(This article was published in the May 2025 Seasoned Servant Connection.)
Continuing the search for that “missing element” of the Rosary, I eagerly read John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter on the Rosary when it was published in 2002. Knowing his great devotion to the Virgin Mary, I reasoned that if anyone had something to say about praying the Rosary it would be this scholarly and saintly Pope. The advice he gave for addressing the monotonously repetitive aspect of the Rosary harkened back to the writings of St. Louis de Montfort’s The Secret of the Rosary, in which he recommended the “[addition of] a word or two to each Hail Mary (depending upon the decade) . . . [to] help remind us which mystery we are commemorating. This word or words should be added after the word ‘Jesus.’” For example, while praying the first Joyful mystery one might insert the word “incarnate” or the phrase “who is incarnate” after the name of Jesus in each Hail Mary throughout the decade. Though intrigued by de Montfort’s recommendation, I did not find it helpful in practice. For me, the secret of the Rosary remained a secret. John Paul wrote of this technique in terms of “the addition of a clause referring to the mystery.” Initially, I saw John Paul’s reference to the technique being essentially a repetition of what I had read in de Montfort’s book, so it made no particular impression on me.
A few years after having read his Apostolic Letter, the idea came to me, spontaneously, to implement a modification of de Montfort’s technique using direct quotations from dialogs found in Scripture verses associated with the mysteries, and in this way the entire mystery, as expressed in Scripture, could be spread across a decade with each Hail Mary having its own particular verse of dialog, resulting in the story of the mystery being told by the people who actually lived out the mystery as contemporaries of Jesus.
Exploring this approach in late 2004, it quickly became apparent that there were many mysteries for which there was not enough dialog. However, it seemed as though one could essentially achieve the same effect by not limiting the technique to dialog. Consequently, I began to make a collection of Scripture verses that told the story of the first Joyful mystery as a test run to get a feel for whether I could justify the effort the project would require, for the effort was not trivial. I put the technique to the test on that single decade and was encouraged by the results. As I continued to work through the remaining Joyful mysteries, I felt that I was on to something.
By the end of 2025, I had assembled the two-hundred verses needed for all twenty mysteries of the Rosary, and I had gained sufficient experience with this approach to be certain it would be the only way I would pray the Rosary going forward. There were three signs indicating this was a good approach. First, the never-ending distractions I had always experienced with the Rosary were greatly lessened by this approach. Second, I found that if I was interrupted while praying the Rosary I could remember the bead on which I had left off when I returned to continue the decade, even if it were hours later. Third, I was constantly amazed at how fast time appeared to pass while praying the Rosary using this method. These three signs indicated that my attention to the praying of the Rosary was significantly enhanced by the method; hence, the signs seemed to confirm the value of the approach. Nevertheless, there was a need to address three nagging concerns about the method. These concerns will be identified and addressed in the next article of this series.
Theology and Sanity 