, the rosary has become, for me, a source of contact with God in everyday life.

Robert Ross, Toronto

Useful links:

How to recite the rosary
http://www.newadvent.org/images/rosary.pdf

Ecumenical/Anglican Prayer Beads
http://www.gigibeads.net/

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