WHAT THE HOLY ROSARY IS

The Holy Rosary is prayer, and meditation on the chief mysteries of the Life, Death and Glory of Jesus Christ and of his Blessed Mother. It is the greatest of all Devotions and includes the two greatest prayers, The Our Father and The Hail Mary.

Therefore let all men, the learned and the ignorant, the just and the sinners, the great and the small praise and honor Jesus and Mary, night and day, by saying the Most Holy Rosary. "Salute Mary who hath labored much among you." Romans 16:6

The Prayers of the Holy Rosary

The Holy Rosary is made up of two things : Mental prayer & Vocal prayer

Mental prayer.... in the Holy Rosary is none other than meditation of the chief mysteries of the life, death and Glory of Jesus Christ and of His Blessed Mother.

And

Vocal Prayer.... consists in saying fifteen decades of the Hail Mary, each decade headed by an Our Father, while at the same time meditating on and contemplating the fifteen principal virtues which Jesus and Mary practiced in the fifteen mysteries of the Holy Rosary.

In the first five decades we must honor the five Joyous Mysteries and meditate on them; in the second five decades the Sorrowful Mysteries and in the third group of five, the Glorious Mysteries. So the Holy Rosary is a blessed blending of mental and vocal prayer by which we honor and learn to imitate the life, death, passion and glory of Jesus and Mary.

The Origin of the Holy Rosary

Since the Holy Rosary is composed, principally and in substance, of the Prayer of Christ and the Angelic Salutation, that is, the Our Father and the Hail Mary, it was without doubt the first prayer and the first devotion of the faithful and has been in use all through the centuries, from the time of the apostles and deciples down to the present. In the year 1214 the Holy Mother Church received the Holy Rosary in its present form and according to the method we use today. It was given to the Church by Saint Dominic, who had received it from the Blessed Virgin as a powerful means of converting the Albigensians and other sinners. This Miraculous way in which the devotion to the Holy Rosary was established is something of a parallel to the way in which Almighty God gave his law to the world on Mount Sinai and obviously proves its value and importance. Inspired by the Holy Ghost, instructed by the Blessed Virgin as well as by his own experience, Saint Dominic preached the Holy Rosary for the rest of his life. He preached it by his example as well as by his sermons, in cities and in country places, to people of high station and low, before scholars and the uneducated, to catholics and to heretics.

Mary's Psalter

Ever since Saint Dominic established the devotion to the Holy Rosary up until the time when Blessed Alan De La Roche re-established it in 1460 it has always been called the Psalter of Jesus and Mary. This is because it has the same number of Angelic Salutations as there are psalms in the Book of the Psalms of David. But the Holy Rosary can be considered to be even more valuable than the Psalms of David for three reasons:

Firstly, because the Angelic Psalter bears a nobler fruit, that of the Word Incarnate, whereas David's Psalter only prophesies His coming;
Secondly, just as the real thing is more important than its prefiguration and as the body is more than its shadow, in the same way the Psalter of Our Lady is greater than David's Psalter which did no more than prefigure it;
Thirdly' because Our Ladys Psalter ( or the Holy Rosary made up of the Our Father and Hail Mary ) is the direct work of the Most Blessed Trinity and was not made through a human instument.

Our Lady's Psalter or the Holy Rosary is divided up into three parts of five decades each, for the following special reasons:

One..... To honor the three Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity;
Two..... To honor the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ;
Three.. To imitate the Church Triumphant, to help the members of the Church Militant and to lessen the pains of the Church Suffering.
Four... To imatate the three groups into which the Psalms are divided:
- The first being for the purgative life;
- The second for the illuminative life;
- The third for the unitive life
Five.... To give us graces in abundance during our lifetime, peace at death, and
glory in eternity

Crown of Roses

The word Rosary means "Crown of Roses" that is to say that every time people say the Holy Rosary devoutly they place a crown of one hundred and fifty - three red roses and sixteen white roses upon the heads of Jesus and Mary. Being heavenly flowers theses roses will never fade or lose thier exquisite beauty.
Our Lady has shown her thorough approval of the name Rosary; she has revealed to several people that each time they say a Hail Mary they are ging her a beautiful rose and that each complete Rosary makes her a crown of roses. So the complete Holy Rosary is a large crown of roses and the Holy Rosary of five decades is a little wreath of flowers or a small crown of heavenly roses which we place on the heads of Jesus and Mary. The rose is the queen of flowers, and so the Holy Rosary is the rose of all devotions and it is therefore the most important one.

The Hail Mary :

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

Luke 1:28 "And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." 

