The Rosary in the Today of Salvation

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Theology of the ‘Mysteries’

Jesus, in the profound abyss of His divine identity, *surpasses all knowledge* (Eph 3:19). But this unfathomable Mystery is revealed in the concrete reality of His historical existence. In those fully human traits, when the baby Jesus rejoiced or suffered, when He grew up among His peers, within the family and work, and even more so when His public life displays His wisdom and miraculous power, the life of Jesus is the place where the Eternal flows into time. Only through encountering the humanity of Jesus, in His ‘mysteries’, can we grasp His Mystery.This principle is theologically decisive. I would even say that on the subject of Christ’s ‘mysteries’ lies the authenticity of Christology. It needs to be reaffirmed, at a time like ours, when, after rediscovering, with ‘christocentrism’, also the importance of His ‘mysteries’, there has been a temptation to veer away from this main path. A push in this direction came from certain trends in biblical exegesis, which cast a great suspicion over the historicity and reliability of many pages of the Gospels.In fact, regarding a traditional reading that also assumed the details and sought the most ingenious ways to harmonize the diversities between the Gospels, today it is a scientifically established fact, and also accepted by the Magisterium, that the evangelical texts do not aim to offer a detailed chronicle, nor even to constitute a true ‘biography’ of Jesus, but rather to present Him through a catechetical lens, in the light of faith and the pastoral concerns of the announcement. Unfortunately, this awareness was largely marked, if not dominated, by the radicalism of a rationalistic stance, which affirmed a clear separation between the ‘historical Jesus’ and the ‘Christ of faith’.If that were true, it would make no sense to spend time contemplating the ‘mysteries’: our gaze would get lost in the shifting sands of a criticism that rarely finds historical certainty in what the Gospel recounts. But the Magisterium of the Church and another exegetical current have concurred in affirming that the Gospels do offer, indeed, a reading of faith, but respectful of the substantial historical unfolding of Christ’s life. It is worth emphasizing ‘substantial’, since it is undeniable, from a contextual examination of the evangelical texts, that they do not aim to provide an exact and complete recognition of the details, as we would expect from a historically documented research today, but rather value the documentary material according to specific theological and catechetical interests.However, this does not detract, *and this is the decisive point!*, from their concern to faithfully reconstruct what happened. The perspective of faith does not distort events but allows us to penetrate them more deeply. From the scenes of the mysteries, even those of childhood proposed in the Rosary as mysteries of joy, we can trust. These scenes can be the object of our meditation and prayer. When the *Catechism of the Catholic Church* invites us to contemplate the ‘mysteries’ of Christ, and when Pope John Paul II relaunches the ‘mysteries’ of the Rosary, the Church’s confidence in the substantial historicity of the Gospels emerges.Another great temptation of theology in our time lies along one of its most beautiful and suggestive paths, as is the one of inter-religious dialogue. A legitimate, and even obligatory, dialogue encouraged by the Council, and founded on the premise that salvation is universal and God reaches out to man and is found by him through many paths.*What is Christ’s role in this inter-religious dialogue horizon?*The Magisterium, in these decades of inter-religious dialogue, has done nothing but reaffirm it: salvation is indeed universal, and the paths to salvation are numerous. But the ‘Savior’ is unique. The many paths can only be derivations from Him, radiations of a single light. Jesus, in the concrete reality of His divine-human mystery, through the Spirit that proceeds from Him, is the point where all the threads of creation and redemption converge. It is clear that only a strong conviction about this point of Christian dogma can justify a contemplative practice like that of the Rosary, which is entirely expressed in fixing one’s gaze on Christ.The RosaryThe Rosary consolidates, on the spiritual and pastoral level, this ecclesial testimony at a time when, with the best dialogical intentions, it tends to lose strength. Let all the people of God be invited to repeat, with the Ave Maria, the name of Jesus. The Rosary helps us to breathe fully the faith of the Church in Christ, the unique and universal Savior. And for this faith to have all its density and depth, there is nothing more decisive than passing through Mary. Calling her countless times, as the Rosary invites us to do, with the title of Mother of God, Theotokos, the title around which in antiquity a battle raged and which the Council of Ephesus (431) consecrated in defense, not so much and not only of a Marian privilege, but precisely of the Christological faith, which implies, unless we recognize, in that very face of the Son of Mary of Nazareth, our God and our Savior?When the presence of the Theotokos, the Mother of God, weakens in piety, the face of the Son also becomes evanescent. Just as in ancient Euclidean geometry two points determine a straight line, one might say the same of the Christological dogma: to affirm fully the divine identity of the concrete man, ‘Jesus’, there is nothing more precise than to call Him ‘Son of God’, at the same time calling Mary ‘Mother of God’.The first title, taken alone, could indeed be interpreted in a more generic sense, as is sometimes attempted, reducing it to the meaning of any ‘epiphany of the divine‘, among the many that, even in other religions, are affirmed through various figures of God’s men. But the title of ‘Mother of God‘ is too strong and, I would say, too ‘provocative‘ to be mistaken: since God, as God, cannot have a Mother, the title of ‘Mother of God‘ makes sense because Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, is God, having the Word assumed ‘hypostatically‘, as a person, the humanity born of the Virgin.