Rosary Meditation Series: The Mysteries of the Rosary as a Vocational Journey

I am currently abroad in an undisclosed foreign country, and I have a 40 minute walking commute to work every morning. Since I work at a Catholic University and they have mass in the morning in the chapel, the streets are still peaceful and empty at the early hour at which I traverse them. As I became familiar with the route, my steps gained a certain automaticity, enabling effective multi-tasking. Never one to see time go to waste (except on the Internet), I decided to pray the rosary during my commute, and it became a habit that stuck.

With the occasional exception here and there, my family has prayed the rosary together every night for as long as I can remember. This, in my perspective, has always been simultaneously good and bad. There are obviously abundant graces that come from praying together as a family, and I know that it taught me early on that prayer and the faith were both things that were to be valued and prioritized. Even when our days were busy, we still found time for the rosary. Familiarity with the prayers and traditions of the church is beautiful; however, my familiarity reached the point of automaticity. I gained the super-power of being able to reach the end of the decade of a rosary, having orally prayed all of it yet without the faintest recollection of having done so. The trap of automaticity is always there waiting for me when I pray the rosary; because of this it has long been hard for me to pray it devotionally. It has rarely been my prayer of choice -- unless on car trips or to kill time; however as I have matured into other aspects of my faith, my interest in the rosary has been slowly awakening. The art of Fra Angelico brought me to an appreciation of the Annunciation, and that then became a portal to dive deeper into the rest of the mysteries. I began to realize that the mysteries were not just arbitrary events in Christ's life; I realized they reflect our own lives, struggles, and journeys, and show us how to live our faith. Dominic preached the rosary and won the hearts of the Cathars. By understanding the mysteries of the rosary, we understand the mysteries of our faith. My morning commute has been the final straw in making me fall in love.

I want to frame this series in the context of the nature of the rosary as a hylomorphic prayer -- a prayer that possesses both body and soul and loses its nature if separated from either. Just as the automaticity of my steps allowed me to meditate on other things while they still led me to the University, automaticity of praying the rosary can open a door to deeper meditation -- though all the while our steps through the rosary still form a foundational undercurrent directing our thoughts toward the divine.

Our Lady giving the rosary to St. Dominic

I will hyperlink entries as they go up. They might not go up in order, since I'm still fleshing out the parallels on some of them.

The Joyful Mysteries

The Annunciation

The Visitation

The Nativity

The Presentation in the Temple

The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple

The Luminous Mysteries

The Baptism in the Jordan

The Wedding Feast at Cana

The Proclamation of the Kingdom

The Transfiguration

The Institution of the Eucharist

The Glorious Mysteries

The Resurrection

The Ascension

Pentecost

The Assumption

The Coronation

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The Agony in the Garden

The Scourging at the Pillar

The Crowning with Thorns

The Carrying of the Cross

The Crucifixion