Dear Rosarians,
Love this thread - and any thread dealing with the Most Holy Rosary!!
With respect to the meditations, St Louis de Montfort offered a number of suggestions as to the “how” in praying the Rosary which are online and we may google them.
However, there is a method that I find is the best one of all, that being the inclusion of a word or words after the Name of Jesus in the Hail Mary to indicate the Mystery being considered. That word or set of a few words could be unchanging for the entire decade, or else one may vary them. St Louis offers his own version, but we can create ours.
In my experience, I like to focus on the words associated with the Angelus in praying the Mystery of the Annunciation. For the Visitation, one may take phrases from our Lady’s Magnificat with a different phrase for each Hail Mary. The same is true for the Mystery of the Presentation in the Temple or Meeting of our Lord with the Song of Simeon. Lots of phrases for the Mystery of the Nativity of our Lord/Christmas. The finding in the Temple is all about this Sorrow of our Lady and her joy in finding Him Who “must be about His Father’s affairs.”
The luminous mysteries contain a wealth of meditations, with Trinitarian reflections on the Baptism in the River Jordan and the Transfiguration where the Holy Spirit comes to rest on the Son in the form of a dove and then as a bright cloud. The wedding at Cana is an opportunity to reflect on how Christ gives us His Mother to be our intercessor and also the Eucharistic theme of the wine “Jesus, with Whom you noursh us in Holy Communion.”
One may use the Beatitudes to fulfill the decade of the mission of Christ the Teacher. Then the Holy Eucharist mystery “Who gave us His Body and Blood in Holy Communion” etc.
The Sorrowful Mysteries can be augmented with phrases reflecting the Stations of the Cross, the seven Words of Christ from the Cross etc.
Then the Glorious Mysteries with their own rich themes for phrases.
The Hail Mary then is a true “Jesus Prayer” where our Lady takes us by the hand and leads us into a reflection on the life of her Son. Her closeness to her Son becomes our closeness.
The inclusion of the Luminous Mysteries by Pope John Paul II did not arise with him, but with a Maltese saint, Bl. Fr. Preca who first developed them. In the Orthodox Rule of the Theotokos, some of the luminous mysteries were always included.
It is true that the 150 Hail Mary’s were intended to reflect the 150 Psalms, the fact is that the decade is what the Rosary is primarily based on, the number ten corresponding to the ten strings of the Psalter.
I have never understood certain traditionalist negative reactions to the inclusion of the Luminous Mysteries. I’ve read a number of their arguments which are unconvincing.
In fact, the truly traditionalist view on the Rosary is that 15 decades have historically been considered the “basic” amount that one should say a day. Traditional rosarians throughout history, including during the English Recusant times, have always done more than 15 decades. St Louis de Montfort, in his “True Devotion to Mary,” says the same - one should never be limited by the 15 decades. He includes an additional six or seven decades to our Lady to celebrate the years of her life on earth and other chaplets.
The English Recusant rosary confraternities and others used the decade, rather than the 150 Hail Mary’s as the standard of their prayer. So there were rosaries of 12 decades for the 12 Apostles, seven decades for the seven Bloodsheddings of our Lord, the seven Joys and seven Sorrows of our Lady, five decades for the Five Wounds of our Lord, 9 decades for the 9 choirs of Angels and so on.
And twenty decades with meditated mysteries on the life of our Lord are not a burden if we divide them up into groups of five said at different times of the day i.e. the Joyful mysteries upon arising in the morning then throughout the day (one could do a decade at the start of every hour as well) ending with the last chaplet before bed. Not a problem at all, where there is a will, there is a way.
The Eastern Psalter is divided into twenty “Kathismata” or sections and so twenty mysteries of the Rosary reflects well on that. But we will find ourselves in situations when we will have time to say even more.
FYI, my wife and I were going to go on a boat cruise in the Caribbean some years back and spent the day in Ft Lauderdale where “she who must be obeyed” went shopping.
I had lots of time so saying decades on a hand rosary (or “decima” as they called them) helped pass the time. It was the only time in my life that I got through over 50 decades of the rosary, reflecting on various mysteries. I say this not as a boast, but to indicate that there is always time that we often waste when we could be doing something spiritually useful.
After our boat cruise, everyone on board was informed that just prior to leaving the docks, five “security guards” were arrested as they were not security guards (but terrorists).
I ascribe my being here today to write these lines to our Lady’s intercession and to her Rosary decades.
Let’s try to do the 20 decades every day - the rewards are simply marvelous!!
Alex
