The Gospel on a rope

 

This beautiful Rosary is similar (in composition, i.e., beads on a rope) to the Pater Noster beads that I mentioned in the previous article. This Rosary was made by Rugged Rosaries, and they make very high quality and durable rosaries with military and first responders in mind. 

Let's talk about the construction of the rosary, in general not just the one in the photo. A normal rosary consists of 59 beads (5 for the opening prayers, 50 Ave Maria beads, and 4 Pater Noster beads one in between each decade). As previously mentioned, the Lay People, often illiterate, would pray memorized prayers such as the Our Father, Pater Noster in Latin, or the Hail Mary, Ave Maria in Latin, and they would keep count with the 150 Psalms the clergy would pray by keeping a string of beads with them. A string with 150 beads became cumbersome for some to carry, or the time to make 150 beads cost too much, so they would use a string with 50 beads on it, three times. 

For those who could not commit the whole Pater Noster memory would typically have the Ave Maria committed to memory, at the time it would have just the Angelic Salutation and the Elizabethan acknowledgement: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with You. Blessed art Thou, amongst women, and Blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus". "Ave Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus" in Latin. The addition of the Name of Jesus, was added in the 13th century as a means of codifying the culturally added "Fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christus. Amen." by Pope Urban IV. The second half of the Ave Maria , the petition prayer, did not come to fruition until the time of the Black Death was ravaging all of known civilization. The official addition is by the 14th or 15th Century and was formally recognized by St. Pope Pius V when he re-organized the Roman Breviary and promulgated the Council of Trent Documents and Catechism. The Prayer as a whole is:

(English): "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

(Latin): "Ave Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."

The string of the 50 beads used for the recitation of the Ave Maria, became what was known as the Marian Psalter, as it was the Marian Prayer used during the reading of the Psalter. Later on around the year 1208 St. Dominic de Guzman came on the scene to fight the heresy of the Albigensian (against the Cathars) who, like all heretics, just recycled some older already refuted argument (that of the Manicheans and Gnostics in general). Basically, they denied Christs' divinity, and the denial of the material world in all ways (including a denial of the body to the point of ritual suicide and murder). 

According to Catholic Tradition the story goes that after a few days of intense prayer and fasting the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Dominic with instructions for the original rosary made of 150 Ave Maria beads, 15 Pater Noster beads, and the original 15 mysteries on which was the life of Christ made clear in showing His Divinity, and Humanity. The Rosary went from a long 165 bead long rosary to a smaller 59 bead long rosary through the same evolution as the Breviary prayer beads. The 165 long bead rosaries are still used by some monastic orders, and you can order a 165 long bead rosary from Rugged Rosary; in fact the one at the top of the page is very similar to the one that was custom made for me (225 beads for the 20 mysteries)! 

However, historically the story has a slightly different story, and a much longer and arduous one. Historically the original mysteries of the 150 bead psalter used with the breviary were on the Second Coming of Christ and the General Judgement at the end times. These mysteries were added by a Carthusian monk named St. Dominic of Prussia, and it was this particular Dominic that arranged the rosary to be a combination of one Pater Noster and ten Ave Maria beads with the mystery attached to it. There was a cultural adaptation that included a mystery per Ave Maria bead centered around a general mystery on the Pater Noster bead. This was a format similar to the scriptural rosary that I will be walking us through in this blog. This practice, due to myriad issues such as illiteracy, lack of funding to reproduce the words on paper, or the art works for each mystery, this form of many mysteries fell out of practice. Eventually the rosary as a whole fell out of practice in many areas due to many of the same reasons previously listed, but also due to disease (the black death) and war. Later on when Blessed Alain de la Roche (Alanus de Rupe) during the celebration of the Mass was called by Jesus in the Eucharist, and the Blessed Virgin Mary in a dream to preach the rosary and reestablish the Confraternity of the Rosary. 

By this time in the late 1400's the development of the Marian mysteries were culturally around and later established by Pope St. Pius V  in the mid 1500s. St. Pius V requested all Christians (Catholics and Protestants, roughly a century after Martin Luther split from the Catholic Church) to pray the Rosary for the victory of Christendom, (212 ships and 60,000 men total), over the Turkish Mohammedans, (278 ships, 80,000 men), who greatly outnumbered and out skilled the Catholics in the naval battle at Lepanto. St. Pius V had received a vision of their victory the day of the battle (news of the naval victory came almost two weeks later by courier on horseback).

The original 15 Mysteries are the 5 Joyful Mysteries, 5 Sorrowful Mysteries, and 5 Glorious Mysteries. The Luminous Mysteries were later added by St. Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae. 

The modern Rosary follows the suit of the documents at the bottom of the Rosary page. The prayers in a standard Rosary has the Apostle's Creed, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Gloria Patri, and the Fatima Prayer. The Fatima Prayer is one of the seven prayers given to the shepherd children at the Fatima apparitions in Fatima Portugal. The Fatima prayer was added to the end of every decade before the Gloria Patri at the request of Our Lady and it goes like this:

(English): "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy Mercy. Amen."

(Latin): "O mi Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, libera nos ab igne inferni, conduc in caelum omnes animas, praesertim illas quae maxime indigent misericoridia tua. Amen."

The traditional prayer schedule for the Rosary with the 15 mysteries is:

• Sunday: Glorious
• Monday: Joyful (Sundays during Advent, Christmastide, and after Epiphany)
• Tuesday: Sorrowful
• Wednesday: Glorious (Sundays of Eastertide and after Pentecost)
• Thursday: Joyful
• Friday: Sorrowful (Sundays of Septuagesima & Lent)
• Saturday: Glorious

The current prayer schedule for the Rosary with the 20 mysteries is:

• Sunday: Glorious
• Monday: Joyful (Sundays during Advent and Christmastide)
• Tuesday: Sorrowful
• Wednesday: Glorious (Sundays of Eastertide and after Pentecost)
• Thursday: Luminous
• Friday: Sorrowful (Ash Wednesday and Sundays Lent)
• Saturday: Joyful

So with the Rosary now formed to the modern version, let us get in depth with the mysteries themselves and grow closer to Jesus and Mary through meditating on His mysteries of Her Rosary!