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The Rosary relates the Christian life to that of Mary. The three great mysteries of the Rosary - the Joyful, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious - are the brief description of earthly life contained in the Creed: birth, struggle, and victory. Joyful: "Born of the Virgin Mary." Sorrowful: "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried" Glorious: "The third day He arose again from the dead, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty." The Christian life is inseparable from the joys of birth and youth, the struggles of maturity against the passions and evil, and finally, the hope of glory in Heaven.
THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES
First Joyful Mystery: the Annunciation
In human love man desires, woman gives. In Divine Love, God seeks, the soul responds. God asks Mary to give Him a human nature with which He may start a new humanity. Mary agrees. A woman's role is to be the medium by which God comes to man. A woman is frustrated who does not bring forth a new man, either physically, by birth, or spiritually, by conversion. And every man is frustrated who knows not both his earthly and his heavenly mother, Mary.
Second Joyful Mystery: the Visitation
Love that refuses to share kills its own power to love. Mary not only wants others to share her love, but also her Beloved. She brings Christ to souls before Christ is born. The Gospel tells us that on seeing Mary, Elizabeth was "filled with the Holy Spirit." When we have Christ within, we cannot be happy until we have imparted our joy. The soul that does not magnify itself alone can truly magnify the Lord. Out of the humility of Mary sprang the song of the Magnificat, in which she made nothing of herself and everything of Him. By reducing ourselves to zero, we most quickly find the Infinite.
Third Joyful Mystery: the Nativity
As the Virgin conceived Our Lord without the lusts of the flesh, so now she brings Him forth in joy without the labours of the flesh. As bees draw honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of the side of Adam without any grief to him, so now in remaking the human race, the new Adam is taken from the new Eve without any grief to her. It is only her other children of the spirit, which she will bring forth at Calvary, who will cause her pain. And the sign by which men would know He is God was that He would be wrapped in swaddling clothes. The sun would be in eclipse, Eternity in time, Omnipotence in bonds, God in the shrouds of human flesh. Only by becoming little likewise, do we ever become great.
Fourth Joyful Mystery: the Presentation
Mary submits to the general law of Purification, from which she was really free, lest she should scandalize by the premature discovery of the secret entrusted to her keeping. Simeon tells her that her Son is to be contradicted - the sign of contradiction is the Cross - and a Sword her own heart shall pierce. And yet all this is considered a Joyful Mystery: for, as the Father sent His Son to be a victim for the sins of the world, so would Mary joyfully guard Him until the hour of sacrifice. The highest use any of us can make of the gifts of God is to give them back to God again.
Fifth Joyful Mystery: Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple
It is so easy to lose Christ; He can even be lost by a little heedlessness; a little want of watchfulness and the Divine Presence slips away. But sometimes a reconciliation is sweeter than an unbroken friendship. There are two ways of knowing how good God is: one is never to lose Him, the other is to lose Him and find Him again. Sin is the loss of Jesus, and since Mary felt the sting of His absence she could understand the gnawing heart of every sinner and be to it, in the truest sense of the word: "Refuge of Sinners."
THE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES
First Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden
Our fellow creatures can help us only when our needs are human. But in an hour of our greatest need, some of them betray and others sleep. In the really deep agony, we must cry to God. "Being in agony, He prayed." What up to that point seemed a tragedy, now becomes an abandonment to the Father's Will.
Second Sorrowful Mystery: The Scourging at the Pillar
Over seven hundred years before, Isaiah prophesied the laceration of Our Lord's Sacred Body, "Here is one despised, left out of all human reckoning, bowed with misery, and no stranger to weakness; how should we recognize that face?" Great souls are like great mountains; they always attract the storms. Upon their bodies break the thunders and lightnings of evil men to whom purity and goodness is a reproach. In reparation for all the sins of the flesh, and in anticipated encouragement to the martyrs who would be beaten by Communists and their progenitors, He delivers His Sacred Body to the lash until "His bones could be numbered," and His flesh hung from Him like purple rags.
Third Sorrowful Mystery: The Crowning with Thorns
The Saviour of the world is made a puppet for those who play the fool: the King of Kings is mocked by those who will have "no King but Caesar." Thorns were part of the original curse upon the earth. Even nature, through sinful men, rebels against God. If Christ wears a crown of thorns, shall we covet a crown of laurel?
