The Rosary is a quiet, contemplative prayer with enormous spiritual power.

Its very repetitiveness makes it a kind of mantra designed to slow us down,

calm our restless hearts, and allow the mysteries of the life of Christ to appear before our mind's eye.

But how exactly do we pray it?

Well, the Rosary actually consists of a series of smaller prayers,

all of which take about 20 minutes to pray.

For our purposes today, I will say the names of each prayer,

Hail Mary, Our Father, etc.

For the text of each prayer, visit wordonfire.org slash rosary. Now let's walk through

the rosary together. Holding the crucifix of the rosary, we pray the ancient Apostles' Creed,

which is a summary of our baptismal promises. Holding the first bead above the crucifix, we then

pray the Our Father, which is of course the prayer

of Jesus taught us to pray. For each of the three beads that follow, we pray the Hail Mary,

which is derived from the biblical text where an angel asks Mary if she's willing to become

the mother of God. One thing we might pray for during this introductory triplet is an increase

in faith, hope, and love.

Next, we pray the Glory B, which gives praise to the three persons of our one God.

Now we move into the heart of the Rosary, the five decades, so-called.

These are groupings of ten beads separated by an individual bead.

Each of these decades corresponds to a mystery in the lives of Christ and his mother.

When we pray the Rosary, we pray it following one of the four categories of mysteries.

The joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, the glorious mysteries, and the luminous mysteries.

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