Many people of faith have a Rosary in their possession, which they many or may not use. Equally, many people who have no faith will proudly show their own rosaries. It can be helpful in personal prayer time to focus the mind and using the beads to help channel prayers and thoughts. However, you do not have to have the beads but could count with your fingers, have an Anglican set of beads or use a a knotted piece of rope as the Orthodox use. It might be something you use regularly or something you use occasionally depending very much on you and your own requirements. It might be traditionally though of as a Roman Catholic thing, but many people and non-Catholics use one to help in prayer time and keep distraction thoughts away.
The Rosary begins with:
the Apostles Creed,
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified; died, and was buried. He descended into Hell; the third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
followed by one
Our Father,
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
three Hail Marys
(traditionally offered for an increase in faith, hope, and charity for those praying the Rosary)
Hail Mary
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.
a Glory Be,
Glory Be
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen
Next come five mysteries, each consisting of one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, a Glory Be, Conclude with the Hail Holy Queen.
While each decade ie the set of 10 beads, of The Rosary is prayed the person saying the prayers holds in their mind one of these mysteries for personal meditation so it means that each time the Rosary is prayed five mysteries will have been thought about. This so enriching for the Christian's prayer life.
The Joyful Mysteries
The Annunciation: The Archangel Gabriel "announces" to Mary that she shall conceive the Son of God.
The Visitation: Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist.
The Nativity: Jesus is born.
The Presentation: Mary and Joseph "present" Jesus in the Temple where they meet Simeon.
The Finding in the Temple: After losing Him, Mary and Joseph find young Jesus teaching the Rabbis in the Temple.
The Luminous Mysteries
The Baptism in the Jordan: The voice of the Father declares Jesus the beloved Son.
The Wedding at Cana: Christ changes water into wine, his first public miracle.
The Proclamation of the Kingdom: Jesus calls to conversion (cf. Mk 1:15) and forgives the sins of all who draw near to him.
The Transfiguration: The glory of the Godhead shines forth from the face of Christ.
The Institution of the Eucharist: Jesus offers the first Mass at the Last Supper with his apostles, establishing the sacramental foundation for all Christian living.
The Sorrowful Mysteries
The Agony in the Garden: Jesus sweats water and blood while praying the night before his passion.
The Scourging at the Pillar: Pilate has Jesus whipped.
The Crowning with Thorns: Roman soldiers crown Jesus' head with thorns.
The Carrying of the Cross: Jesus meets His mother and falls three times on the way up Calvary.
The Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross and dies before His mother and His apostle John.
The Glorious Mysteries
The Resurrection: Jesus rises from the dead.
The Ascension: Jesus leaves the Apostles and bodily "ascends" to heaven.
The Descent of the Holy Spirit: The Apostles receive the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire in the upper room with Mary.
The Assumption: Mary is taken bodily--assumed--into heaven by God at the end of her life here on earth.
The Coronation: Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Now this has been taken from a Roman Catholic website trying to simplify the mystery of The Rosary for Christians and here in particular for catholics. It is at its most simple a way to pray, remembering God's intervention in our humanity and the person of Jesus' mother, who is so important in our devotions.
"The Rosary started as an exercise of the mostly illiterate laity to say 150 repetitions of the Our Father (which is the same as the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13) to emulate the monastic practice of the daily recitation of the entire Psalter during the Liturgy of the Hours. Those taking up this practice tended to use knotted ropes or strings of beads to keep track.
As time went on, there grew up another practice of saying the Hail Mary in five groups of ten repetitions. The earliest record of this practice is the Ancrene Wisse, a twelfth century monastic manual for English women anchorites (a type of Christian ascetic whose rule usually bound them to a stability of place, typically church grounds, where they could lead an intensely prayer-focused life).
Over time it appears that these two practices merged, and the groups of ten Hail Marys (also known as decades) came to be preceded each by a repetition of the Our Father.
In the late fourteenth century, a monastic in modern-day Germany named St. Dominic of Prussia (not to be confused with St. Dominic who was the founder of the Dominican Order of monks) added in the practice of meditating on the life of Jesus during the repetition of the Hail Marys. This is probably the origin of what are known as the Mysteries of the Rosary. St. Dominic of Prussia called this the Life of Jesus Rosary.
The Rosary was given official status as a recognized form of devotion by Pope Pius V, when he called on the entire Catholic Church to pray for victory involving the Papal States (i.e. the Vatican).
From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the content and structure of the Rosary was largely unchanged; in the early twenty-first century, Pope John Paul II added a set of mysteries (part of the meditations on Jesus) called the Luminous Mysteries, which focus on the miraculous works of Jesus and how they relate to the story of Salvation.
Today, most western Christians are familiar with the Rosary prayer, though I would speculate that most American Protestants (especially from an Evangelical background) are most familiar with the Rosary as a physical object.
Within Catholicism, the Rosary is known and taught as an effective devotion on the life of Christ through the lens of Mary; though at various times priests and Popes have overstated this devotion and its importance to the level of being a necessary devotion for proper piety." Lincoln.
One of best books written about The Rosary it is said is, Neville Ward's "Five for Sorrow and Ten for Joy." This is a very old book now, but one that starts from using the Rosary as an aid to our prayer life and from a Protestant point of view. The Rosary is something that we should try and use as we pray and so deepen our relationship with God in Christ. Ward says,
" It seems hard to believe that one can meditate on a theme while mentally repeating certain prayers even though these are so thoroughly known that little effort is required. As one becomes familiar with Rosary the prayers gradually recede, to form a kind of "background music", and the mystery is before the mind as though one is looking at a religious painting or ikon. the balance frequently changes, and the prayers occupy the foreground of the mind for a time, and this may lead to a form of simple attention to God, which is more like contemplation."
If you haven't used the Rosary at all, why not try it and see how you get on. As Ward has said it takes a little time but you might well find it useful and helpful in your devotional life. If you find it too constrictive and cumbersome, what have you lost! We do all need to work on our prayer life, so that it is alive and real and not just a set of words or thoughts that we do not really engage with.
