Rosary

Apr 22 2024

The Joyful Mysteries

The first part of the Rosary contains five mysteries: the first, the Annunciation of the archangel Gabriel to our Lady; the second the Visitation of our Lady to Saint Elizabeth; the third, the Nativity of Jesus Christ; the fourth, the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple and the purification of the Blessed Virgin; the fifth, the Finding of Jesus in the Temple among the doctors. These are called the Joyful Mysteries because of the joy which they gave to the whole universe. Our Lady and the angels were overwhelmed with joy the moment the Son of God became incarnate. Saint Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist were filled with joy by the visit of Jesus and Mary. Heaven and earth rejoiced at the birth of the Saviour. Holy Simeon felt great consolation and was filled with joy when he took the holy child into his arms. The doctors were lost in admiration and wonderment at the replies which Jesus gave; and who could express the joy of Mary and Joseph when they found Jesus after three days’ absence?

The above is an excerpt from The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis de Montfort.

The Joyful Mysteries

First Joyful Mystery: The Annunciation
“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” Luke 1:31

Second Joyful Mystery: The Visitation
When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke 1:41

Third Joyful Mystery: Nativity of Jesus Christ
[Mary] gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:7

Fourth Joyful Mystery: Presentation in the Temple
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. Luke 2:22

Fifth Joyful Mystery: Finding in the Temple
“How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Luke 2:49

We Invite You to Pray the Joyful Mysteries with Us

Apr 03 2023

Living the Triduum at Home

On the evening of Holy Thursday, the whole Church moves from Lent to the Sacred Paschal Triduum–the days from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday. These are the most important days of the year for through them we enter into the saving mysteries of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, we should try to enter into them with a particular attentiveness and devotion so that the graces the Lord merited for us through the mysteries that make up this time may bear abundant fruit in our lives. These days are not only concerned with the major liturgies in our churches though. They should also lead to a conversion of our lives, and as such they can impact every aspect of this time. From the way that we approach work to the practices we take up at home, these days can bear great fruit if we do our best to enter into them in everything that we do. To help draw this out, here are some practical recommendations on how the mysteries that make up the Triduum can guide us both in our churches and in our homes. Feel free to choose whichever ones you would like or other cultural customs that you or your family have found helpful. The whole goal is to enter more deeply into this sacred time. From our devotional practices to our culinary customs and to everything in between, these days can be rich with grace and lead to a flowering of holiness in our hearts and in our homes. May the Lord bring that about for you and your loved ones.

Download the guide

Download Living the Triduum at Home: A Practical Guide to Christian Living During the Sacred Paschal Triduum by Fr. Peter Martyr Yungwirth, O.P.

Apr 03 2023

Holy Week and the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary

In the upcoming liturgies of Holy Week, the Church recalls the final events of Jesus’s earthly life day by day, and, once the Triduum begins, even hour by hour. The Church makes this yearly commemoration of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus in order to give us the time to reflect more deeply on the meaning of these mysteries. One way of doing so is to meditate on these events with Mary, to look at them with her and from her perspective. The Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary give us one good way of following the events of Holy Week with Mary. In the Middle Ages, however, another Marian devotion sprang up that became much more closely associated with Holy Week. This was the devotion to our Lady of Sorrows, and in particular to the Seven Sorrows, or Seven Dolors, of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

We can see why this devotion became associated with Holy Week by looking at the Seven Sorrows themselves:

The prophecy of Simeon foretelling the Passion and Death of Jesus
The flight from Herod into Egypt
The loss of Jesus for three days
Meeting Jesus as he carried his cross to Calvary
Standing at the foot of the cross and witnessing the death of Jesus
Watching as the soldier pierced Jesus’s side with a lance and receiving his body from the cross
Seeing the body of Jesus buried in the tomb

Beginning with the very first sorrow, each of these is connected in some way, either directly or indirectly, to the Passion of Jesus. They also provide us with a unique Marian perspective on some part of this great mystery.

For example, consider the third sorrow. We typically think of this event from the perspective of the fifth Joyful Mystery, the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple. The third sorrow, however, focuses on the loss Mary experienced during the three days Jesus was separated from her and Joseph. These three days prefigure the three days Mary would be separated from Jesus while his body lay in the tomb.

