I got an interesting email this week, and thought I’d answer it via blog, since it might be of interest to others of you as well.
A brother writes, “Lately I’ve been tossing around the idea of wearing a rosary as a tangible aid in meditative prayer. Obviously I’d change the prayers up a little bit, but I was wondering what you thought about that. Where did the concept of the rosary come from? Is it merely a religious external or do you think there’s a little validity to it? Just wondering…”
First, a bit about the Rosary, for those not familiar with it. This, from catholic.com: “The word rosary comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary…in recent years the rosary has made a comeback, and not just among Catholics. Many Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the Bible.”
Though I am not personally aware of this increase in protestant usage of the rosary, it actually makes some sense. Many in our day are longing and looking for some connections to the heritage of Christianity – something more formal, more structured. As a result, many liturgical elements are making a comeback (check out the candles at Sunday Six at EVBC, for example).
So what about this rosary thing? The practice of praying the rosary involves using beads, usually about the size of a necklace, with each bead being a cue to recite a specific prayer. Here are the prayers involved:
Opening: The Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”
The Lord’s Prayer (1), or the The “Our Father”: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
The Hail Mary (3): “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among 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. Amen.”
The Glory Be or Gloria Patri (1): “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
Closing: The Hail Holy Queen: “Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.”
THE GOOD: I love the Apostle’s Creed…I think the modern church should recite this regularly. I also (of course) love the Lord’s Prayer. The Gloria Patri is beautiful, too. So, I think a regular diet of these is a great thing. I’m also a fan of finding tangible disciplinary devices to aid us in our prayers. We protestants/evangelicals often pooh-pooh such things as overly formal or traditional. Rather, we just leave it to ourselves to improvise our prayers every time we bow our heads. Personally, I would do better praying what I should pray instead of praying whatever I feel like praying. Rich prayers from scripture, and from our heritage, can provide a rich foundation for our entire prayer experience.
THE BAD: One might argue that the recitation of the first half of the Hail Mary is simply a quotation from scripture. Yes, it is…but it’s a strange thing to quote in our present context. Elizabeth said “Hail, Mary”, because she was standing right in front of her. I can’t, because I’m not. Just like I think it is doctrinally incorrect to say, “Hail, Apostle James”, or “Hail, Luther”, or even “Hail, (my deceased) Dad” … I have no scriptural indication that Mary can hear us right now. So, I fail to see the Biblical logic of addressing her like Elizabeth did.
The second half of the Hail Mary has us asking Mary to pray for us. First, I do not know whether or not Mary can hear requests from earth right now, and, if she can, how many she can hear at once, etc. Besides, even if she could hear me, and then pray for me, I have no reason to believe that her intercession on my behalf is any more influential or effective than the intercession of the people in my Home Group. I ask them to pray for me, because they can hear me, and their prayers are powerful by grace through the Spirit of God. Asking Mary, or any other person who has passed away, to pray for me is at best a mystical substitute, and, at worst, a waste of time.
The Hail Holy Queen is, well, Biblically speaking, a mess, and reflects a theology about Mary that has developed through the ages in the Roman church, and has no Biblical support. Mary isn’t the mother of mercy, our lives, our sweetness, or our hope. She may or not be an advocate for us (I don’t think she can). She may have eyes of mercy, but she can’t see us. And we don’t need her to show us to Jesus when we die.
CONCLUSION: I sort of like the whole bead-idea of the rosary, with each bead reminding me to pray for something specific. I think the Apostle’s Creed and Lord’s Prayer are under-prayed, and need to be used more often, so they would both make good “beads”. But the rosary prayers themselves are problematic, to say the least. Our brother says, “Obviously I’d change the prayers up a little bit.” Yes…and, if the prayers are Biblical, valuable and appropriate, then a rosary-like prayer discipline could prove to be an effective aid to our ongoing spiritual development.
Comments appreciated!
Bill
(Below is some more on the history of the Rosary from catholic.com, for those still interested in learning more…my comments are in brackets.)
It’s commonly said that St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans), instituted the rosary. Not so. Certain parts of the rosary predated Dominic; others arose only after his death. Centuries before Dominic, monks had begun to recite all 150 psalms on a regular basis [that is a cool thing!]. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, known as the conversi, should have some form of prayer of their own. They were distinct from the choir monks, and a chief distinction was that they were illiterate. Since they couldn’t read the psalms, they couldn’t recite them with the monks. They needed an easily remembered prayer [interesting...we're not that sensitive to this, in our very-literate society. How would we pray if we had no Bibles? By memory.]. The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, and, depending on circumstances, it was said either fifty or a hundred times. These conversi used rosaries to keep count, and the rosaries were known then as Paternosters (“Our Fathers”). [A good use of beads, I'd say!]. In England there arose a craftsmen’s guild of some importance, the members of which made these rosaries. In London you can find a street, named Paternoster Row, which preserves the memory of the area where these craftsmen worked. The rosaries that originally were used to count Our Fathers came to be used, during the twelfth century [a time in the history of the church when the doctrines about Mary took some very bold turns away from scripture], to count Hail Marys—or, more properly, the first half of what we now call the Hail Mary. (The second half was added some time later.) Both Catholics and non-Catholics, as they learn more about the rosary and make more frequent use of it, come to see how its meditations bring to mind the sweet fragrance not only of the Mother of God, but of Christ himself. ["Not only of the Mother of God, but of Christ himself"??? The latter is all I need, and all the scriptures urge me to seek.]
