What Is the Rosary?

When I was a child, if someone had asked me, “What is the Rosary?” I would’ve probably said that it is a pretty piece of Catholic jewelry that people are supposed to wear around their necks when they went to Church.  I used to love to hold the beads up to the sunlight and marvel at the way they seemed to sparkle in my hands.  I thought of the Rosary as a symbol of my faith and I had some vague sense that it had to do with committing to a long period of time filled with boring repetition of prayers and sitting still to the point of discomfort under the watchful eye of my mother.

Looking back, I have to smile at my innocent cluelessness.  I had too many notions and misconceptions that clogged the real truth.  The Rosary is so much more than a beaded necklace or a symbol of the Catholic faith!  And it certainly isn’t meant to be a monotonous recitation of prayers that causes restlessness and irritability in a person.  (It doesn’t take more than 25 minutes out of the whole day.)  So what is the Rosary?  The Rosary is the prayer of the Gospel; the life of Jesus Christ as seen through the eyes of His mother, the Virgin Mary.

Who Is the Virgin Mary?

The Virgin Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ.  The Rosary is her prayer of predilection.  You can’t have the Rosary without the Blessed Virgin Mary and you can’t have the Blessed Virgin Mary without the Rosary.  We are strongly encouraged to turn to Our Lady as our powerful intercessor because she is the one who brings all of our needs and requests to her Son, Jesus.

It is unfortunate that many people (even Catholics) seem to have this insane aversion to allowing Our Lady to intercede for us when praying to God.  They have this bizarre misconception that by devoting ourselves to the Blessed Mother with the intention of finding favor with Jesus Christ we are somehow abusing  our worship of the Lord and offending Him.  They couldn’t be any further from the truth!  After all, it is through Mary that we find favor with the Lord.

Before I started this blog I prayed to the Holy Spirit to give me the insight and direction that I need in order to know what to say, how to say it and when.  The answer I received was that I need to keep this simple.  I think sometimes we think that when something is simple it can’t possibly be effective or have any real depth of meaning.  Well, let’s turn that thought around and keep it simple anyway and see what happens!  What is the Rosary?  It’s the simplest prayer with the longest echo in Heaven.

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