VATICAN CITY—“The rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer,” writes Pope John Paul II in The Rosary of the Virgin Mary” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae). “With the rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty of the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love.”

In signing the document at the Oct. 16 audience, the anniversary of this papal election, rather than on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on Oct. 7, the Holy Father clearly wanted to link his appeal for a “revitalization” of the rosary to his own personal experience and piety. In effect, the preparation for his Silver Jubilee as Pope next year will be a year devoted to Mary through the rosary.

“The Rosary” is marked by the same personal meditative quality that marked John Paul's apostolic letter “Novo Millennio Ineunte” (“As the New Millennium Begins”). That letter, which marked the end of the Great Jubilee, contained an extended invitation to “contemplate the face of Christ.” In “Rosarium,” which the Pope describes “as a kind of Marian complement to [“Novo Millennio Ineunte”],” he says that “to recite the rosary is nothing other that to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ.”

The Holy Father defends the rosary as proper Christian prayer directed toward Christ himself and, because of this focus on Christ, not an obstacle to ecumenical relations. In addition, he proposes the rosary be prayed especially for the cause of peace and the defense of the family.

“The rosary mystically transports us to Mary's side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth,” writes the Pope. “This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is‘fully formed' in us (Galatians 4:19).

“This role of Mary, totally grounded in that of Christ and radically subordinated to it, in no way obscures or diminishes the unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. This is the luminous principle expressed by the Second Vatican Council, which I have so powerfully experienced in my own life and made the basis of my episcopal motto: Totus Tuus.”

“The Rosary” is written from the heart of a disciple, priest and Pope who has long contemplated the face of Christ through the eyes of his Mother. John Paul, who often prays several rosaries a day, notes that “in the course of those mysteries we contemplate important aspects of the person of Christ as the definitive revelation of God.”

The traditional 15 mysteries of the rosary focus on the infancy and childhood of Christ (the joyful mysteries), the passion and death (the sorrowful mysteries) and the definitive triumph of the resurrection (the glorious mysteries). The public life of Christ is absent—a gap the Holy Father hopes to correct with the new luminous mysteries.

“It is during the years of his public ministry that the mystery of Christ is most evidently a mystery of light:‘While I am in the world, I am the light of the world' (John 9:5),” writes John Paul. “Certainly the whole mystery of Christ is a mystery of light. Yet this truth emerges in a special way during the years of his public life, when he proclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom.”

“In these mysteries, apart from the miracle at Cana, the presence of Mary remains in the background,” writes the Holy Father of his new mysteries. “The Gospels make only the briefest reference to her occasional presence at one moment or other during the preaching of Jesus, and they give no indication that she was present at the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist. Yet the role she assumed at Cana in some way accompanies Christ throughout his ministry. The revelation made directly by the Father at the baptism in the Jordan and echoed by John the Baptist is placed upon Mary's lips at Cana, and it becomes the great maternal counsel which Mary addresses to the Church of every age:‘Do whatever he tells you.' (John 2:5).”

In the rest of the‘Rosarium' letter, John Paul reflects on how the contemplative prayer of the rosary leads one to a deeper knowledge of the mystery of Christ, which reveals the mystery of man—with all his “problems, anxieties, labors and endeavors—in the mystery of God: To pray the rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and his Mother. Twenty-five years later, thinking back over the difficulties which have also been part of my Petrine ministry, I feel the need to say once more, as a warm invitation to everyone to experience it personally: The rosary does indeed‘mark the rhythm of human life,' bringing it into harmony with the‘rhythm' of God's own life, in the joyful communion of the Holy Trinity, our life's destiny and deepest longing.”

Children's Rosary

This Marian letter from this Marian Pope concludes with him turning to another of his favorite themes: young people.

“To pray the rosary for children, and even more, with children ... is admittedly not the solution to every problem, but it is a spiritual aid which should not be underestimated,” he writes. “Why not try it? With God's help, a pastoral approach to youth which is positive, impassioned and creative—as shown by the World Youth Days!—is capable of achieving quite remarkable results. If the rosary is well-presented, I am sure that young people will once more surprise adults by the way they make this prayer their own and recite it with the enthusiasm typical of their age group.”

Why not try it? At the beginning of his 25th year, John Paul asks the world to rediscover what he calls his “favorite prayer.”

—Father Raymond J. de Souza