‘Theotokos’ immediately refers to the hypostatic union, stating the personal belonging to the eternal Word of the concrete human nature formed in Mary’s womb. ‘Mother of God, pray for us…’. While the Rosary makes us repeat this supplication, and the Christology of the Creed that is confessed, takes root in our sense of faith, and makes us adore Jesus as ‘true God of true God, begotten, not made, of the same substance as the Father‘.The relevance of the mysteryIf all this is true, it also follows that the meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary should be made as an experience in the present, of the salvific power of Christ. The Rosary was born in a historical moment when Christian theology and spirituality were particularly attentive to the humanity of Christ, contemplated in the mysteries of his earthly life. It was the fruit of a monastic spirituality, later transferred to the mendicant orders, which made of the contemplation of Jesus’ humanity the primary instrument of spiritual ascension, inspiring an attitude of affection and tenderness towards the Savior, in the invocation of his holy name.When Saint Francis contemplates the birth of Jesus in the manger of Greccio, or with the stigmata, he repeats in himself the pain and love of the Crucified, moving within this spirit of spirituality. A similar process, though with different emphases, is found in the Dominican tradition. Both theological lines emphasized the salvific value of the Redeemer’s humanity. Saint Thomas illustrated this from a perspective known as ‘christology from above‘, that is, from the perspective of the Word made flesh in Mary’s womb. From this perspective, Christ’s human nature is considered ‘instrument‘ of the divine Word. ‘What does this imply?‘That all things, even the smallest in the human life of Christ, acquire a value of salvation for us, because they have all the value of the divine Word expressed in them. Saint Thomas says: «All things that were done in the flesh of Christ were salutary for us because of the divinity united». And further: «All the actions and passions of Christ operate instrumentally by the virtue of the divinity for the salvation of humanity». Therefore, here is a very important aspect of the Rosary: in the mysteries of Christ, we do not simply go back to a historical fact, an event of the past, but we go back to an event that, in some way, is realized «today», and today it releases all its salvific power.When we place ourselves in contemplation of the birth of Jesus, or his baptism, or his agony in Gethsemane, or his scourging, through the eternal present of the Word, in which we immerse ourselves, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we in some way reach that historical moment, or rather, that historical moment reaches us, and we can enjoy all its salvific power as if that event were happening today. Scripture substantially goes in the same direction with the concept of «memorial», a remembrance that «actualizes» the salvific events.Remembering the Exodus is to revive it, as remembering the Pasch of Jesus is to revive it. In the liturgy, and especially in the Eucharist, this principle finds its fullest expression. It is not a rhetorical expression, that which the liturgy makes us repeat: «Today for us was born the Savior», «Today Christ rose». But in the power of the Spirit that «reminds» us of Christ (cf. Jn 14:26), this also holds true, in some way, every time, in meditation as well as in life, we place ourselves before the Mystery of the Savior. The Rosary is an immersion in the today of salvation.Dwelling in the MysteryThe inclusion in the Rosary of the mysteries of light, which refer to the public life of the Savior from his baptism to the institution of the Eucharist, will remain a landmark in the history of this prayer. With this integration, one can say that truly the whole course of Christ’s life passes before the eyes of the pray-er. Twenty mysteries, therefore, twenty scenes proposed for contemplation. They are not the whole Gospel. They cannot replace it.The Pope emphasized that meditation on the Rosary in no way intends to compete with lectio divina, that is, direct meditation on the Gospel, where the words of the sacred text, from the first to the last, and in the variety of evangelical traditions, become listening, assimilation, and light for life. Therefore, the Rosary does not replace lectio divina. On the contrary, it presupposes and promotes it. This is even more important to reaffirm in an era when the People of God, also thanks to the impetus given in this regard by Vatican II, are progressively regaining familiarity with the Word of God.The relaunch of the Rosary, even with the caution of a renewed biblical emphasis, would be a step backward if practiced in replacement of the immediate and continuous encounter with the Word. Stating this clearly, one must add that the break of the Rosary in the encounter with the Word has its specificity that wonderfully integrates lectio divina and almost becomes a special path. If it selects, from the evangelical landscape, only twenty scenes, it does so not to impoverish the landscape, but to allow focus of the contemplative gaze.It is as if, in a rich garden of flowers, after having given an overview, we focused on this or that flower to savor its beauty up close. The twenty mysteries chosen, distributed over various cycles, are like a privileged path in this garden of the spirit. The Rosary is a space, more than a way. To my mind, it is both space and path. The soul that walks through the mysteries dwells in the Mystery.Step by step, the twenty mysteries become the supernatural habitat, the landscape in which the Christian lives, returning and revisiting his steps, until the mystery is perfectly assimilated, and one can say with the same force of the Apostle Paul: I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20). A transformative path. Strokes of God’s Spirit that sketch on our spirit the features of Christ. Ascent to the mountain of transfiguration, where the face of Christ is revealed and transforms us in His image, from glory to glory, according to the action of the Lord’s Spirit (cf. 2 Cor 3:18).Rosary and EucharistIf we understand the Rosary in this way, we also understand what Sister Lúcia, the seer of Fátima, wrote in a letter of September 16, 1970: The Rosary, after the sacred liturgy of the Eucharist, is the prayer that best leads us back to the spirit of the mysteries of faith, hope, and charity. By saying this, she moves in the same line as Blessed Bartolo Longo, who, in an article of 1914 titled The Rosary and the Eucharist, argued:

