A listener named Linda asks Father Dave about praying the Rosary. She asks, “When [praying] the Rosary, and we get to the Mysteries — are we just reading the Mysteries, or do we concentrate on the visual of the Mystery while saying the Hail Mary? Help!”
Father Dave begins, “The spirit of the prayer is for us to reflect on and meditate on these Mysteries. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be visual. Some people are visual learners and that helps them enter into prayer, but the primary thing we’re doing is reflecting.”
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He notes that some resources for praying the Rosary offer a description of each Mystery and can invite us to reflect. “Even if it’s just the word ‘crucifixion,’ those 10 Hail Marys repeat and the words are the same; we know them so well that we don’t have to concentrate on the Hail Marys themselves,” Father Dave says. “It allows both our mind and our spirit to multitask, to use a modern word.”
“Whether it’s visually, as you suggested, or some other way in our heart or in our soul, we are feeling, experiencing, reflecting on, being affected by what those Mysteries signify in the life of Christ,” he continues. “The Mysteries are about the life of Mary and the life of Jesus, but really, it all points to Jesus.”
Father Dave offers a way we can bring the mysteries of the Rosary to modern life, offering an example with the Sorrowful Mysteries. “Our hearts [can encounter] the suffering that Jesus and Mary experienced during their lifetime, and prayerfully relate that either to our own suffering or of that we love or care about,” he says. “We can think of somewhere else in the world, and people we’ve never met who are suffering. There are people in Colombia that are suffering from an earthquake right now, or people in Ukraine, or the Middle East.”
“There are also lots of joyful things in the world,” he continues, reflecting on the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. “For example, how many babies were born in the last couple of minutes since I’ve been answering this question? To allow our humanness to engage on those basic levels is important.”
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Father Dave adds that the Church does not mandate particular rules for praying the Mysteries of the Rosary. “The Church wants that to be as broad as possible because it’s going to be different for every person, but also for every time of prayer in the life of a person,” he says. “Last week, I might have engaged in the Sorrowful Mysteries in a different way than I do this week. They’re meant to be very accessible.”
He notes that engaging in the Mysteries of the Rosary will become easier through repetition and commitment. “The idea is that the more we do it, the more familiar it becomes, so that we can live into the Mysteries of the Rosary more than the first time we learned the prayer of the Hail Mary,” Father Dave says. “The prayer will ebb and flow with us during the course of our spiritual lives.”
