Why Should We Pray the Rosary?

When I started reading the Bible, I was so fascinated by its beauty and infinite treasure. A question always popped up my mind, “Why does the Virgin Mary ask us to pray the Rosary every day? Why not read the Bible every day?”

My Search for Truth

After I I joined the Pentecostal church where my wife was involved, my childhood memories kept haunting me – singing Marian songs during Flores de Mayo, daily rosary in the family, house-to-house visitation of the image of our Lady of Fatima, etc. I took those memories as fancy and I feared these Marian sentiments might interfere with my new conversion to Christ and suppress the workings of the Holy Spirit in me. I tried to drown my Marian inclination by reading lots of anti-Marian articles on the internet, I even bought an anti-Marian book which labeled Marian apparitions as satanic. But deep inside, I felt helpless. It was as if I turned deaf to the legitimate need of a child in me for a spiritual Mother.

I revisited my college readings on Carl Gustav Jung’s solution to create a feminine side of God by reconstructing the image of the Holy Spirit as  Feminine. So, a female God conceiving a female Virgin of Nazareth. It sounded like LGBTQ! Does not make sense to me.

With all my heart I prayed to God: “Lord, I don’t mind if my family or the whole world would reject me in this, if this Marian devotion is against your will, please take it away from me. Show me the Truth, Lord. And I will accept it without hesitation. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

After much struggle, questioning, and finding answers to my burning questions, one day I was cleaning our room and opened some boxes that were kept for years. I took out a small stamp with an image of Mother Mary. I read the words: “Jesus said, ‘Love my Mother as much as I love her.’”

I cannot describe the impact of those few words. It hit me like an atomic bomb that blew all my anti-Marian ideas. I had no doubt it was a message from God to me, an answer to my prayer and search for the truth about Marian devotion. That was on November 30, 2014, two years after I got my conversion to Christ on October 24, 2012. Starting that day, I took my Marian devotion with all of my heart.

God has endowed me abundantly with spiritual blessings through the devotion of the Holy Rosary. Let me take down some images of the rosary which I illustrate every time I talk of its importance in our spiritual journey.

The Rosary As Spiritual Food

At the start, I wrote my reflection of each mystery on an index card and read it before I would proceed to say each mystery. I felt like a child holding a plate full of food that was prepared by my Mother. Praying and meditating on each mystery was like chewing and digesting the Word of God. We read in the Book of Revelation (chapter 10), John was eating the scroll.

As the Bible on a String

This image is taken from Fr. Ronan Murphy. Anywhere I go I always have a rosary in my pocket. When I go out from the house, wait for a vehicle, and take a ride, I pray using my tiny Rosary concealed in my handkerchief.

The Rosary is the best way to focus our heart on God in our day to day activities.

As a Spiritual Weapon

A Nigerian Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme testified that amidst the worsening situation in Nigeria where radical Islamic groups such as Isis and Boko Haram were launching their attack on innocent people, around 3.8 million people were suffering malnutrition and were displaced because of the attack. Jesus handed a sword to the Bishop, and when he took it, it was transformed into a rosary in his hand. This is not a new idea, we saw in the story of St. Dominic and many saints showing the power of the rosary as a weapon against dark forces.

As an Album of Jesus

Imagine yourself a child, sitting on the lap of his Mother, and together you look into the images of Christ in the album. Mama Mary is telling you stories about Jesus – from the Annunciation, to his Baptism, and to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. It’s an album that allows you to become part of its stories and germinate those stories in your heart and mind.

As a Bouquet of Flowers

From Latin “rosarium” which means rose garden. As Catholics, we always associate Mama  Mary with roses. St. Louise de Montfort used to emphasize that every time we say the rosary, we are offering flowers to Mama Mary. There is much meaning in a flower as an expression of love and devotion.

As a Sling of David

We read in Samuel 17, the Israelites were terrified in a battle when they saw a 9 foot tall Goliath challenging anyone to fight him, for forty days that challenge went on.

One day David, a shepherd boy, was commanded by his father to deliver food to his warrior brothers. Reaching the battlefield, he was indignant upon seeing Goliath blaspheming God. “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine blaspheming God?” David volunteered to fight Goliath and was brought to Saul, who gave him the armor and sword, which David refused because they were too heavy. He had more confidence in God than in anything else. To cut the story short, the boy took only his sling (here we have the rosary) as a weapon, and picked up five stones (five mysteries) from the stream (the Word of God). The rest is history.