None of devotion is like that of the Holy Crown prepares so well for the Eucharist, ignites in our soul the love for it, awakens desire. The Rosary merely reminds us of Jesus’ life, but in the Most Holy Sacrament this life perpetually renews its eternal cycle. Who would be content to meditate only on Jesus’ life in the Rosary, if they can live it with Him in the Eucharist? Who would be satisfied with the shadow, if they can have the light? Who would be content with images and memories, if they can possess life? The Rosary, therefore, leads in a gentle, almost imperceptible way to the Most Holy Sacrament: whoever approaches Jesus with thought also feels the need to approach Him in reality. Whoever knows Jesus cannot help but love Him, but on the other hand, whoever begins to love Him truly cannot renounce possessing Him.

If, in the years of the Council, rediscovering rightly the Liturgy and its peak in the Eucharist, we were tempted to do so at the cost of the Rosary, it is time to overcome this temptation. In the symphony of prayer and Christian spirituality, it is two requirements and two complementary moments. The Eucharist is at the center and the apex. But the Rosary fulfills a task of first order: that of preparing the ground on a contemplative path saturated with ‘love’ for Christ. The Rosary leads to the Eucharist.

If we have so often repeated, with our gaze fixed on Jesus in Mary’s arms, ‘blessed be the fruit of your womb‘, how not to feel the need to ‘feed‘ from that fruit?

If we do not feel this need, it is a sign that we ‘mumble’, but we do not pray! And after having eaten the ‘fruit‘ from Mary’s womb, do we not feel the need for it to mold all the folds of our being, so that our life becomes ‘eucharistic’ like that of the Holy Virgin?

It is sad to note how often the Eucharist is received without feeling the need, after such a great event, to remain in the adoring silence of contemplation. The ‘goodbyes’ from our Masses, often hurried and noisy, are an indication of a tendency to banalize the Eucharist. It is necessary that the Eucharist itself be ‘re-conceptualized‘, prepared and ‘reverberated‘ through the meditative exercise, and not by chance, Saint John Paul II proposed it to meditation on the Rosary as the fifth of the mysteries of light.

It is significant, moreover, that in the Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, the Pope emphasizes that the Eucharist is the “sacrament of unity” and “the source and summit of the whole Christian life.”In the heart of the Year of the Rosary, He dedicated a chapter to Mary, the eucharistic woman. This is our ideal: not just to live from the Eucharist, but to become the Eucharist. It is not enough, to become such, to have merely the celebration: the Eucharist needs its time of resonance in life, the time of assimilation. The spiritual food, no less than the material, needs to be assimilated! The Rosary, certainly not exclusively, but with a particular effectiveness, assists this process of our spiritual journey.A word about indulgencesIn this horizon of today’s salvation, one cannot fail to speak also about the tradition that saw the Church apply indulgences to the Rosary, as well as to Rosary Confreries. This is, in fact, a topic that, in pastoral practice, is not simple to illustrate, since, in the sensitivity of uncathechized faithful, the word indulgence is often attributed an improper meaning, and the conditions for obtaining it are perceived as mechanical and automatic, which certainly does not correspond to the Church’s thought.Indeed, frequently, when one speaks of indulgence, many faithful have a feeling of discount, similar to that one has regarding commercial prices or judicial penalties. Indulgence is, on the contrary, a gift that, far from implying a discount in the sense of disengagement, requires, on the contrary, a greater effort in the pursuit of holiness. It is a superabundance of grace that, if received by us, liberates the soul from the residues that sin leaves in us even after it has been forgiven.It is a help for us to totally detach ourselves from ourselves to adhere perfectly to God. A help offered through the ministry of mercy that the Church has received, being able to count on the spiritual treasure of Christ’s merits, operative also in those who have perfectly associated themselves with Him. In the communion of the unique body of Christ, these merits obtain flows of grace to sustain the path of holiness of the weaker members.But then one sees how little it would serve to limit oneself to the external conditions for obtaining the indulgence. The fundamental condition is to detach from the slightest affection for sin, finally, the choice of holiness. The Rosary, fully understood, with its meditative structure, its Christological character, its orientation towards a commitment to life, can help the faithful to mature this choice, thus placing the decisive condition for the gift of indulgence to be truly effective.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and the Graduate Program in Mariology.Regarding the Rosary as a current and effective prayer in the history of salvation, refer to the Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus by Pope Paul VI.