It is this lowliness that Cardinal Luciani refers to which can combat the internal noise that afflicts us. Many may consider the Rosary repetitious, boring, or what he calls a “poor prayer.” But when we pray this simple prayer faithfully and with humility, the barriers of inner turmoil and distraction disappear. As we experience how the Rosary helps us break through the noise of our own pride and selfishness, we are better able to recognize how truly great the gift of the Rosary is and how it remains an essential tool to help us grow spiritually today.
As Pope Benedict XVI said in a 2008 address following the recitation of the most holy Rosary at the Basilica of St. Mary Major: “Today, together we confirm that the holy Rosary is not a pious practice banished to the past, like prayers of other times thought of with nostalgia. Instead, the Rosary is experiencing a new springtime. Without a doubt, this is one of the most eloquent signs of love that the young generation nourish for Jesus and his mother, Mary. In the current world, so dispersive, this prayer helps to put Christ at the center, as the Virgin did, who meditated within all that was said about her Son, and also what he did and said.”
In the following homily, given against the backdrop of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and a changing Church, Cardinal Luciani gives a beautiful defense of the Rosary, one which we can still appreciate and take to heart today.
Is the Rosary Outdated?
Homily for the centenary of the feast of the Holy Rosary1
by Cardinal Albino Luciani (later Pope John Paul I)
October 7, 1973
What would happen during a meeting of Catholics if I were to invite the ladies and gentlemen to show what they had in their pockets or purses? I would certainly see a quantity of combs, pocket mirrors, tubes of lipstick, change purses, cigarette lighters, and other more or less useful little items. But how many rosaries? Years ago, I would have seen more of them.
In [Alessandro] Manzoni’s house in Milan today, you can see his rosary beads hanging at the head of his bed: he said the Rosary habitually, and in his novel The Betrothed, Lucia [the heroine] pulled out her beads and said the Rosary at the most dramatic moments.2
Windthorst, a German statesman, was once invited by some friends who were non-practicing Catholics to show his rosary. It was a trick: they had removed his rosary from his left pocket beforehand. When Windthorst did not find it in the left one, he put his hand into the right and ended up looking good: He always carried a spare rosary! Christophe von Gluck, a great musician, used to withdraw for a few minutes during receptions at the Court of Vienna to say his Rosary. Blessed Contardo Ferrini, a university professor in Pavia, would invite his friends to say the Rosary when he was a guest in their home. St. Bernadette assured us that when Our Lady appeared to her, she had a rosary over her arm, asked her if she also had one, and invited her to say it, while the Virgin recommended the reciting of the Rosary to the three little shepherds at Fátima.
Why have I begun with this series of examples?
Because the Rosary is contested by some. They say: it is an infantile and superstitious prayer, not worthy of adult Christians. Or: it is a prayer that becomes automatic, reduced to a hasty, monotonous, and boring repetition of Hail Marys. Or: it’s old-fashioned stuff; today there are better things: the reading of the Bible, for example, which is to the Rosary as the wheat is to the chaff!
On this subject, allow me to give a few impressions as a shepherd of souls.
A first impression: the crisis of the Rosary comes in second place. Today, in first place, there is a crisis of prayer in general. People are completely caught up in material interests; they think very little about their souls. And noise has invaded our existence. Macbeth would be able to repeat: “I have murdered sleep, I have murdered silence!”3
We have trouble finding a few little scraps of time for the inner life and the dulcis sermoncinatio or “sweet colloquy” with God. And it is a real loss. Donoso Cortes said, “Today the world is going badly because there are more battles than there are prayers.” Communal liturgies, which are certainly a great good, are being developed: they are not enough, however; personal conversation with God is also necessary.
A second impression: When people talk about “adult Christians” in prayer, sometimes they exaggerate. Personally, when I speak alone with God and Our Lady, I prefer to feel like a child rather than an adult. The miter, the skullcap, and the ring disappear; I send the adult on vacation and the bishop too, with the staid, serious, and dignified behavior that go along with them, in order to abandon myself to the spontaneous tenderness that a child has for Mama and Papa. To be, at least for half an hour or so, as I am in reality, with my misery and the best of myself, to feel surfacing from the depths of my being the child I once was, a child who wants to laugh, chatter, and to love the Lord, and who sometimes feels the need to weep so that mercy may be shown him, helps me to pray. The Rosary, a simple and easy prayer, in turn, helps me to be a child, and I am not ashamed of it at all.
A third impression: I should not and do not want to think badly of anyone, but I confess that I have several times been tempted to conclude that this or that person thinks he is an adult just because he is acting like a judge, criticizing from on high. I feel like saying to him: “What do you mean, mature? When it comes to prayer, you are an adolescent in crisis, a disappointed and rebellious person, who has not yet gotten rid of the aggressiveness of the difficult age!” May God forgive me for my rash judgment! And now I come to the other objections.
Is the Rosary a repetitious prayer? Father [Charles] De Foucauld used to say, “Love is expressed in few words, always the same, and constantly repeated.”
A woman who was traveling by train had put her baby to sleep in the baggage carrier.4 When the little one awoke, he looked down from the carrier and saw his mother sitting in front of him watching over him. “Mama!” he said. And the other: “Darling!” And for a long while the dialogue between the two did not change: “Mama!” from above, “Darling!” from below. There was no need for other words.
Don’t we have the Bible? Certainly, and it is a quid summum, but not everyone is prepared to read it or has time to. For those who do read it, it will also be useful for them at times, while traveling, on the street, and in times of particular need, to talk with Our Lady, if they believe that she is our mother and sister. If the reading of the Bible is just beginning to be appreciated as mere study, the mysteries of the Rosary, when meditated on and savored, are the Bible studied in depth, and made spiritual flesh and blood.
A boring prayer? It depends. It can be, instead, a prayer full of joy and happiness. If you know how to say it, the Rosary becomes a lifting of the eyes to Mary, which increases in intensity as you go on. It can also turn out to be a refrain that springs from the heart and calms the soul like a song.
A poor prayer, the Rosary? And what kind of prayer, then, would be “rich”? The Rosary is a series of Our Fathers, a prayer taught by Jesus, of Hail Marys, God’s greeting of the Virgin through the Angel, of Glory Bes, the praise of the most Holy Trinity. Or would you like lofty theological ponderings instead? They wouldn’t be suitable for the poor, the old, the humble, and the simple. The Rosary expresses faith without invented complications, without evasions, and without many words, it helps us to abandon ourselves to God and to accept suffering generously. God also makes use of theologians, but in distributing his grace, he makes use above all of the littleness of the humble and those who abandon themselves to his will.
There is another thing to be considered: The family should be the first school of piety and religious spirituality for the children. Religious teaching that comes from the parents, [Pope] Paul VI has said recently, is difficult, authorized, and irreplaceable. Difficult because of the climate of permissiveness and secularism that surrounds us; authorized, because