Devotion to the Holy Rosary: ​​the school of the Gospel

 

Saint Francis Xavier, missionary in the Indies, wore the crown of the Rosary around his neck and preached the Holy Rosary a lot because he had experienced that, in doing so, it was easier for him to explain the Gospel to pagans and newbies. Therefore, if he was able to fall in love with the Rosary of the newly baptized, he knew well that they had understood and possessed the substance of all the Gospel to live, without forgetting it.

The Holy Rosary, in fact, is really the essential compendium of the Gospel. It is very easy to realize this. The Rosary summarizes the Gospel by offering to the meditation and contemplation of those who recite it the whole arc of the life lived by Jesus with Mary on the Palestinian land, from the virginal and divine conception of the Word to his birth, from his passion to death, from his resurrection to the eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.

Already Pope Paul VI explicitly called the Rosary "evangelical prayer". Pope John Paul II then carried out an important operation trying to complete and perfect the evangelical content of the Rosary, adding to the joyful, painful and glorious mysteries also the luminous mysteries, which integrate and perfect the whole arc of the life lived by Jesus with Mary on the land of the Middle East.

The five luminous mysteries, in fact, were a particular gift from Pope John Paul II who enriched the Rosary with the most important events of the public life of Jesus, which goes from the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River to the miracle in the Wedding at Cana for the Mother's maternal intervention, from the great preaching of Jesus to his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, to conclude with the institution of the Divine Eucharist, before the Passion and Death contained in the five painful mysteries.

Now, with the luminous mysteries, it can be said that in reciting and meditating the Rosary we retrace the entire life span of Jesus and Mary, for which "the compendium of the Gospel" was truly completed and perfected, and the Rosary presents now the Good News in its fundamental contents of salvation for the eternal life of all men, gradually impressing itself on the mind and heart of those who pray the holy crown piously.

It is true, of course, that the mysteries of the Rosary, as Pope John Paul still says, "do not replace the Gospel and do not even recall all its pages", but it is however evident that from them "the soul can easily range over the rest of the Gospel ».

Catechism of the Madonna
Those who know the Holy Rosary today can therefore say that they really know the complete compendium of the life of Jesus and Mary, with the fundamental mysteries of the main truths that constitute the perennial patrimony of the Christian faith. In summary, the truths of faith contained in the Rosary are these:

- the redemptive Incarnation of the Word, by the work of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1,35) in the virgin womb of the Immaculate Conception, the "full of grace" (Lk 1,28);

- the virginal conception of Jesus and the divine motherhood of Mary;

- the virgin birth of Mary in Bethlehem;

- the public manifestation of Jesus at the wedding at Cana for the Mediation of Mary;

- the preaching of Jesus the Revealer of the Father and of the Holy Spirit;

- the Transfiguration, sign of the Divinity of Christ, Son of God;

- the institution of the Eucharistic mystery with the Priesthood;

- the "Fiat" of Jesus the Redeemer to the Passion and Death, according to the Father's Will;

- the Coredemptrix with a dead soul, at the feet of the crucified Redeemer;

- the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus to heaven;

- Pentecost and the birth of the Church of Spiritu Sancto et Maria Virgine;

- the bodily Assumption and the glorification of Mary, Queen next to the Son King.

It is clear, therefore, that the Rosary is a summary catechism or is a miniature Gospel, and for this reason, every child and every adult who learns well to recite the Rosary knows the essentials of the Gospel, and knows the fundamental truths of the Faith in the "school of Mary"; and whoever does not neglect but cultivates the prayer of the Rosary can always say that he knows the substance of the Gospel and the history of salvation, and believes in the fundamental mysteries and primary truths of the Christian faith. What a precious school of the Gospel is therefore the Holy Rosary!