The Rosary - Repetition and Variation

(the favourite one)

 

 Exactly when the Rosary prayer was first created is subject to debate, but there seems general agreement that the basic structure began to emerge in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries and developed steadily ever since, with the latest accretion about ten years ago when Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries.

Of course, most of the Hail Mary is taken directly from the New Testament. It is the structured sequence of it and the accompanying prayers, the Apostles' Creed, the Our Father and the Gloria, and their interaction with the developing Mysteries, that have evolved over the last few hundred years.

(the Sundays/Holy Days one)

One suggestion is that the present form of the Rosary developed from the medieval practise of monks who prayed the 150 psalms each day. Since their lay brethren could not read Latin they were unable to pray the psalms. Instead, they recited the Our Father 150 times a day instead, using a string of 150 beads to keep their place. True or not, it’s a nice story!

And it also raises the question of repetition, an aspect of the Rosary that is often criticised. If we say a full Rosary we will be saying the Hail Mary more than 200 times (although, more usually, one set of mysteries and 50 Hail Marys is said daily). Didn’t Jesus say that one should not babble like pagans with ‘many words’ (Matthew 6:7)?

(the backup one)

 

In fact, it is quite clear that Jesus wanted his listeners to avoid thoughtless and vain repetition, the idea that there is a magic effect in repeating certain words or phrases like a mantra. He taught that the Father knows what we need before we ask for it but this does not make prayer superfluous – indeed Jesus gave us the Our Father as our prayer model.
Interestingly, there is plenty of evidence that repeating prayers is ‘normal’ and has a long history.

A few examples: Jesus attended Passover, which has fixed prayers that are repeated annually;  He worshiped with the book of Psalms, which is a collection of hymns and prayers that is used repeatedly; He said the same prayer three times in the Garden of Gethsemane ( Matthew 26: 44); the Didache -  parts of which are likely older than parts of the New Testament – instructs the first Christians to pray the Our Father three times a day; early monks attempted to sing the entire psalter every week, and by the fifth century St. Benedict’s Rule had formalised psalms, prayers and readings into the Liturgy of the Hours; by the year 800, lay brothers in certain Benedictine monasteries were praying 50 Paternosters for the deceased; finally, in the book of Revelation 4:8 we read that the heavenly host repeats ‘Holy, Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was, and is, and is to come’ day and night.

The Rosary is not a prayer of words so much as a prayer of meditation, and in the complete Rosary we contemplate the incarnation, birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection and glory of Jesus. The individual mysteries form the background to the repeated prayers, blending with the words and striking their own resonances.

However, the conscious mind sometimes rebels – or mine certainly does – against the rhythmic repetition of the Hail Mary. The mind struggles to recall the meaning and significance of the individual words while contemplating the mystery. Too often, the conscious mind wanders, then stalls, there is a sort of time warp effect and one recovers consciousness, realising that a whole bunch of Hail Marys have just flowed past while the conscious mind was elsewhere.  

(the Lourdes souvenir one)

 

Over time, I found that some very minor changes to the prayers give enough variation to keep me grounded, while improving the quality of the prayer. Two examples:

Occasionally, with the Hail Mary itself, I introduce a variation to emphasise the particular status of the BV Mary (an innovation of value to former Calvinists who have inherited the view that attention to Mary diminishes the centrality of Christ) :

‘...Holy, holy, holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners, now and at the end of the world.’     

In the Glory Be I occasionally us the following formula to emphasise the separate contribution of the component parts of the Trinity:

‘Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son, Who died for us,
And to the Holy Spirit, Who is with us still,
As it was in the beginning.....’

 I’ve also learned the useful lesson that there must be limits to creative adaptation...Once, I considered making what I thought a minor ‘improvement’ to the Our Father, only to receive the very clear intuition that some prayers are already perfect!

Resources for the Rosary

For the last several years I’ve prayed the Rosary every night; the Joyful Mysteries on Monday and Saturday, the Sorrowful Mysteries on Tuesday and Friday, the Mysteries of Light on Thursday, and the Glorious Mysteries on Wednesday and Sunday.

Some evenings, especially when I’m tired or have had a glass of wine with dinner, it’s a struggle. The mind wanders and several Hail Mary’s pass in a blur, or I realise that I’ve lost my place in the Lord’s Prayer – what comes next? Did I remember to say the Glory Be for the previous decade (- and did I remember to add the Fatima prayer?). Did I say the ‘correct’ mystery for this particular evening?  And then I start to move down the slippery slope...Is there really any value in praying the rosary, isn’t it just meaningless repetition? Have I begun to treat it as a sort of magic rite? Am I doing it for the wrong reason - because I want a return from the effort – rather than doing it to praise and glorify the Creator, honour His mother and meditate on His birth, life, death and resurrection?

And then there are the rare evenings when the beads slip through the fingers. The prayers come easily and naturally, following each other with precision and perfect timing. More importantly, the words are rich with meaning, repetition stimulates rather than dulls, new insights blossom, emotions surge and ebb. The end, when it comes, always surprises, the sense of participating in something important and wonderful, tinged with a sense of loss.

But mostly there are the regular evenings, which fall somewhere between these two extremes. And that’s where I find reference materials most useful; particularly, different ways to pray the Rosary.

For travelling, there is the Rosary card produced by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a fold-out stiff card with all the prayers, the mysteries, scriptural quotations and instructions.

For regular use, I prefer a small, simple booklet that supports each prayer. I have about a dozen books and booklets that I cycle through to vary my approach, but I find that I use two particular small booklets for the great majority of the time. (I must admit that books with lengthy dissertations or explorations of the Rosary have a wonderfully calming effect - I’m soon asleep).

The first is ‘A Way to Pray the Rosary’ by Sister Mary Francis of the Poor Clares (McCrimmon Publishing, 0855976489). This is my favourite selection of scriptural quotations to accompany the individual Hail Marys. Appropriate, crisp, complete, indispensible.

 

The second is ‘Praying the Rosary with the Saints’ by Nick Donnelly (CTS, 9781860822582). Here, the 200 or so quotations are selected from 50 great saints, ranging from Saint Patrick to Blessed Mother Teresa, from the Curé of Ars to the founder of Opus Dei. Thought-provoking, meaty, humbling, pithy - even amusing!

Here are four of my favourites, one from each mystery:

JOYFUL - ‘Let us love God my brothers, let us love God. But let it be with the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brow.’ Vincent de Paul.

LIGHT – ‘He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness.’ Mother Teresa.

SORROWFUL – ‘Lord, where are Your friends? They have left You. This running away has been going on for twenty centuries.’ Josemaria Escriva.

GLORIOUS – ‘Though I die, as die I certainly shall, nevertheless I shall not for ever die, for I shall rise again.’ John Henry Newman.

From time to time I use other forms of Rosary prayer; meditation, dramatization, icons, praise, thanksgiving, reconciliation etc to support the decades of the Hail Mary.

 

If you haven’t tried it, why not try it? And stick with it. You’ll find that it’s habit-forming (in the nicest possible way!).