The Rosary is made up of two things: mental prayer and vocal prayer. In the Rosary mental prayer is none other than meditation of the chief mysteries of the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ and of his blessed Mother. Vocal prayer consists in saying the decades of the Hail Mary, each decade headed by an Our Father, while at the same time meditating on and contemplating the principal virtues which Jesus and Mary practised in the mysteries of the Rosary.
A mystery is a sacred thing which is difficult to understand. The works of our Lord Jesus Christ are all sacred and divine because he is God and man at one and the same time. The works of the Blessed Virgin are very holy because she is the most perfect and the most pure of God’s creatures. The works of our Lord and of his blessed Mother can rightly be called mysteries because they are so full of wonders, of all kinds of perfections, and of deep and sublime truths, which the Holy Spirit reveals to the humble and simple souls who honour these mysteries.
The chief concern of the Christian should be to tend to perfection. “Be faithful imitators of God, as his well-beloved children,” the great Apostle tells us. This obligation is included in the eternal decree of our predestination, as the one and only means prescribed by God to attain everlasting glory. The Christian must always have before his eyes the life and virtues of Jesus Christ, so as never to say, think or do anything which is not in conformity with his model.
It was because our Lady wanted to help us in the great task of working out our salvation that she ordered Saint Dominic to teach the faithful to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ. She did this, not only that they might adore and glorify him, but chiefly that they might pattern their lives and actions on his virtues.
Just as children learn from their parents by watching them and talking with them, so those who pray the Rosary can become like their divine Master if they reverently study and imitate the virtues of Jesus which are shown in the mysteries of his life. They can do this with the help of his grace and through the intercession of his blessed Mother.
Arm yourself with the arms of God, with the prayer of the Rosary, and you will crush the devil’s head and stand firm in the face of all his temptations. That is why even a pair of rosary beads is so terrible to the devil, and why the saints have used them to fetter him and drive him from the bodies of those who were possessed.
The saints made our Lord’s life the principal object of their study; they meditated on his virtues and his sufferings, and in this way arrived at Christian perfection.
Let us meditate, then, on the life and sufferings of our Saviour by means of the holy Rosary; let us learn to know him well and to be grateful for all his blessings, so that, on the day of Judgment, he may number us among his children and his friends.
Extracts from The Secret of the Rosary by Saint Louis de Montfort