The Rosary in the Today of Salvation

The theology of the ‘mysteries’

Jesus, in the abyssal depth of His divine identity, ‘surpasses all knowledge‘ (cf. Eph 3:19). But this unfathomable Mystery of His emerges in the concreteness of His historical existence. In those fully human traits of His, when the child Jesus rejoiced or suffered, when He grew in all things like His contemporaries amid family and work, and naturally still more when His public life manifests His wisdom and thaumaturgic power, the life of Jesus is the place where the Eternal pours Himself out into time. Only through the encounter with the humanity of Jesus, in His ‘mysteries’, can we encounter His Mystery.

This principle is theologically decisive. I would even say that on the theme of the ‘mysteries’ of Christ an authentic Christology is decided. It must be reaffirmed in a theological age such as ours which, after having rediscovered, together with ‘Christocentrism’, also the importance of His ‘mysteries’, has been all the more tempted to turn aside from this main road. An impulse in this direction came from certain tendencies in biblical exegesis, which cast great suspicion on the historicity and reliability of many pages of the Gospels.

In fact, over against a traditional reading that took even the details as given and sought the most ingenious ways of harmonizing the divergences among the Gospels, it is today a scientifically established datum, accepted by the Magisterium as well, that the Gospel texts do not intend to offer a detailed chronicle, nor even to constitute a true ‘biography’ of Jesus, but are rather His catechetical presentation, in the light of the gaze of faith and of the pastoral concerns of proclamation. Unfortunately, this awareness has been largely marked, if not dominated, by the radicalism, of a rationalistic stamp, of those who have gone so far as to assert a clear separation between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’.

If this were true, it would make no sense to dwell on contemplating the ‘mysteries‘: our gaze would be lost in the quicksand of a criticism that very rarely finds any historical certainty in the things the Gospel recounts. But the Magisterium of the Church and another exegetical current have found themselves in agreement in affirming that the Gospels do indeed offer us a reading of faith, yet one respectful of the substantial historical unfolding of the life of Christ. ‘Substantial‘ is to be underlined, since it is incontestable, from the Gospel texts examined in context, that they do not intend to offer an exact and complete accounting of the details, such as we might today expect from documented historical research, but rather value the documentary material according to specific theological and catechetical interests.

This, however, does not take away, and this is the decisive point!, the fact that they are concerned to reconstruct faithfully what happened. The optic of faith does not deform the events, but allows us to penetrate them more deeply. In the scenes of the mysteries, including those of the infancy proposed in the Rosary as the joyful mysteries, we can place our trust. To these scenes our meditation and our prayer may go. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to meditate anew on the ‘mysteries’ of Christ, and when Saint 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 the theology of our time arises along one of its most beautiful and evocative paths, that of interreligious dialogue. A legitimate dialogue, and even an obligatory one, encouraged by the Council, and founded on the presupposition that salvation is universal and that God reaches man and lets Himself be found by him along many paths. What, within this horizon of dialogue, is the role of Christ?

The Magisterium, in these decades of interreligious dialogue, has done nothing other than reaffirm it: salvation is indeed universal, and the paths of salvation are countless. But the ‘Savior’ is one alone. The many paths can only be derivations of Him, irradiations of a single light. Jesus, in the concreteness of His divine-human mystery, through the Spirit who is diffused from Him, is the point at which all the threads of creation and redemption are joined. Clearly, only a firm conviction on this point of Christian dogma can justify a contemplative practice such as that of the Rosary, which is expressed entirely in fixing one’s gaze upon the face of Christ.

The way of Mary

The Rosary comes to consolidate, on the level of spiritual and pastoral practice, this ecclesial witness, at a moment when it tends, with the best of dialogical intentions, to lose force. May the whole people of God be invited to repeat, with the Hail Mary, the name of Jesus. The Rosary helps us to breathe fully the Church’s faith in Christ, the one and universal Savior. And for this faith to have all its density and depth, there is nothing more decisive than to pass through Mary. To call her countless times, as the Rosary invites us to do, by the title of Mother of God, Theotokos, the title around which the battle was fought in antiquity and which the Council of Ephesus (431) consecrated in defense not so much and not only of a Marian privilege, but properly in safeguard of Christological faith, what does this imply if not to recognize, in that very face of the son of Mary of Nazareth, our God and our Savior?

When the presence of the Theotòkos, the Mother of God, grows weak in piety, the face of the Son too becomes evanescent. Through two points, says the ancient postulate of Euclidean geometry, there passes one straight line, and one line only. The same could be said of 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‘, while at the same time calling Mary ‘Mother of God‘.

The first title, taken in isolation, could even be interpreted in a more generic sense, as is sometimes attempted, reducing it to the meaning of some ‘epiphany of the divine‘, among the many that, even in other religions, are affirmed through one or another face of the men of God. But the title ‘Mother of God‘ is too strong and, I would say, too ‘provocative‘, to be misunderstood: since God, as God, cannot have a Mother, the title ‘Mother of God‘ makes sense because Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, is God, the Word having assumed ‘hypostatically‘, as person, the humanity born of the Virgin.

