Since Behold Your Mother is doing a Mary Moments Carnival on the rosary, I thought that nowmight be a good time to re-post this for those of you who haven’t seen it before.

The husband of one of our members at the Catholic Spitfire Grill (you’re welcome to join us!) has opined that the fact there are more Hail Mary’s than Our Father’s is “proof” that the Rosary is “Mary Worship.” He is not the only person in this world to express this opinion. In fact among Protestants who are not familiar with the rosary other than simply the mechanical aspects of the prayer (say one Our Father, ten Hail Mary’s…..) it is not uncommon at all. In fact, I have seen websites where the exact percentage of “Mary Worship” praying a rosary actually reflected as determined by the ratio of Hail Mary’s to Our Father’s was declared. If someone is out there reading and has the statistical and mathematical inclination, I’d love to see a well done parallel to this calculation. What percentage of the rosary is taken directly from Sacred Scripture? Since the Our Father is 100% scripture, the Hail Mary about 50% so, and ALL of the mysteries (15 or 20 depending on how you want to count) are also taken from the Bible, I am confident the number would be pretty high. But I digress….

Why does the rosary have more Hail Mary’s than Our Father’s? I don’t know for sure. How’s that for an answer?

I can tell you about the scriptural origins of the rosary. The origins of the practice are traced to the early days of the church when very devout religious (monks, priests, nuns) made it a practice to recite all 150 Psalms daily. Many laypeople wanted to imitate that practice but memorizing all 150 Psalms without being able to afford a copy of them, much less find the time to say them daily was simply beyond reach. What evolved was the practice of saying simple prayers 150 times instead…usually the “Our Father” or a “Hail Mary”. In order to keep track, rocks or stones were placed in one pocket and moved to the other throughout the day as the prayers were said. Eventually, this lead to the knotting of cords, or stringing of beads and of course, some figured out that one needn’t have all 150 on a cord just say 10 (a decade) 15 times etc. Things from other sources also converged to make the Rosary what it is today as well. Many theologians, particularly in the Middle Ages believed that each of the 150 Psalms was reflective of particular events in the life of Jesus and his mother. So underlying the discipline of saying all 150 Psalms daily was the idea that it was a meditation on the life of Jesus and the path to Salvation. Now tie in St. Dominic, who was a primary figure in fighting some of the heresies that were particularly troublesome in the late 12th century and early 13th century. He had a vision that one of the ways to strengthen the church against these heresies was to teach people to meditate on the life of Jesus and his mother so what was once just an underlying idea became the principal idea. One more idea that certainly helped me bring it all together was that in a world that was dominated by the Church and in the absence of clocks…prayer was the principle method of keeping time. The Liturgy of the Hours or the specific prayers said during the day, marked each period of the day as clearly to someone at that time as saying 3 pm would to someone in ours. Likewise, so would telling someone that it would take about 10 Our Fathers as a means of telling them how long it would last. Now put all of the pieces together and you can kind of see where the modern form of the Rosary came from.

That still doesn’t answer the question about why there are more Hail Mary’s than Our Father’s. After all it could have gone the other way. We could say one Hail Mary and 10 Our Father’s, or all Hail Mary’s or all Our Father’s…or some other combination. Somewhere out there, there may be a definitive and historical answer. I’ll be honest. I didn’t even look for it. The Rosary is about resting in the Gospel. Praying the rosary is about meditating on Sacred Scripture and asking Jesus to speak to us. It’s about claiming the promises. It’s about imitating the lives of Our Lord and Our Lady. Over the years a big picture of sorts has developed for me, and I am only comfortable in saying that this is my personal understanding of the rosary. I do not wish to impose my understanding on anyone else who prays the rosary since they may have a different and equally valid understanding. This is how Our Lord speaks to me through this prayer at this place in my spiritual journey. I am also equally comfortable in saying that I have only scratched the surface of what the rosary has to offer in the way of other spiritual treasures.

