On this Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7) in the centennial year of Our Lady's celebrated apparitions under that title at Fatima (1917), it's worth recounting not just how powerful a prayer the Rosary has been since it was introduced to the church in the middle ages, but more to the point, perhaps, just why. To put it quite succinctly and bluntly: the Rosary is the best Bible study of all time, period.
Unfortunately, not only have many Protestant congregations traditionally viewed veneration of Mary as inherently idolatrous and thus reflexively speak negatively of the Rosary, but even Catholics tend to see it as a "grandma devotion" for old women with nothing better left to do in life but say Hail Marys endlessly day in and day out.
The ironic thing with this, of course, is that the only purpose of the Rosary is to conform one's own life challenges and trials with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ Himself. Or in other words, the Rosary brings into sharp focus our only real business on this earth from the moment we're born all the way up to our return to the dust.
Indeed, if Sacred Scripture is ultimately about only one subject - namely the Word made flesh Himself - then it must behoove any student of such a rich and massive compendium of texts from two to three thousand years ago to zero in on a single unifying theme that ties all of Scripture together. In the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we have precisely this one great strand of revelation that binds all the rest together: that God took human flesh in the Incarnation for the express purpose of suffering and dying on the Cross to expiate sin and thus join sinful humanity to Himself in the life of Heaven even while still on earth.
If you could come up with a better summary for what Christianity is all about in the most practical everyday terms, I'd give you my whole fortune if I had one and go into massive debt just to give you more.
If we pray the Rosary daily - especially all 15 traditional decades and not just the day's prescribed five - then daily we are confronted with these three fundamental questions:
1. How did we humble ourselves today to receive Christ into our hearts? (Joyful Mysteries)
2. How did we suffer and die with Christ (not literally but ontologically) today? (Sorrowful Mysteries)
3. How did this suffering and death bring us to a new peace and joy today that we know can only come through such a union with the crucified Christ? (Glorious Mysteries)
That's our faith in a nutshell...period. Which makes the Rosary the best Bible study of all time...period.
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