The Rosary Prayer

Before we turn to the saints for instruction, we first should consider the meaning of the rosary itself. Surely no maxim serves as a better introduction to the rosary prayer than the celebrated admonition that Saint Benedict gives his monks concerning prompt response to the bell for the Divine Office: “Let nothing be preferred to the work of God.” We know that the solemn celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours—theopus Dei, or the work of God—forms the heart of the monastic life, and that its central place in the life of the monk or nun witnesses to the measureless importance that the Church assigns to the regular practice of prayer. Moreover, just as the Liturgy of the Hours establishes a rhythm of prayer for designated times of the day, so the rosary aims to develop a rhythm of personal recollection, one indeed that continues throughout every moment of the day. Some commentators even see the original one hundred and fifty Hail Marys that made up the rosary prayer prefigured in the same number of biblical psalms.

Our four principal guides are in agreement on the importance of developing a spiritual discipline that safeguards recollection. As fathers in the faith, they want to ensure that we maintain steadfastly the practice of the presence of God. In theRule, Saint Benedict counsels his monks “to give themselves frequently over to prayer.” Saint Bernard, in one of his sermons on the Song of Songs, tells his monks, “I listen willingly to the voice of the teacher who does not stir up applause for himself but compunction in me.” In hisLetter to All the Faithful, Saint Francis urges every Christian “to receive willingly the perfumed words of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and to put them into practice, for they are Spirit and life.” And Saint Dominic—so a certain Brother William of Montferrat testified during the saint’s canonization proceedings at Bologna—“avoided useless conversations and always spoke either with or about God.” Each of these exhortations urges the Christian believer to remember that recollection forms a serious part of the Christian life.

Popular piety associates devotion to the rosary with Saint Dominic’s fervent reliance on Our Lady’s maternal mediation. Though the “psalter of Our Lady,” as the rosary prayer was originally designated, probably was in use in Northern Europe as early as the twelfth century, the Dominican professor and preacher Alan de la Roche (1428–1475) should in all probability be credited for the fact that the rosary came under the suzerainty of the Dominican Order. He did this by encouraging the establishment of rosary confraternities, whose purpose was to incite devotion to Our Lady among both religious and lay persons. Since the fifteenth century, but especially after the nineteenth-century renewal of religious life in France, the family of Saint Dominic has claimed the rosary as a proper part of its spiritual heritage. Today, the best attestations of this legacy are found in the monasteries where Dominican nuns maintain a quasi-continuous recitation of the rosary, and in confraternities of lay people who are committed to praying the rosary daily.

The Dominican Blessed Jordan of Saxony used to say that the most beneficial prayer will be the one that moves the heart in the most beneficial way. As an authentic form of Christian prayer, the rosary directs both our minds and our hearts to God. The recitation of the rosary accomplishes these ends in an especially beneficial manner. Like the monastic practice of meditative reading, or thelectio, the rosary he