On the Holy Rosary.

As October is the month of the Holy Rosary, I have been trying to do some reading pertaining to the benefits and promises of this beautiful prayer given to us by our Lady. Below is a snippet from Catherine Doherty:

"The Creed is our declaration of faith and allegiance to the Holy Trinity, to the commandments of God and his spouse, the church. Recite it slowly and let each word sink in - for thousands have died for these words and what they stand for. The Our Father is our prayer for the fellowship of men and women under the fatherhood of God, a prayer of love, trust, hope, and faith. And the Hail Marys are the angelic salutation that brought the incarnation and the redemption to this earth! It still does, to those who say it with their hearts as well as their lips. The repetition, slow and reverent, of these prayers, is not monotonous. It is a companion to our retracing of the life of God, his mother, and his church, a pilgrimage of love and faith. Mary continually holds out to us, her children, the slender thread of a rosary, asking that we say it, perhaps because it is as slender as she, and as strong as the God we pray to. October is the months of the rosary. Let us pray it daily, spanning the word with its slender, unbreakable strength, lifting it, lifting it up, up to the very feet of God."

I found this to be a perfect summation of the Rosary; the origin of its words and a reason for its repetition. Amazing, all the trans-formative power to be found within this simple string of prayers, in its ability to draw our minds and hearts to contemplate the Divine. Pope Pius XI provides excellent reasons to dwell on the mysteries of the Rosary:

"How could love not be made more fervent by the Rosary? We meditate on the Suffering and Death of our Redeemer and the Sorrows of His afflicted Mother. Will we not make a return for the love received? ...The Rosary enlivens the hope for things above that endure forever. As we meditate on the glory of Jesus and His Mother, we see heaven opened and our heartened in our striving to gain the eternal home."

The Rosary is especially beautiful to me because it meshes so well with humanity and makes Christ and the Blessed Mother more tangible to us. Its mysteries present us with the occurrences of our Lord's life; the birth, joys, growth, good works, sorrows, death, and eternal life. By meditating on the very humanity of the Divine, we learn how to be perfect as He is perfect. But isn't that always the goal of our Lady...to continuously lead us to her Son.

"To become perfect, say a Rosary a day."  St. Louis de Montfort

On that note, I should get to my daily Rosary as I work in the kitchen. :)