Today is the beginning of the month of the Rosary, and so it is a natural subject.
What a gift it is! It just fits into our pocket; it’s something we can just finger. We don’t even have to pray it; we can just touch it or hold it. And it holds us. St Therese of Lisieux said: “The Rosary is a long chain that links heaven and earth. One end of it is in our hands, and the other end is in the hands of the Holy Virgin”. It’s a connecting thing. It winds itself into our lives. Ordinary Catholics love it and great historical figures too, little people and big people too.
“In a tribute to Pope John Paul II written after the Pontiff’s death in 2005, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires recounted how the Pope’s example inspired him to “recite the 15 mysteries of the Rosary every day.”
“If I remember well it was 1985,” Cardinal Bergoglio wrote. “One evening I went to recite the Holy Rosary that was being led by the Holy Father. He was in front of everybody, on his knees. The group was numerous; I saw the Holy Father from the back and, little by little, I got lost in prayer. I was not alone: I was praying in the middle of the people of God to which I and all those there belonged, led by our Pastor.”
“In the middle of the prayer I became distracted, looking at the figure of the Pope: his piety, his devotion was a witness,” he continued. “And the time drifted away, and I began to imagine the young priest, the seminarian, the poet, the worker, the child from Wadowice… in the same position in which knelt at that moment, reciting Ave Maria after Ave Maria. His witness struck me.”
“I felt that this man, chosen to lead the Church, was following a path up to his Mother in the sky, a path set out on from his childhood. And I became aware of the density of the words of the Mother of Guadalupe to Saint Juan Diego: “Don’t be afraid, am I not your mother?” I understood the presence of Mary in the life of the Pope. That testimony did not get forgotten in an instant. From that time on I recite the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary every day.”
The great prayer given to the Church by the Holy Spirit has been the Book of Psalms, all 150, the prayers of David and others. The Rosary, given by Mary, is a sort of simplified follow-on, with its 150 Hail Mary’s. The Psalms are sometimes long. I have known some monks who have known them by heart. But it’s easier to get the Hail Mary by heart! It’s sometimes called therefore Mary’s Psalter.
There’s so much to say about it. It can be said alone or with others. I can be prayed in church or walking outside or in bed or on the bus. It’s vocal prayer, the saying of words. It’s meditative prayer because while we say the Hail Mary’s we can reflect on the 15 – now 20 mysteries. It’s contemplative prayer: it stills us and focuses us on the presence of God. It can be intercessory prayer; it can enfold other people. For example, if we say the 1st joyful mystery, we can be thinking of all the people who are receiving a word from God at the moment we are praying; we can that they respond with the faith of Mary. When I pray the mystery of the Visitation I remember all the priests and deacons and ministers of Holy Communion who are setting out, carring the Blessed Sacrament to the sick or housebound as Mary carried Jesus in her womb to Elizabeth. The 3rd glorious mystery, the descent of the Holy Spirit, makes me pray for all those being confirmed, receiving the same gift of the Holy Spirit. If we’re recalling the agony in the Garden, we can embrace in our spirit all people facing difficult decisions and so on with the other mysteries.
And don’t worry if you say the Rosary “badly”.
It’s a Marian prayer, but more still a Christ-, a Christological prayer. It’s “walking with Mary through the life of Jesus”. It keep us close to the saving mysteries of Christ’s life. It keep us close to the Bible stories; it has been called “the Bible on beads”. It takes us through in a week or a day what the liturgical year takes us through in a year: it contains Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter.
St Paul’s words in today’s 1st reading could be a summary of what the rosary can do to us: it keeps the Holy Spirit alive in us, it strengthens us in our inner being, it brings Christ to dwell in our hearts through faith. It helps us to know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fulness of God (cf. Eph 3: 16-19).
The Rosary is a spiritual weapon against the powers of evil: while we pray it Mary crushes the serpent under her immaculate foot. Many positive moments in history, the defeat of adversaries of the faith and the Church, have been attributed to the faithful praying of the Rosary: the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the battle of Vienna 1689, the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Austria in 1955, the conversion of Bartolo Longo, the survival of some Jesuits in the Hiroshima in 1945, the saving of Brazil from Communism in the early 1960s.
“Unless you become like little children”, says the Lord. Children belong to a family; they need to be there to flourish. And so it is in the family of God, the Church. “The family that prays together stays together”. May we love the Rosary and remain in the family!
Holy Family Church, 1 October 2026
