Rosary – To God Be Glory

How to Pray the Rosary

Make the Sign of the Cross, then pray the Apostles’ Creed on the crucifix.
On the first white bead, pray the Our Father.
On the next three purple beads, pray three Hail Marys for an increase in Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Pray the Glory Be.
Announce the first mystery. On the white bead, pray the Our Father.
On the ten purple beads, pray ten Hail Marys while contemplating the mystery.
At the end of the decade, pray the Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer.
Repeat the same pattern for all five mysteries.
After the fifth mystery, pray the Hail, Holy Queen and the closing prayer beginning “O God, whose Only Begotten Son…”.
Conclude with an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be for the Holy Father’s intentions, then make the Sign of the Cross.

Meditating on the Life of Christ

The Mysteries of the Rosary

Joyful Mysteries

0/59 beads marked

Sorrowful Mysteries

0/59 beads marked

Glorious Mysteries

0/59 beads marked

From the Marian Psalter to a school of contemplation

History of the Rosary

Prayer in the Pattern of the Psalms

The Rosary grew within a Christian tradition of repeated, counted prayer. The Church’s Psalter contains 150 Psalms, and for centuries monks and clergy prayed them as part of the Divine Office. Among the faithful, repeated prayers such as the Our Father and, increasingly, the Hail Mary became a way of joining prayer to a pattern reminiscent of the Psalter. The full traditional Rosary came to contain 150 Hail Marys. Pope Paul VI specifically noted that this number has an analogy with the Psalter and reaches back to the origins of the devotion.

St. Dominic and the Dominican Tradition

According to the ancient and cherished tradition of the Dominican Order, the Blessed Virgin Mary entrusted the Rosary to St. Dominic in the early thirteenth century as a means of drawing souls back to Christ through prayer, meditation, and conversion. Dominican tradition remembers the Rosary as a spiritual weapon against heresy and sin. The precise form of the Rosary continued to develop over succeeding centuries, but the association of St. Dominic and his Order with the preaching and spread of the Rosary became one of the devotion’s most enduring traditions.

The Rosary Takes Its Familiar Form

The prayer did not appear all at once in every detail of the form familiar today. The wording of the Hail Mary developed over time, and the practice of joining repeated Hail Marys to meditation on events in the lives of Jesus and Mary gradually became more structured. By the later Middle Ages, groups of decades and sets of mysteries were increasingly recognizable.

In the fifteenth century, Blessed Alan de la Roche, O.P., became an especially important preacher of the Rosary and helped establish Rosary confraternities. Dominican confraternities encouraged regular recitation, meditation on the mysteries, and prayer in communion with other members. Their spread helped make the Rosary a prayer of ordinary Catholic homes as well as religious communities.

St. Pius V and the Fifteen Mysteries

In 1569 Pope St. Pius V gave authoritative form to the Rosary tradition in Consueverunt Romani Pontifices. Four centuries later, Pope Paul VI recalled that St. Pius V had defined the form of the Rosary handed down in the Church. The traditional complete Rosary contemplated fifteen mysteries—five Joyful, five Sorrowful, and five Glorious—through 150 Hail Marys, reflecting the number of Psalms in the Psalter.

Lepanto and the Feast of the Holy Rosary

The Rosary became especially associated with the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when Pope St. Pius V called Christians to prayer as the Holy League faced the Ottoman fleet. After the Christian victory, a feast in honor of Our Lady of Victory was established; Pope Gregory XIII later associated the celebration with the Holy Rosary. Over time the feast spread more widely through the Church and is celebrated today as Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7.

The Rosary Popes

Successive popes strongly encouraged the Rosary, but Pope Leo XIII became especially associated with it. He repeatedly urged the faithful to pray the Rosary, particularly during October, and wrote numerous encyclicals explaining its value for Christian life. In the twentieth century, popes continued to commend the Rosary as a prayer centered on Christ and prayed in company with His Mother.

Fatima and the Daily Rosary

The Rosary received renewed emphasis through the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima in 1917. The three shepherd children reported that Mary repeatedly asked for the Rosary to be prayed every day, together with conversion, penance, and prayer for sinners. The events at Fátima helped renew the place of the Rosary in Catholic family and devotional life throughout the twentieth century.

The Luminous Mysteries

In 2002 St. John Paul II proposed five additional Mysteries of Light—the Luminous Mysteries—focused on Christ’s public ministry from His Baptism in the Jordan through the institution of the Eucharist. He described them as a proposed addition to the traditional pattern and left their use to the freedom of individuals and communities. He also explicitly noted that the traditional pattern had been shaped by the number 150, corresponding to the Psalms. The Luminous Mysteries offer a valuable way to contemplate the public life of Christ; this page retains the traditional fifteen-mystery form.

A Prayer Centered on Christ

Across these centuries of development, the essential purpose of the Rosary has remained contemplation of Jesus Christ with Mary. Its repeated prayers provide a rhythm in which the mind and heart can dwell on the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and glory of Christ. As St. John Paul II taught, the Rosary is one of the Church’s traditional paths of Christian prayer directed toward contemplating the face of Christ.

How to Pray the Rosary

The Mysteries of the Rosary

Joyful Mysteries

The Annunciation

The Visitation

The Nativity

The Presentation

The Finding of Jesus in the Temple

Sorrowful Mysteries

The Agony in the Garden

The Scourging at the Pillar

The Crowning with Thorns

The Carrying of the Cross

The Crucifixion

Glorious Mysteries

The Resurrection

The Ascension

The Descent of the Holy Spirit

The Assumption

The Coronation of Mary