A Remarkable and Powerful Prayer

Here the Holy Father recognizes, in the prayer of the Rosary, that dimension of plurality and universality characteristic of the liturgical prayer of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. "Moreover, this is a characteristic of the liturgical prayer of the Missal and the Breviary." And he says that the Rosary is the supplication of the multitude praying for the ordinary and extraordinary needs of Holy Church, of nations and of the world. "It is the crowd which prays, united in supplication for the whole human family, religious and civil."

His Holiness Paul VI, after the last voting session of the Council Fathers on 21st November, 1964, promulgated the dogmatic constitution "Lumen Gentium" on the Church. In it we read:

Reading this document of the Second Vatican Council, I believe that no well-disposed person could deny that the prayer of the Rosary is one of the principal practices and exercises of Marian piety which, just then, were in the mind and the thoughts of the Council Fathers, just as it cannot be denied that this prayer is one of the practices and exercises of piety which have been most recommended and approved by the Church’s Magisterium.

Then, on 2nd February, 1974, Pope Paul VI published the Apostolic Exhortation "Marialis cultus," in which he dedicated paragraphs 42 to 55 to the prayer of the Rosary, confessing: "We, too, from the first General Audience of our Pontificate on 13th July 1963 onwards, have shown our great esteem for the pious practice of the Rosary" (n. 42).

He also declares that he has followed very attentively the numerous meetings and researches which took place on the subject of this Marian devotion:

His Holiness John Paul II expressed his intimate feelings, and his way of living the prayer of the Rosary, in these words of 29th October, 1978:

To conclude this list of recommendations of, and appreciation for, the holy Rosary, I leave you one last quotation from a prominent figure in the Church. In the homily which the Archbishop of Colombo (Sri Lanka), His Eminence Cardinal Cooray, gave in Fatima on 12th August, 1967, he spoke of the religious life being lived at that time in the Sri Lankan Shrine in honor of Our Lady of Fatima:

There are those who say that the Rosary is an antiquated and monotonous prayer, because of the constant repetition of the prayers which compose it. But I put the question: Is there anything at all which lives except through the continual repetition of the same actions?

God created everything that exists in such a way that it is kept alive by the continual repetition of the same actions. Thus, in order to preserve our life, we breathe in and breathe out always in the same way; our heart beats all the time according to the same rhythm. The stars, the sun, the moon, the planets, the earth follow always the same course, which God has laid down for them. Day follows night, year after year, always in the same way. Likewise the sun gives us light and warmth. In so many plants the leaves appear in the Spring, then they are clothed with flowers, next they yield fruit and, in autumn or winter, they lose their leaves.

Thus, everything follows the law which God has laid down for it, and yet it never occurs to anyone to say that it is monotonous; hence, nobody says so; the fact is that we need all this in order to live! Well then! In the spiritual life we experience the same need to repeat continually the same prayers, the same acts of faith, hope and charity, in order to live, since our life is a continued participation in the life of God.

As we have already seen, when the disciples asked Jesus Christ to teach them to pray, He taught them the beautiful formula of the Our Father, saying: "When you pray say: Father..." (Lk 11, 4). The Lord ordered us to pray thus, and did not say that, after a certain number of years, we were to look for a new formula of prayer, since that one had become old-fashioned and monotonous.

When lovers are together, they spend hours and hours repeating the same thing: "I love you!" What is missing in the people who think the Rosary monotonous is Love; and everything that is not done for love is worthless. Hence, the Catechism tells us that the Ten Commandments of God can be summed up in one: to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves.

Those who say the Rosary daily are like children who, every day, manage to find a few moments just to be with their father, to keep him company, to show him their gratitude, to do some service for him, to receive his advice and blessing. It is an exchange of love, the love of the father for the child and the child for the father; it is a mutual giving.

Ave Maria!

This article is an excerpt from Sr. Lucia's "Calls" from the Message of Fatima, Secretariado dos Pastorinhos, Fatima, distributed by Ravengate Press.