The Greek kecharitomene means favored by grace, graced . Its tense suggests a permanent state of being "highly favored," thus full of grace . Charity, the divine love within us, comes from the same root. God is infinite Goodness, infinite Love. Mary is perfect created goodness, filled to the limit of her finite being with grace or charity.

Blessed art thou among women

Luke 1:41-42a "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, "Most blessed are you among women... Luke 1:48 "For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed."

Among all women is a way to say the highest/greatest etc. of a group in Semitic languages (these words would likely have been spoken in Aramaic). Mary is being called the greatest of all women, greater than Ruth, greater than Sarah, greater than EVE!  Since Eve was created immaculate (without original sin), Mary must have been conceived immaculate. And, although Eve fell into sin by her own free will, Mary must have corresponded to God's grace and remained sinless. She could not otherwise be greater than Eve. Thus, as the Fathers of the Church unanimously assert, Mary is the New Eve who restores womanhood to God's original intention and cooperates with the New Adam, her Son, for the Redemption of the world.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus

Luke 1:42b "and blessed is the fruit of your womb."

Jesus is Mary's fruit. Good fruit does not come from anything but a good tree (Mt. 7:17-18)! The all-holy Son of God could not be the fruit of any other tree than the Immaculate Virgin.

Holy Mary, Mother of God

Luke 1:43 "And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Kyrios is the Greek word used by the Jews in the Septuagint Bible (Greek translation) for Yhwh, the Divine Name of God. In her greeting of Mary, Elizabeth is saying: "How is it that the mother of my God should come to me." Against the heresies of the 4th and 5th centuries which tried to split the Person of Jesus into two, divine and human, denying one or the other, the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD proclaimed Mary Theotokos (God-bearer, i.e. mother of God). Jesus is a single Person, a Divine Person, the 2nd Person of the Most Holy Trinity. To be mother of the Person Jesus is to be mother of a Person who
is God. Mary's title protects this truth against errors which emphasize or deny, either the divinity or humanity of the Lord.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Luke 2:35 "...and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

John 2:5 "His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."

Mary sees a need and appeals to Her Son to satisfy it. He does. We turn to Mary to ask her to intercede with her Son in our daily spiritual and material needs, but especially at the hour of our death. At that moment our salvation hangs in the balance as the devil makes his final foray to deter us from the path to God (Rev. 2:10). It is not surprising, therefore, that both the Hail Mary and the Our Father conclude with an appeal to be delivered from the evil one.

The Our Father :

The Son of God has always glorified His Father by His works and He came into the world to teach men to give glory to Him. He showed men how to praise Him by this prayer which He taught us with His own Lips. It is our duty therefore,to say it often, we should say it reverently and attentively and in the spirit in which Our Lord taught it.
Our Father
This means that he is the Father of mankind because he has created us and continues to sustain us, and because he has redeemed us. He is also the merciful Father of sinners, the Father who is the friend of the just and the Glorious Father of the blessed in heaven.
Farther
Thou who throughout eternity dost begot a son who is God like thee. Eternal, consubstantial with thee. Who is the very same essence as thee; and is of like power and goodness and wisdom as thou art. Father and Son who from your mutual love produce the Holy Spirit. Who is God like unto you; three persons but one God
Who art
We pay tribute to the infinity and immensity and fullness of God's essence. God is rightly called "He who is"; that is to say, he exists of necessity, essentially and eternally, because his is the being of beings and the cause of all beings. He posesses within himself, in a supereminent degree, the perfections of all beings and he is in all of them by his essence, by his presence and by his power, but without being bounded by their limitations. We honor his sublimity and his glory and his majesty by the words "who art in Heaven" that is to say, who is seated on a throne, holding sway over all men by thy justice.
Our Father who art in heaven
We make as many acts as the noblest Christians virtues as we pronounce words, when recite attentively this divine prayer. In saying our Father who art in Heaven we make acts of faith, adoration and humility.

Thou who dost fill heaven and earth with the immesity of thy being. Thou who art present everywhere. Thou who art in the saints. By thy glory, in the damned. By thy justice, in the good. By thy grace, and even in sinners. By thy patience, with which thou dost tolerate them. Grant we beseech thee that we may always remember that we come from thee; Grant that we may live as thy true children ought to live; Grant that we may set our course towards thee, and never swerve; Grant that we use our every power, our hearts and souls and strength to tend towards thee and thee alone.
Hallowed be thy name
We show a burning zeal for His glory. We worship Gods holiness, and we make obeisance (respect) to his kinship and bow to the justice of his laws.