Because of this intimate connection with the Passion, devotion to the Seven Sorrows became a common way for people to reflect on the mysteries of Holy Week. In fact, the devotion became so popular that, in 1727, Pope Benedict XIII instituted a universal feast commemorating the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Friday before Palm Sunday. With this, the Church officially recommended devotion to the Seven Sorrows as a privileged means of preparing for and entering into the commemoration of Jesus’s Passion and Resurrection during Holy Week.

Today, the Church no longer celebrates the feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Following the revision of the liturgical calendar, it was combined with Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15th in order to keep the focus of the final weeks of Lent directly on the events of the Passion. But the revision kept the connection between the Seven Sorrows and the Passion because the new feast directly follows that of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14th. Thus, reflecting on the events of Holy Week by meditating on the Seven Sorrows remains a great way to delve deeper into the meaning of Jesus’s Passion.

Lastly, the most common way of meditating on Mary’s sorrows is by reciting the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is similar in form to the standard Rosary.

Here’s how to pray the chaplet:

Begin by making the Sign of the Cross
Recite the Act of Contrition and say the optional Opening Prayer
Announce the First Sorrow
Say one Our Father and seven Hail Marys
Repeat (3) and (4) for each of the Sorrows
Say three Hail Marys in honor of the tears which Mary shed in her sorrows
Say the optional Closing Prayer and finish by making the Sign of the Cross

(The optional prayers, as well as short passages that can be used to announce the sorrows, are found on page 107 of the 1910 Raccolta.)

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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)

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This article was originally published in the dominicanajournal.org and was written by Brother Gregory Santy. Brother Gregory entered the Order of Preachers in 2018. He received a Licentiate in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America.

Mar 06 2023

To Scripture, Through the Rosary

You have likely heard that famous line from Saint Jerome’s commentary on Isaiah: “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ” (CCC 133).

It’s a bold claim and can be especially startling when we first hear it, but St. Jerome is hitting something right on the head: the truths we learn from Scripture really put us into contact with Christ, with the real and living God. That contact should not be fleeting. Once we cease to read Scripture, we are not forced to forget God—like the way someone is only in contact with the ocean as long as he is swimming in it. Christ ought to linger in our hearts. Our Lady is the model for this: hearing the mysterious words of the angel Gabriel, “Mary kept all these words, reflecting on them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). We could even say she “treasured” the angel’s words.

How can you follow St. Jerome in cherishing Christ in the Scriptures and imitate our Lady in lingering over the words of God? Pick up a rosary!

To begin with, the words themselves that we pray during the Rosary are drawn from Scripture (Mt 6:9-13; Lk 1:28, 42-43; Rom 11:36). But the other part of the Rosary—and sometimes the more difficult part—is the meditation on the “mysteries” of Christ. We are to ponder in our hearts the life of Christ and, frankly, there is no better way to do this than to have the words of Scripture inscribed upon our hearts.

I will give but one little example, and you will see that every mystery of the rosary can cast our minds “into the depths” (Lk 5:4). Let’s take the second Joyful Mystery, the Visitation, consisting of some 17 verses (Lk 1:39-56).

Consider the words St. Elizabeth spoke to our Lady: “And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Is not this indeed a supreme gift, that the sweet Mother of Jesus should wish to visit me? To be graced with the presence of the woman chosen by God to give human flesh to the Eternal Son: who am I to have merited such a prize? How deep is God’s love that he would send his mother to visit me—a prideful sinner—in this valley of tears!

Now, that is but one verse of the 17, and these are just a few thoughts that arise in my heart when I pray the rosary.

Each verse, phrase, image, and detail in the Gospels can take us right to the heart of Christ. If, while we pray the rosary, we are also aware of the very words of Scripture—which are like “honey from the rock” (Ps 81:17)—then our meditation will tend to be sweet, not dry. But we must have the words of Scripture inscribed upon our hearts, or at the very least, close at hand. Don’t be afraid to pass to and fro, from reading a passage of the Gospels to praying a decade of the rosary. The one will illumine the other.

