Today marks the fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae and his proclamation of the Year of the Rosary. For the Holy Father, the Rosary was more than "a prayer of great significance" (1); it was his "favorite prayer" (2). As a pope who firmly adhered to Mary and her Rosary, John Paul II showed how the Rosary touches the most profound desires of the human heart.
Contemplating the Face of Christ
John Paul II identifies the Rosary as, above all, a way of contemplation: "the Rosary is simply a method of contemplation" (28). As a form of contemplation, however, the Rosary is distinctive. By contrast with other methods of contemplative prayer, the Rosary surfaces as one in which the face of Jesus Christ is sought. Whereas some spiritual exercises lead along a path where nothing can be seen adequately, nothing can be spoken adequately, the Rosary moves the person who prays it along "a path of contemplation" (38) where the face of Jesus can be seen, where the name of Jesus can be said. The trend of certain methods of meditation can be said to be negative, that is, they proceed by way of negation (via negativa). Along this negative way, the person searches for God in darkness and emptiness by evacuating the mind of all images and all words. The Rosary, on the other hand, belongs to the way of affirmation (via positiva). The one who prays the Rosary cultivates images and values words as he or she contemplates Jesus Christ. Through its use of images and words, the Rosary affirms the way God draws us to himself: in and through Jesus Christ, the Image of the invisible God and the Word of God.
The Rosary is a method whereby merely human ways of interacting can become assimilated into and transformed by the ways of God, the ways of love, for God is love (1 John 4:8). Pope John Paul II called this the "logic of the Incarnation."
Incarnational Prayer
The Holy Father highlights the incarnational aspect of the Rosary: "This is a methodology, moreover, which corresponds to the inner logic of the Incarnation: in Jesus, God wanted to take on human features. It is through his bodily reality that we are led into contact with the mystery of his divinity" (29). What the Holy Father means by this deserves close attention.
When praying the Rosary, the whole human person (body and soul) takes part in the contemplative pursuit of Jesus Christ. Each bead that the fingers handle is another step along the way to Christ; each voiced prayer of the words of Scripture is an evangelical proclamation of the Word of God. The imagination ruminates over the mysteries in the life of Jesus Christ; the mind ascends to the sublime heights of wisdom; the heart penetrates the depths of God's love. The entire human person, in his or her sensitive, intellective, and affective faculties, prays in praying the Rosary.
The Rosary even touches our emotional lives. In praying the Rosary, our emotions find their proper ordering and expression through meditation on the face of Christ. For what other face reveals a more perfectly ordered emotional life than the face of Jesus Christ? In the face of Christ, we can behold the very feelings of Jesus Christ. We behold his confidence as an unaccompanied twelve-year-old boy who instructs the teachers in the temple in Jerusalem. We behold his zeal when Jesus expels the money changers from his Father's house as part of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God and call to conversion. We behold his fear as he agonizes in the garden over his suffering and death. We behold his consolation when his loving obedience to the will of the Father triumphs. The Man of Sorrows, scourged, mocked, and crowned with thorns, invites us to unite our sorrow, our mourning, our pain to his. No greater depth of gratitude can be reached than that of Christ in his institution of the Eucharist; no greater love and compassion can be shown than that in his passion and cross. The joy of the Resurrection radiates from the face of the one who was dead but has been raised to life. The Rosary conforms our own emotional lives to Christ's emotional life when we contemplate the mysteries of our salvation. With this in mind, John Paul II writes that the Rosary "engages the whole person in all his complex psychological, physical and relational reality" (27).
The Rosary is also a place where we become "open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life" (9). In other words, the Rosary is a place where the Holy Trinity meets humanity and where the human person encounters the three divine persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John Paul II calls this place the school of Mary.
The School of Mary
In seeking the face of Jesus Christ, Mary goes first. She precedes us because she is the one in whom God humbled himself to take on a face we could contemplate. "The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary" (10). Mary goes not only before us, but with us, in contemplating Christ. The Pope reminds us that the way of the Rosary, even when recited in private, is never "a spiritual itinerary" undertaken alone or in isolation (37). The explicitly Marian character of the Rosary encourages us to "contemplate the face of Christ in union with, and at the school of, his Most Holy Mother. To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ" (3). The Rosary is a school of contemplation; it is also a school of spiritual formation.
By matriculating into the school of the Rosary, we entrust ourselves to the instructive and formative guidance of Mary. In this school, "Mary acts as Mother, Teacher and Guide" (37). As our Mother, she presents us what to contemplate: the face of Jesus Christ her Son. As our Teacher, she teaches us how to contemplate: by the power of the Holy Spirit. As our Guide, she shows us the end or purpose of our contemplation: the glory of the Father. She forms in us a wonder at the mystery of the Triune God and a greater appreciation of the wonderful things God has done and continues to do for us.
Moreover, through the Rosary, Mary shares with us the wonderful gifts God has given to her. Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart (Luke 2:19; cf. verse 51). It befits her to endow us with a share in her marvelous prayer. So by her intercessory prayers, the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary "obtain[s] for us in abundance the gifts of the Holy Spirit" (14). When we join her in contemplating the mystery of Jesus Christ, she joins us to her own contemplation and she hands over to us the fruits of her contemplation. And the things which she hands over ought not be reduced to any particular discipline. We neither study the events in the life of Jesus Christ as mere history nor examine his person as mere biography. Rather, the course in contemplative formation that the Rosary offers is a loving encounter and engagement with the mystery of Jesus Christ.
John Paul II wholeheartedly recommends the Rosary as a wonderful way of contemplating the face of Christ. The Rosary unites us more steadfastly to Mary who prays for us now and at the hour of our death.