I saw the Son of God go by
Crowned with a crown of thorn.
"Was it not finished, Lord" said I,
"And all the anguish borne?'
He turned on me His awful eyes:
"Hast thou not understood?
Lo, every soul is Calvary
And every sin a rood."
(Rachel Annard Taylor, "The Question," from Anthology of Jesus, edited by Sir James Marchant ["rood"= cross]).
Fourth Sorrowful Mystery: The Carrying of the Cross
Many a cross we bear is of our own manufacture; we made it by our sins. But the Cross which the Saviour carried was not His, but ours. One beam in contradiction to another beam was the symbol of our will in contradiction to His own. To the pious women who met Him on the roadway, He said; "Weep not for Me." To shed tears for the dying Saviour is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to lament the sin that caused it. If Innocence itself took a Cross, then how shall we, who are guilty, complain against it?
Fifth Sorrowful Mystery: The Crucifixion
Once nailed to the Cross and "lifted up to draw all men to Himself," He is taunted: "Others He saved, Himself He cannot save." Of course not! This is not weakness, but obedience to the law of sacrifice. A mother cannot save herself, if she would raise her child; the rain cannot save itself, if it would bud the greenery; a soldier cannot save himself, if he would save his country; and neither will Christ save Himself, since He came to save us. What heart can conceive the misery of humankind, if the Son of God had saved Himself from suffering, and left a fallen world to the wrath of God?
THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES
First Glorious Mystery: The Resurrection
Easter Sunday was not within three days of the Transfiguration, but within three days of Good Friday. Love is not to be measured by the joys and pleasures which it gives, but by the ability to draw joy out of sorrow, a resurrection out of a crucifixion, and life out of death. Unless there is a Cross in our life, there will never be an empty tomb; unless there is the crown of thorns, there will never be the halo of light: "O, Death, where is thy victory? O, grave where is thy sting?"
Second Glorious Mystery: The Ascension
In Heaven there is now a human nature like our own, the promise of what ours will one day be if we follow His Way. Thanks to this human nature, He will always have a deep sympathy for us, even "making intercession for us." We can ascend to Him, now, only in our minds and hearts; our bodies will follow after the Last Judgment. Until then we approach His Throne with confidence, knowing that "pierced Hands distribute the richest blessings."
Third Glorious Mystery: The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles
As the Son of God in the Incarnation took upon Himself a human body from the womb of the Blessed Mother overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, so now on Pentecost He takes from the womb of humanity a Mystical Body, as the Holy Spirit overshadowed the twelve Apostles with "Mary in the midst of them abiding in prayer." The Mystical Body is the Church; He is the Invisible Head; Peter and his successors, the Visible Head; we, the members, and the Holy Spirit its soul. As He once taught, governed, and sanctified through His human nature, so now He teaches, governs, and sanctifies through other human natures compacted into His Mystical Body, the Church. We can never thank God enough for making us members of His One Fold and one Shepherd.
Fourth Glorious Mystery: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven
Mary was not a rose in which Divinity reposed for a time; she was the canal through which God came to us. Mary could no longer live without the Dream she brought forth, nor could the Dream live without her, body and soul. Her love of God bore her upward; His love of His Mother lifted her upward. Our Lord could not forget the cradle in which He lay. In the Annunciation, the angel said: "The Lord is with Thee." In the Assumption: "Mary is with the Lord." Her Assumption is the guarantee that one's prayers to her will be answered. The Son is on the right Hand of the Father; she is on the right Hand of the Son.
Fifth Glorious Mystery: The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin
As Queen of Heaven, Our Lord comes back to us again through Mary, passing His Life and His blessing through her hands as the Mediatrix of all graces. He came through her in Bethlehem; through her, we go back to Him and through her He comes back again to us.
Our Lady went into a strange country
And they crowned her for a queen
For she needed never to be stayed or questioned
But only seen;
And they were broken down under unbearable beauty
As we have been.
Our Lady wears a crown in a strange country
The crown He gave,
But she has not forgotten to call her old companions
To call and crave;
And to hear her calling a man might arise and thunder
On the doors of the grave.
(G. K. Chesterton, "Regina Angelorum," from Collected Poems, 1935)
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