Why do we pray the rosary

Jesus came to establish His kingdom based on the kingdom of King David. The light bulb went on for me. She listens to the petitions of the people, you and me, and whispers them into the ear of her Son. It gave me such consolation to think that Mary is interceding for me, her son, to Jesus, her Son! Now that is what I think about when I pray the rosary every day. I lift up all of the people in my life to Mary and entrust them to her maternal care, knowing that Jesus is listening as well.

Just as I ask people on earth to pray for me, I ask Mary and the saints to pray for me as well. And what better intercessor in heaven do we have than Mary? We meditate on the mysteries of Jesus, based in the Gospels, from the Annunciation through the resurrection.

The Our Father is the prayer that Jesus taught us. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.

It is interesting that the Blessed Mother appeared in the St. Anthony Church at Fatima to seven-year-old Jacinta, one of the Fatima seers. There she taught Jacinta how to meditate on the mysteries of the rosary by showing her 15 tableaus pictures of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries.

Mary taught her to meditate on the mysteries by forming images of the mysteries in her mind as she prayed the Hail Marys. Praying the decades 10 Hail Marys of the rosary is not necessarily about focusing on the meaning of each word of each prayer. Rather it is more about pondering the mystery for that decade. For example, the first sorrowful mystery is the Agony in the Garden. While a person says the 10 Hail Marys for that decade they might think about how Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and what Jesus said and did there.

To do this it helps to know the Gospel passages regarding the mysteries. The rosary is a prayer of the gospels as we not only meditate on the gospel scene, but most of the prayers are also taken from Scripture verses. While meditation is a very good form of prayer, and even necessary, contemplation is a higher form of prayer.

Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross are both experts on contemplative prayer. They not only experienced it but taught about it in their writings.

They said that contemplation is not something we can produce through a method or when we want to, but is given by God and is a gift of God. Also called "infused contemplation", it is something we can't produce, nor can we prolong it, since it is God's action. The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" in defines contemplation in this way: "Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus.

This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men. Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the 'interior knowledge of our Lord,' the more to love him and follow him.

Some of the saints have said that if we are meditating or praying vocally and feel God is leading us to contemplation, that we should allow this to happen rather than trying to force ourselves to meditate at that time or finish our devotions if we run out of time. Along these lines, the "Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena" in the section called A Treatise of Prayer, said something which directly applies to any devotional prayer including the rosary.

Here is a quote of what the Lord told her while in ecstasy:. She should not do so, for, in so doing, she yields to a deception of the Devil. The moment she feels her mind disposed by My visitation, in the many ways I have told you, she should abandon vocal prayer; then, My visitation past, if there be time, she can resume the vocal prayers which she had resolved to say, but if she has not time to complete them, she ought not on that account to be troubled or suffer annoyance and confusion of mind; of course provided that it were not the Divine office which clerics and religious are bound and obliged to say under penalty of offending Me, for, they must, until death, say their office.

But if they, at the hour appointed for saying it, should feel their minds drawn and raised by desire, they should so arrange as to say it before or after My visitation, so that the debt of rendering the office be not omitted. But, in any other case, vocal prayer should be immediately abandoned for the said cause. In this way the unfathomable riches of these mysteries are disclosed. Pope Francis has often said he prays the rosary every day.

In , I had the chance to meet Pope Francis with a group of priests after a Wednesday audience. After posing for a photo with us he pulled his rosary out of his pocket and held it up to us, and with great insistence urged us to pray the rosary and not to forget to pray for him. Let us join Pope Francis in this month of October and pray together the rosary for peace in our world, in our families, in our Church. Let us pray for deliverance from the pandemic and conversion of hearts back to God.

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