King David the prophet said that the name of the Lord is awe-inspiring, and Isaias that heaven is always echoing with the praises of the seraphim who unceasingly praise the holiness of the Lord God of Hosts. We ask here that all the world may learn to know and adore the attributes of our God who is so great and holy. We ask that he may be known, loved and adored by pagans, turks, jews, barbarians and by all infidels. That all men may serve and glorify him by a living faith, a staunch hope, a burning charity and by renouncing all erroneous beliefs. Tis all adds up to say that we pray that all men may be holy, because our God himself is all-holy.
Thy kingdom come
We pray that men will obey him on earth as angels do in Heaven. When we ask for the spread of His kingdom we make an act of hope

Do thou reign in our souls by thy grace so that after death we may be found meet to reign with thee in thy kingdom in perfect and unending bliss. Oh Lord we firmly believe in this happiness to come; we hope for and expect it, because God the Father has promised it in his great goodness; it was purchased for us by the merits of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit; he who is the light has made it known to us.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven
We show a spirit of perfect obedience.

As Turtullian says, this sentence does not in the least mean that we are afraid of people thwarting God's designs because nothing whatsoever can happen without divine providence having forseen it and having made it fit into his plans beforehand. No obstruction in the whole world can possibly prevent the will of God from being carried out. Rather we say thy will be done, we ask God to make us humbly resigned to all that he has seen fit to send us in this life. We also ask him to help us do,in all things and at all times, His holy will, made known to us by the commandments, promptly, lovingly and faithfully as the Saints do it in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
We show our trust in his providence. We practice poverty of spirit and detachment from worldly goods.

Our lord taught us to ask God for everything that we need whether in the spiritual or temporal order. By asking for our daily bread we humbly admit our own poverty and insufficiency and pay tribute to our God, knowing that all temporal goods come from his divine providence. When we say bread we ask for that which is just necessary to live, and of course this does not include luxuries. We ask for this bread today this day which means that we are concerned only for the present, leaving the morrow in the hands of providence. And when we ask for our daily bread we recignize that we need God's help every day and that we are entirely dependant on upon him for his help and protection.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
We appeal to his mercy when ask for the forgiveness of our sins. When we beg him to forgive us our sins we make an act of sorrow for them. By forgiving those who have trespassed against us we give proof of the virtue of mercy in its highest degree.

Every sin say Saint Agustine and saint Tertullian, is a debt which we contract towards Almighty God and his justice demands payment down to the very last farthing (half a penny). Unfortunately we all have these sad debts. No matter how many they may be we should go to God in all confidence and with true sorrow for our sins saying Our Father who art in heaven, forgive us our sins of thought and those of speech, forgive us our sins of commission and omission which make us infinitely guilty in the Divine justice. We dare to ask this because thou art our loving and merciful Father and because we have forgotten those who have offended us, out of obedience to thee and out of charity. Do not permit us in spite of our infidelity to thy graces, to give in to the temptation of the world, the devil and the flesh.
Lead us not into temptation
Through asking God's help in all our temptations, we make acts of humility, prudence and fortitude. We look to his great power when we beg him not to lead us into temptation.
But deliver us from evil
As we wait for Him to deliver us from evil we exercise the virtue of patience.We show our faith in his goodness by our hope that He will deliver us from evil.

The evil of sin and also of the temporal punishment and everlasting punishment which we know that we have rightly deserved.
Amen
So be it.
This word at the end of The Our Father is very consoling and Saint jerome says that it is a sort of seal of approbation that Almighty God puts at the end of our petitions to assure us that he will grant our requests, very much as though he himself were answering. Amen! may it be as you have asked, for verily you have obtained what you asked for. This is what is meant by Amen.

Finally
While asking for all these things, not for ourself alone but also for our neighbor and for all the members of the church, we are carrying out our duty as true children of God, we are imitating Him in His love which embraces all menand we are keeping the commandment of love thy neighbor. If we mean in our hearts what we say with our lips and if our intentions are not at variance with those expressed in the Lord's Prayer, then, by reciting this prayer, we hate all sin and we observe all of God's laws. For whenever we think that God is in Heaven, infinitely removed from us by the greatness of His majesty, as we place ourselves in His presence we should be filled with overwhelming reverence. Then the fear of the Lord will chase away all the pride and we will bow down before God in our utter nothingness. When we say the name Father and remember that we owe our existence to God by the means of our parents and even our knowledge to our teachers who hold the place and are the living images of God, then we can not help paying them honor and respect, or, to be more exact, honoring God in them. Nothing then, too, would be farther from our thoughts than to be disrespectful to them or hurt them. We are never farther from blaspheming than when we pray that the Holy name of God may be glorified. If we really look upon the kindom of God as our heritage we cannot possibly be attached to the things of this world.