(This article was published in the October 2025 Seasoned Servant Connection. There are additional articles to the series, but this is the last article describing the odyssey.)
In this article I will address the third of three concerns, mentioned in previous articles, that I had regarding the method of praying the Rosary that I had adopted. This concern has to do with the apparent conflict between saying the words of a prayer while attempting to focus the mind on a mystery that typically has little to do with those words. My research on the Rosary eventually led me, via John Paul II, to Pope Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation, Marialis Cultus, # 46, in which he explicitly addressed this concern with two items in particular.
In the first, he shows how the words of the Rosary’s prayers and the mind’s thoughts on the mysteries work in harmony to deepen one’s experience of praying the Rosary. He does this by comparing the ancient practice of weaving cloth on a loom, saying “the succession of Hail Marys constitutes the warp [i.e., the vertical threads on a loom that provide a foundation for the weaving] on which is woven one’s reflection on the mysteries [which constitute the woof, the thread woven horizontally into the warp].” In this down-to-earth image he says we can understand the “litany like” repetition of the Hail Mary’s in their “unceasing praise of Christ” to be the foundation (the warp) upon which the Scripture references (the woof) bring to life the mysteries of Jesus. Or to use an analogy from the world of art, the Hail Mary’s provide a background for the mysteries of Jesus that constitute the foreground. But in order to have that foreground, it is necessary to “add to the name of Jesus in each Hail Mary a reference to the mystery” so as to deepen one’s engagement with the mystery.
In the second item he speaks of an ancient custom: “As is well known, at one time there was a custom, still preserved in certain places, of adding to the name of Jesus in each Hail Mary a reference to the mystery being [reflected upon]. And this was done precisely in order to help [the reflection] and to make the mind and the voice act in unison.” On reading those two items, my third concern was completely vanquished. Not only was the practice promoted by these two authoritative voices, both of whom were popes and are canonized saints, but there also “was a custom, still preserved in certain places” of praying the Rosary in this manner.
Where are those places, I wondered. Not long after being made aware of them, I came across a little book on the Rosary that was first published in 1961 (i.e., prior to the addition of the Luminous mysteries) that provides a brief historical overview of the development of the Rosary that includes this important note: “The only place in the world where the old medieval Rosary with 150 Hail Mary thoughts is known to survive today is in the isolated little mountain village of Schröcken, high in the Vorarlberg Alps of Austria [where] the villagers still come together as they have since the Middle Ages to pray the Rosary the way it was once prayed throughout the Christian world.” Clearly, the approach to the Rosary I had adopted has passed the test of time, for it is more than five hundred years old, and the approach is both approved and recommended by the highest of religious authorities.
Theology and Sanity 