To explain, let me start with a prayer that is commonly said at the end of the recitation of the rosary:

“O God, whose only begotten Son, by his life, death and resurrection, has purchased for us the blessings of eternal life, grant we beseech thee, that by meditating on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

I put it in bold. The nutshell explanation of why there are so many Hail Mary’s. May “we imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise” 

Why is that? First, it’s important to understand what Mary means in the Catholic understanding of the gospel. Often Catholics are accused of ascribing divinity to Mary and of being less than candid when we say that we do not believe she is divine. I tell you honestly that it is because she isn’t divine that she means so much to Catholics. In Mary’s fully-human-not-at-all-divine example of obedience, we see the possibilities for us! By a supernatural, unmerited, unearned GIFT to her, God preserved her from original sin in the Immaculate Conception. She was saved by the One Perfect Sacrifice of Her Son on the Cross, just like we can be. As His Gift to her, God, who is not bound by time, granted her the gift of salvation made possible by the Son she would bear from the moment of her conception. Her salvation, prefigures our own! She is the first Christian and her reward for faithful obedience in heaven (Revelation 12) foreshadows our own reward in heaven. Her response to Word of God is the perfect example of how we should submit our free will to the will of God when she declares, “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38) When in humility she goes to assist her aging cousin, the Holy Spirit speaks through Elizabeth when she declares ”Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” (Luke 1:45) It is these two events that are captured in the scriptural portions of the Hail Mary. It is also important that the only command Mary gives that is recorded in Sacred Scripture is “Do whatever He tells you.” (John 2:5) Keep all that in mind and we’ll come back to it in a minute. 

The next thing that it is important to fix in your mind is the Catholic attitude toward Sacred Scripture and the Gospels in particular. They are literally the words of God. When the Gospel is read in church, we stand to listen to the words of Our Lord. The Mysteries of the Rosary are taken from Sacred Scripture. When we meditate on the words of the Gospel, it is our Lord speaking to us directly from the printed page. The Our Father are Christ’s instructions to us for prayer taken directly from Sacred Scripture. They are the things He has directed us to request from the Throne of Heaven. The Mysteries and the Our Father are the words of Our Lord. He is speaking to us through the gospels while we meditate on the words of Jesus…..and with those words in our mind, in our heart, and often literally on our lips we pray (I am putting the words of the Hail Mary in bold italic print)….

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. (Luke 1:28) …my response to His words should be in imitation of Mary, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to thy word.” Her yes, allowed life for the world a literal “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” My yes to our Lord, will allow Him to work through me and continue to bring His Kingdom here on earth. Was our salvation dependant on Mary? In a certain sense I think it was (although I certainly believe that if she had said ‘no’ God would have found another way). Her “yes” mattered to God. Her “yes, parallels our own yes to the Lord. Could we be saved without our own ”yes” to God? Like her, I ask the Lord for the grace to say to His Words “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to thy word.”….imitate what they contain. 

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.(Luke 1:42) …and I remember “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” Trust in the Lord to accomplish all that He has promised in the Gospels…obtain what they promise.

Holy Mary, Mother of God…He is My Lord, fully human and fully divine.

Pray for us sinners now…I am a sinner in need of Him just as those at the wedding in Cana needed Him where He turned the water into wine, prefiguring His Precious Blood that would bind us to Him as part of the Bride of Christ…Do whatever He tells you…imitate what they contain.

And at the hour of our death…obtain what they promise.

The rosary is a prayerful conversation. The Lord speaks through Sacred Scripture (in the mysteries and the Our Fathers) and we seek to listen, to imitate, to obey, and to trust in Him for all those things. In the Hail Mary we find our response in Mary, who prefigures our faith, she has gone first. She listened and submitted. Her reward (Assumption and Coronation) prefigures our own reward and we trust in Our Lord just as she did. The Mysteries (the Gospel, the plan of Salvation) and the instructions of how we are to pray from Our Lord himself, remain foremost in our mind as we rest in the Gospel and while we rest and mediate, we recite the Hail Mary which is all about our response to those words. I think there are more Hail Mary’s than Our Fathers because the words of Our Lord don’t leave our mind while we pray about our response to them and I don’t know about you, but I need all ten of those Hail Marys (and probably a few more) because sometimes I don’t hear very well.

Excellent on-line articles about the historical origin of the rosary: Paternoster Row: Historical Rosaries and Paternosters; St. Dominic and the Rosary at Catholic.net; a different article with same name St. Dominic and the Rosary

WikiHow: How to say the rosary. 

Online interactive/multi-media rosaries: The Holy Rosary; Virtual Rosary; Daily Rosary; Fatima Online Rosary (chant); St. Philip Neri Newman Center; Catholic Calendar Rosary Page

Make your own rosary to keep or to give away: Rosary Army; Our Lady’s Rosary Makers; RosaryWorkshop.com (this site also has some interesting historical information and pictures of antique rosaries)