Fingering the Mysteries

Today's feast of Our Lady of the Rosary might be one of those that mystifies non-Catholics. Where on earth is the biblical foundation?! Of course, if you know something about the origins of the Rosary itself, you recognize that that's just where the biblical foundation is. The Rosary evolved as a way for people who could not read Latin (or read at all) to follow, in some way at least, the monastic custom of praying the 150 Psalms on a regular basis. (That was a pretty hefty undertaking even in the monasteries!) The "Angelic Salutation" (from the Bible) took the place of the Psalms.
But the Rosary is more than a string of Angelic Salutations, even if they are divided into sets of ten. The main point of the Rosary isn't the chain of vocal prayers as much as it is the contemplation of the mysteries of salvation in the Gospel. When Pope John Paul provided a new set of mysteries for the Rosary, bringing the number of Angelic Salutations to a rather unbiblical 200, he may have inadvertently compromised some of the symbolic connection between the Rosary and the Psalter, but he strengthened our contact with the mysteries of salvation.


In a way, I think it is safe to say that, however it happened in history, there is a tremendous biblical basis for associating the mysteries of the Life of Christ with the Psalms (or, in the case of the Rosary, the Psalm-substitute of the Hail Mary). After all, why did the monks pray the Psalms in the first place? Just because they were in the Bible? Just because they seem to reflect every aspect of human life and feeling? Or because, in every mystery of his life, Jesus prayed the Psalms, and so we can access the heart of Christ through them, or--as St. Paul said, "put on the mind of Christ" by taking up the Psalms.



Read Chesterton's poem about the Battle of Lepanto, the historical event that led to the establishment of today's feast.