The Rosary: A Prayer of Presence

 

The most fundamental component of the Holy Rosary is the ‘Hail Mary.’ Analytically, it is the smallest unit to which the Rosary can be reduced before it completely loses recognition as the Rosary. The Rosary is essentially the ‘Hail Mary.’ However, the beautiful and powerful prayer of the Rosary sometimes unwittingly obscures the Hail Mary itself. Were the number of Rosaries some of us have said over the entire course of our lives reduced materially into straight-chained chaplets, with beads the size of peanuts, the length might encircle entire states. So, I believe that in a number of cases and without intending to, we say so many Rosaries that, without intending to, we lose sight of the Hail Mary with the attendant implication that our prayer life suffers a vitiation in quality and efficacy. This understanding is perhaps put in clearer perspective when we consider an observation  by one of the former Spanish side’s finest coaches, Vicente del Bosque, concerning Sergio Busquets, a Spanish player of no mean legendary repute himself. He said “When you watch the game, you don’t see Sergio Busquets,

but when you watch Sergio Busquets, you see the entire game.” Hence drawing directly from that insightful analogy, when sometimes we focus on completing our Rosaries, we do not see the ‘Hail Mary’, but when we focus on and look at and see the Hail Mary, we see the entire Rosary: Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with You, Blessed are you among women’.

 Now, if we can but meditatively reflect on the Hail Mary, we recognize that it is a prayer of presence, and the Rosary itself becomes a prayer of communion; a desire to be with God and have God be with us because this is the highest blessing of all: Emmanuel: God with us. We recognize in the Hail Mary, Jesus the Emmanuel, the fruit of Mary’s womb, the long desired of all Nations, whom we in turn express a relentless and longing desire to be one with, to be present to the eternally present one at all times, a longing that receives emphasis and intensity with each repetition of this great prayer of presence. The entire Rosary is then seen as a prayer of presence, a desire to be always conscious of the presence of God, to have God be with us. The Rosary thus seen, then, unleashes transformative power that conforms us to the image of Christ. This is the kind of experience our seraphic father Francis had. When he saw the hail Mary, he saw a prayer of presence, and this desire, as Thomas of Celano would testify, so transformed him that he became not so much a man of prayer as a prayer himself. Properly looked at, the Rosary is capable of bringing us to this place also.

Our Lady of the Rosary - pray for us 

Friar Gabriel Amokaha OFM Cap

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