The Theotòkos refers immediately to the hypostatic union, expressing the personal belonging to the eternal Word of the concrete human nature formed in the womb of Mary. ‘Mother of God, pray for us…’. While the Rosary makes us repeat this supplication, the Christology of the Creed that is thereby confessed takes root in our sense of faith and makes us adore Jesus as ‘true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father‘.

The present relevance of the mystery

If all this is true, one also understands how the meditation of the mysteries of the Rosary must be made as an experience, in the today, of the saving power of Christ. The Rosary was born at a historical moment in which Christian theology and spirituality showed themselves particularly attentive to the humanity of Christ, contemplated in the mysteries of His earthly life. It was the fruit of a monastic spirituality, later handed on to the mendicant Orders, which made the contemplation of the humanity of Jesus the primary instrument of spiritual ascent, inspiring an attitude of affection and tenderness toward the Savior, in the invocation of His holy name.

When Saint Francis contemplates the birth of Jesus in the Nativity scene at Greccio, or, with the stigmata, ‘repeats‘ in himself the pain and the love of the Crucified, he moves within this spirit of spirituality. An analogous process, though with different emphases, is found in the Dominican tradition. Both theological lines highlighted the saving value of the humanity of the Redeemer. Saint Thomas illustrated this from the perspective that is called ‘Christology from above‘, that is, from the perspective of the Word made flesh in the womb of Mary. In this perspective, the human nature of Christ is considered the ‘instrument‘ of the divine Word. What does this imply?

That all things, even the least, of the human life of Christ acquire a value of salvation for us, because they possess the whole value of the divine Word who is expressed in them. Saint Thomas says: “All the things that were accomplished in the flesh of Christ were salutary for us by virtue of the divinity united to it”. And again: “All the actions and passions of Christ work instrumentally, by the power of the divinity, for human salvation”. Here, then, is a very important aspect of the Rosary: in the mysteries of Christ one does not approach merely a historical fact, an event of the past, but an event that, in some way, is accomplished “today”, and today releases all its saving power.

When we place ourselves in contemplation of the birth of Jesus, or of His baptism, or of His agony in Gethsemane, or of His scourging, through the eternal present of the Word, into which we immerse ourselves in the power of the Holy Spirit, we in a certain way reach that historical moment, or rather, that historical moment reaches us, and we can enjoy all its saving power as if that event were taking place today. Scripture leads substantially in the same direction with the concept of “memorial”, a remembrance that “actualizes” the saving events.

To remember the Exodus is to relive it, just as to remember the Passover of Jesus is to relive it. In the liturgy, and especially in the Eucharist, this principle has its fullest realization. It is no rhetorical expression that the liturgy makes us repeat: “Today a Savior has been born for us”, “Today Christ is risen”. But in the power of the Spirit who “reminds” us of Christ (cf. Jn 14:26), this also holds, in some way, every time that, in meditation 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 mystery

The inclusion in the Rosary of the mysteries of light, which concern the public life of the Savior from the Baptism to the institution of the Eucharist, will remain a milestone in the history of this prayer. With this integration, it can be said that truly the whole course of the life of Christ passes before the eyes of the one who prays. Twenty mysteries, then, twenty scenes proposed for contemplation. They are not the whole Gospel. Nor can they replace it.

The Pope emphasized that the meditation of the Rosary in no way intends to compete with the lectio divina, that is, with the direct meditation of the Gospel, in which the words of the sacred text, from the first to the last, and in the variety of the Gospel traditions, become hearing, assimilation, light for life. ‘Therefore the Rosary does not replace the lectio divina. On the contrary, it presupposes and promotes it‘. And this is all the more important to reaffirm at a time when the people of God, thanks also to the impulse given in this direction by the Second Vatican Council, are progressively recovering familiarity with the Word of God.

The relaunching of the Rosary, even with the precaution of a renewed biblical emphasis, would be a step backward if it were practiced as a substitute for the immediate and continuous encounter with the Word. Having said this clearly, it must nevertheless be added that the ‘angle‘ of the Rosary, in the encounter with the Word, has its own specificity, which wonderfully complements the lectio divina and almost becomes a special path. If it selects only twenty scenes from the Gospel landscape, it does so not in order to ‘impoverish the landscape, but to allow the focusing‘ of the contemplative gaze.

It is as if, in a garden rich in flowers, after taking in an overall view, we were to concentrate now on this flower, now on that one, in order to savor its beauty up close. The twenty chosen mysteries, distributed across the various cycles, are like a privileged path through this garden of the spirit. The Rosary is a space, more than a ‘way‘. To my mind, it is both space and path. The two things complement each other. 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 to and revisiting his steps, until the mystery is perfectly ‘assimilated‘ and one can say with the same force as the Apostle Paul: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me‘ (Gal 2:20). A transforming path. Brushstrokes of the Spirit of God that trace in our spirit the features of Christ. An ascent to the mountain of the ‘transfiguration‘, where the face of Christ is revealed and transforms us into His image, from glory to glory, according to the action of the Spirit of the Lord (cf. 2 Cor 3:18).