A recently published example of what I’m talking about comes from one of the professors at the Dominican House of Studies, who just wrote a Eucharistic rosary meditation with Scriptural passages for each mystery. The chosen verses go beyond the obvious associations, and so draw our minds deeper into the Christocentric nature of Scripture (e.g., for the first Glorious Mystery, consider praying with Psalm 68: “May God arise; may his enemies be scattered…”).

St. Jerome counsels us to know Scripture in order to know Christ. With the help of our Lady’s rosary, we savor Scripture and so savor Christ himself. St. Jerome might not have prayed the rosary, but he would surely urge you to do so.

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This article was originally published in the dominicanajournal.org and was written by Brother Titus Mary Sanchez. Brother Titus Mary Sanchez is from Ft. Worth, TX. After studying business and history at Southern Methodist University, he entered the Order of Preachers in 2018.

Feb 15 2023

Join the 2023 Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage

Man is a pilgrim animal. Planted upon earth but destined for heaven, he must chart a path of peace through a perilous world. Classic Catholic devotion has long provided for man’s pilgrim needs by means of pilgrimage itself. What better way, really, to remind ourselves that we are pilgrims—to wrest ourselves free of contemporary comforts and rise to things eternal—than to do the very thing that we are: to make pilgrimage to a holy shrine, a prelude to the heavenly home prepared for us in the Father’s house.

This pilgrim practice has for its exemplar none less than God himself. Christ is the pilgrim par excellence. Son of God, he “came down from heaven.” He pilgrimed his way into and out of Egypt, then in and around Judea and Galilee and even into Samaria, and then—at last—Christ resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51) to offer his life on Calvary. Risen from the grave, he ascended to heaven so that we “might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before” (Preface I for the Ascension).

If pilgrimage is a work of prayer—a lifting of the mind and heart to God through the pilgrim’s arduous travels—there is indeed a prayer properly suited to our pilgrim state. It is both spiritual and material, devotional and contemplative, repetitive and diverse, flexibly long or short. It is the Rosary.

The Rosary lifts our feeble minds and stony hearts, through the medium of beads, to ponder Christ’s own pilgrimage, by which he purchased our heavenly home. Looking upon his joys and lights, sorrows and glories, we see our own in his saving mysteries. There is no situation in life unaccounted for by the Rosary because there is no situation in life unaccounted for by Christ and his grace, given in plenitude to his Blessed Mother. Through his merits and hers, that grace overflows to us, who are now made truly capable of imitating what this blessed prayer contains and so obtaining its promises.

If man is a pilgrim animal, and the Rosary is the paradigmatic pilgrim prayer, it is only right and just to unite the two. Thus, the 2023 Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage. A new initiative of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, the pilgrimage kicks off on January 30 with a nine-month novena to Our Lady. It culminates on September 30—the eve of Rosary Sunday—in our nation’s capital with a full-day, national event at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, located next to the campus of the Catholic University of America.

It is a thoroughly national affair to honor the Queen whose Son, the King of all nations, desires to bring all unto salvation. It is also a thoroughly Dominican affair, uniting America’s friars, numerous monasteries of cloistered nuns, thousands of apostolic sisters, and myriad parishes, apostolates, Lay Dominican chapters, and Rosary confraternities in prayer, preaching, and pilgrimage unto the praise of God and the salvation of souls. Simply, if you love Christ and his Mother—and the prayer of them both—this pilgrimage is for you.

How does one get involved? First, sign up to join in the monthly novena prayer, offered on the thirtieth day of each month from January 30 to September 30. Second, share the novena and its prayer cards with others. And third, inasmuch as you are able, make plans to join us for the main event in Washington, DC on September 30. It promises to be a day full of grace, drawing all who partake of it in any way yet closer to the One seated upon the throne of grace (Heb 4:16) and the crowned Lady (Rev 12:1) who stands at his side.

Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)

This article was originally published in the dominicanajournal.org and was written by Br. Charles Marie Rooney. Br. Charles entered the Order of Preachers in 2017. Raised in Darien, CT, he graduated from Duke University in 2016, where he completed a Program II major entitled “Markets, Society, and Personalism.” He then earned an M.A. in Philosophy at Maynooth University, Ireland in 2017, writing his thesis on Thomistic Personalism.