Deacon Kyle Eller: Rediscovering the rosary in all its peace and richness

Mere Catholicism 

I remember vividly the first time I prayed the rosary, because it scared me. I had not yet been received into full communion with the Catholic Church or even joined RCIA, but I was on the precipice of it, and praying the rosary was a big step. 

While I had come to understand intellectually that saying the Hail Mary was not worshiping Mary, I had grown up in another Christian tradition, and there was still a piece of me that was afraid I was missing something and would be committing some kind of idolatry. So I first said a prayer to God assuring him of exactly what I meant by it, and then I went for it. That was 20 years ago, give or take. 

For the early years of my walk as a Catholic, the rosary was a regular part of my prayer life, and since then I’ve gone through seasons with it. As I write this, I’ve just finished a 54-day rosary novena, which is the first time in a while that I’ve made the rosary such a regular part of my day for that long a time. Usually it’s something I pray just now and again. 

I can’t claim to have prayed the novena particularly well. A lot of those rosaries were rushed, or last thing before bed. I missed a few days and had to make them up later on, so it ended up being 55 days. 

But still, despite my many imperfections, it was moving and sometimes deeply consoling to have that rosary in my life again, and it brought back to me why it’s such a beautiful and beloved prayer. 

The Italian theologian Romano Guardini wrote a lovely little book called “The Rosary of Our Lady,” which I read in those early years after my conversion, and an observation in that book has stuck with me all that time. 

Guardini speaks of prayer as a “place” of recollection, “not only as a domain of spiritual tranquility and mental concentration, but as something that comes from God. 

“We are always in need of this place, especially when the convulsions of the times make clear something that has always existed but which is sometimes hidden by outward well-being and a prevailing peace of mind: namely, the homelessness of our lives.” 

He says that in such times we require this “place” of prayer more than ever, “not to creep into as a hiding place, but as a place to find the core of things, to become calm and confident once more.” 

Writing in 1955, he wrote that this is why the rosary is so important in these times. He notes that “the rosary does not require any special preparation, and the petitioner does not need to generate thoughts of which he is not capable at the moment or at any other time. Rather, he steps into a well-ordered world, meets familiar images, and finds roads that lead him to the essential.” 

That leads to the passage that has stuck with me: “The rosary has the character of a sojourn,” Guardini writes. “Its essence is the sheltering security of a quiet, holy world that envelops the person who is praying. … The rosary is not a road, but a place, and it has no goal but a depth. To linger in it has great compensations.” 

Part of what Guardini is referring to is the rosary’s remarkable combination of depth and simplicity. The different mysteries of the rosary, expanded since he wrote to 20 by Pope St. John Paul II (himself a great devotee of the rosary), present for us, as Guardini puts it, “the essential,” “the core”: the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, heaven, baptism, marriage, the preaching of the kingdom, the Transfiguration, the Eucharist, priesthood. 

How beautiful it is to constantly and simply be called back to these inexhaustible treasures, to have Christmas, for instance, be not just a December thing but an every week thing, all through the year, always in our hearts, and so with the rest of the mysteries of our salvation. 

These are the “well-ordered world” and the “familiar images” Guardini speaks of. We become enveloped in this holy “place” by simple prayers even a child can say, and by letting our hearts and minds rest in these mysteries. 

There is a sensibility many people take up without thinking about that to be an “adult faith,” we must go beyond these basics, dive into ever deeper flights of theological speculation or, worse, novelty and change for the sake of change, as something we invent by our clever thoughts rather than receive through the revelation of God. 

This is the very opposite of the truth. Depth and growth in our faith do not involve moving away from these essentials but deeper into them, and not in more complexity driven by our own cleverness but in deeper simplicity and receptivity. 

St. Josemaria Escriva has a great quote about how the rosary punctures our pride. “The rosary is most effective for those who use their intelligence and their study as a weapon,” he wrote. “Because that apparently monotonous way of beseeching Our Lady as children do their Mother can destroy every seed of vainglory and pride.” 

October is a month of particular devotion to the rosary, in part because of the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, Oct. 7, which is our diocesan patronal feast. In this time of confusion and chaos and division, a time when so many people are feeling “the homelessness of our lives,” perhaps the rosary is a key remedy for us, as it has been in so many times past. 

Deacon Kyle Eller is editor of The Northern Cross. Reach him at [email protected].