Friends, the Lord Jesus has entrusted his church with privileged means

through which we can participate in his victory over sin and death.

These include the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Penance,

the Bible and specific devotional prayers such as the rosary.

Why is the rosary so important?

First, the rosary is embodied, concrete, densely objective.

It's something that you hold in your hand.

The simple feel of the rosary beads can put you in a mystical frame of mind.

Second, the rosary is a way of disciplining the mind for meditation.

When our minds are skittish, superficial, obsessive, we never move to the deeper realms of the soul.

The repetitious prayer of the rosary quiets the mind and allows the depths of the soul. The repetitious prayer of the rosary

quiets the mind and allows the depths of the soul to rise.

Third, the rosary slows us down.

For me, this is perhaps the most striking quality of the rosary.

All the spiritual traditions witness to the fact that the soul likes

to go slow. The surface of the psyche is in constant motion, hurrying to its next thought.

But the deep spiritual center likes to see, to hear, to savor. When we pray the rosary, we move in a circle, arriving at the very place we started.

The purpose is not to get particularly anywhere, rather, it is to meditate upon the great Christian mysteries,

to look at the icons of Jesus' birth, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension

from a variety of angles, in varying moods, with different emphases, the way we might muse

over a Rembrandt portrait. This is just the sort of slow prayer the deep soul loves to do. The Rosary, a concretizing, quieting,

savoring prayer has enormous spiritual power. And it therefore has enormous

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