Why pray the Rosary by Bishop Cozzens

Why Pray the Rosary?

by Bishop Andrew Cozzens

The rosary is a mysterious prayer because of its simplicity, but also because of its depth. It has been prayed and loved consistently by faithful Catholics since the beginning of the second millennium. It is a prayer beginners can learn, and it can lead us into the depth of the Christian life. It is loved by the simplest souls and some of the greatest mystics of the Church.

Our Lady herself, most especially in her appearance at Fatima, but also in other apparitions, has begged us to pray the rosary daily. She said that it was essential to bring peace to our families and to our world, and she asked us to pray the rosary to bring an end to war.

Those who start to pray the rosary regularly find in it eventually a mysterious attraction and incredible power. Many find their lives begin to change through the strength of this prayer. They are drawn to deeper conversion; they experience more peace and their desire for holiness grows.

Its simplicity is found in the repetition of the prayers from memory that are intended to allow us to enter the mysteries of the life of Jesus and Mary. Some find it helpful to combine Scripture reading and even some silence with the prayers to aid in meditation on the mysteries.

Some have accused Catholics of violating the command of Jesus with the rosary, when Jesus said, “When you pray, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words” (Mt 6:7). It is possible to recite the rosary in this false way, treating it as a magic formula that effects things by saying meaningless words. But this is not the way the rosary was meant to be prayed.

The repetition of the Hail Mary, rather, is often compared to a child speaking words of love over and over again. As St. John Paul II said in his important encyclical on the rosary, which he wrote in 2002, “If this repetition is considered superficially, there could be a temptation to see the rosary as a dry and boring exercise. It is quite another thing, however, when the rosary is thought of as an outpouring of that love which tirelessly returns to

the person loved with expressions similar in their content but ever fresh in terms of the feeling pervading them” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae 26).

In this way the repetition of prayers in the rosary actually works with our human psychology and can allow calm and focus as we enter more deeply into love.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens September 30, 2021 1

1 Bishop Andrew Harmon Cozzens (b. 1968) has been Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA) since 2013.

The Rosary is a prayer so humble and simple and theologically rich in biblical content.

I beg you to pray it.

Pope St. John Paul II

The word rosary comes from the Latin rosarius, which means “garland”: a bouquet of prayers offered to God. The term bead is an Old English word that originally meant “a prayer.”

According to some traditions, the Holy Rosary dates back to the 13th Century, when St Dominic had received the Rosary from our Lady herself as a means of converting the Albigensians*. The Church recommended it as the Breviary or Psalter of the Poor at a time when many people were illiterate and welcomed this simple prayer tool.

* Albigensians, the heretics — especially the Catharist heretics — of 12th/13thcentury southern France.