Rosary and Eucharist

If we understand the Rosary in this way, we also understand what Sister Lucia, the seer of Fatima, wrote in a letter of September 16, 1970: “The Rosary, after the sacred eucharistic liturgy, is the prayer that most leads us back to the spirit of the mysteries of faith, hope, and charity”. In saying this, she moves along the same line as Blessed Bartolo Longo, who, in an article of 1914 entitled ‘The Rosary and the Eucharist‘, argued:

“No devotion like that of the Holy Crown so well prepares for the Eucharist, kindles in our soul love for it, awakens the desire for it. The Rosary only reminds us of the life of Jesus, but in the Most Blessed Sacrament this life perpetually renews its immortal cycle. Who will be content to meditate only on the life of Jesus in the Rosary, when he can live it with Him in the Eucharist? Who will be satisfied with the shadow, when he can have the light? For whom will images and memories suffice, when he can possess life itself? The Rosary, therefore, leads gently, almost imperceptibly, to the Most Blessed Sacrament: whoever draws near to Jesus in thought also feels the need to draw near to Him in reality. Whoever knows Jesus cannot but love Him; but, on the other hand, whoever begins truly to love Jesus cannot renounce possessing Him”.

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

If we so often repeat, with our gaze fixed on Jesus in the arms of Mary, ‘blessed is the fruit of thy womb‘, how can we not feel the need to ‘feed‘ on that fruit?

If we do not feel that need, it is a sign that we are ‘humming’, but not praying! And after having eaten the ‘fruit‘ of Mary’s womb, do we not perhaps feel the need for it to shape every fold of our being, so that our life may become ‘eucharistic’ like that of the Holy Virgin?

It is sad to observe how often eucharistic communion is received without feeling the need, after so great an event, to remain in the adoring silence of contemplation. The ‘farewells’ at the end of our Masses, often hurried and noisy, are the sign of a tendency to trivialize eucharistic communion. The Eucharist itself needs to be ‘re-understood‘, prepared for and ‘reverberated‘ through meditative exercise, and it is not by chance that Saint John Paul II proposed it to the meditation of the Rosary as the fifth of the mysteries of light.

It is significant, moreover, that in the Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, promulgated at the heart of the Year of the Rosary, he devoted a chapter to Mary, the ‘woman of the Eucharist‘. This is our ideal: not only to live from the Eucharist, but to ‘become’ Eucharist. To become such, the mere Celebration is not enough: the Eucharist needs its time of ‘resonance‘ in life, the time of assimilation. ‘Spiritual food‘, no less than material food, needs to be assimilated! The Rosary, certainly not exclusively, but with a particular efficacy, assists this process of our spiritual journey.

A word on indulgences

Within this horizon of the today of salvation, one cannot fail to speak also of the tradition that has seen the Church apply indulgences to the Rosary, as well as to the confraternities of the Rosary. A theme, in truth, that in pastoral practice is not at all simple to explain, since, in the sensibility of faithful who are not fully catechized, an improper meaning is attached to the word ‘indulgence‘, and a ‘mechanical‘ and ‘automatic‘ flavor to the conditions for obtaining it, which certainly does not correspond to the mind of the Church.

Frequently, in fact, when one speaks of ‘indulgence‘, many of the faithful have a sense of ‘discount‘ similar to the one they have with regard to commercial prices or judicial penalties. The indulgence is, on the contrary, a gift that, far from implying a ‘discount‘, in the sense of a ‘release from commitment‘, demands rather a greater engagement in the effort of holiness. It is, in fact, a superabundance of grace which, if welcomed by us, enables us to free the soul from those residues that sin leaves in us even after it has been forgiven.

It is a help so that we may detach ourselves entirely from ourselves in order to adhere perfectly to God. A help offered through the ministry of mercy that the Church has received, able to count on the ‘spiritual treasury‘ of the merits of Christ, operative also in those who have been perfectly associated with Him. In the communion of the one body of Christ, these merits obtain streams of grace to sustain the path of holiness of the weaker members.

But one then sees how little it would serve, in order to obtain the indulgence, to limit oneself to its exterior conditions. The fundamental condition is to detach oneself from the least affection for sin, in short, the choice of holiness. The Rosary fully understood, with its meditative structure, its Christological character, its orientation toward the commitment of life, can help the faithful to mature in this choice, thus establishing the decisive condition for the gift of the indulgence to be truly effective.

Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.

On the Rosary as a prayer that is timely and effective in the history of salvation, see the Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus of Pope Paul VI.

Learn how to pray the Rosary in our guide: How to Pray the Rosary, Step by Step.