The Holy Rosary has conquered a lot of Goliaths as recorded in history. We have the story of Lepanto in 1571 and the Philippine Edsa Revolution in 1986, and a lot of stories in the lives of saints.

As a Drop of Water on a Hard Surface

A tiny drop of water hitting constantly over a period of time can destroy a hard surface. There is power in repetition. There is a deeper layer of consciousness where transcendence takes place. For example, in my own experience, since childhood, many times I have heard about the story of Incarnation, the reason we celebrate Christmas. But it is in my meditation in the third Joyful that this mystery sunk into my deeper consciousness.

It was an explosive insight that gave a profound meaning to Christmas. Not only Christmas but also meditating on other Christian mysteries such as the Resurrection, the Institution of the Eucharist, and others also brought deep impact to my life. It is in praying the Rosary that I fully understood what it meant by the word personal revelation from God. The most powerful experience was when the third Luminous mystery hit the depth of my consciousness. “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him”(1 Corinthians 2:9).

As an Explosive Weapon Against Sin

At least, only one of the sacred mysteries of the Rosary when contemplated deeply that it sinks to the heart – is enough to cause a profound change to an individual. Only one! at least, only one out of twenty mysteries of the Rosary, when pondered deeply will turn out to be a bomb which destroys sin in the individual. What a genuine change it would be if we meditate on all the twenty mysteries!

St. Louse de Montfort puts it powerfully in saying, “Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day be led astray. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with my blood.”

As a Storage of Reflections

The best insights that moved me, the most powerful preaching that changed me, the most touching stories I heard, the best Bible verses I encountered, everything I considered best that shake me, I store it in my Rosary journal. In the early days when I started to pray the Rosary, I wrote down those reflections. Now I got my Rosary journal by memory. It is only the limit of my imagination.

For example, upon reading Sister Faustina’s testimony on hell, I connect that reflection with the Agony in the garden in the first Sorrowful mystery. Upon watching Francis Chan’s rope demonstration in youtube, I put it in the third Luminous mystery. I incorporated all the best reflections I had but still retaining the Biblical scenario in each mystery. Like Mama Mary “She treasured it all up in her heart.”(Luke 2:51)

As a Holographic Dimension of Spiritual Realities

Each mystery of the rosary contains all the other mysteries. If the Gestalt principle says “The whole is not the sum of its parts” but in Rosary each part echoes the whole image. We see Christ’s passion and death in the Annunciation, there is Resurrection in the Baptism, and Coronation in the Wedding at Cana. Each mystery contains all other mysteries. Again it’s only the limit of our own imagination.

As the Path to Eternal Wisdom

“Her I loved and sought after from my youth; I sought to take her for my bride and was enamored of her beauty.” (Wisdom 8:2)

The Rosary is a contemplation of Jesus, the incarnate Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24). There’s an abyss of divine wisdom in the Rosary.

As a School of Prayer

Pope Francis used this image of the Rosary. We are like spiritual kindergarten learning phonetics of prayer that is pleasing to God because it is centered on His Son. It is a school of Fiat – saying Yes to God in everything. The salvation of the world started by the Fiat (Yes) of the simple Virgin in Nazareth.

As a Glider for Contemplation

When we meditate on the mysteries, it’s like flapping our wings with efforts so as to fly towards the Sun. But sometimes, God will infuse some insights, images, or intuitive ideas which come effortlessly into our consciousness, an experience we call contemplation. It’s a profound experience, like finding the joy of gliding effortlessly after much flapping with our wings. Ultimately, it’s taking joy in God’s Majesty.

As a Doorway to Silence

In my own experience, I find it very hard to attain mental silence. My mind keeps on chattering day and night even when I sleep. But when I read St. Therese of Lisieux, at least I learned, first, to silence my will in a form of total surrender to God. Second, the silence of ego – an absolute certainty of my own unworthiness. Third, the most important one is the silence of desires other than God. When there is mastery of the third, your mind may still chatter but the chattering is directed to God. Henri Nouwen puts it right when he said that the beauty of prayer is when one learns to convert his daydreaming into thanksgiving to God. Here, we accomplish St. Paul’s words “to pray unceasingly”(1 Thes 5:17) because we all daydream all the time.

Achieving mental silence is tricky. But St. Therese’s method is like entering silence passing the back door of our consciousness. The key is total surrender to God.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

“Why didn’t Mama Mary tell the visionaries to read the Bible every day?”

She did. Her command is more than reading it. She’s like saying meditate, ponder, eat, chew, digest the Word of God (not the written document per se but the Person of Jesus) – by praying the Rosary every day!