The Rosary

in 50 Pages

The Layman’s Quick Guide to Mary’s Psalter

Taylor R. Marshall

Saint John Press

MMXX

Copyright © 2020 Taylor Reed Marshall, Ph.D.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the permission in writing from the publisher or author.

Sacred Scripture citations are generally from the 1899 edition of the Douay-Rheims (Challoner) Bible or a translation of my own rendering.

Marshall, Taylor

The Rosary in Fifty Pages
The Layman’s Quick Guide to the Rosary / Taylor Marshall

1st ed.

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN:

1. Rosary. 2. Catholicism. 3. Theology. I. Title.

Published by Saint John Press

Printed in the United States of America

Acid-free paper for permanence and durability

Cover Art and Rosary Instruction Design: Steven M. Nelson {smnelsondesign.com}

Please visit The Rosary in Fifty Pages on the web at:

www.taylormarshall.com

This book is dedicated to everyone

who has ever prayed a Rosary for me.

Thank you. -TRM

Ascendit Simon Petrus et traxit rete in terram, plenum magnis piscibus centum quinquaginta tribus. Et cum tanti essent, non est scissum rete.

     - Evangelium secundum Ioannem xxi, 11

Table of Contents

Does Devotion to Mary Steal from Jesus?

Did the Early Christians Ask Mary to Pray for Them?

Two Kinds of Prayer: Direct and Instrumental

Did Early Christians Honor Mary?

Where Did the Hail Mary Come From?

Mary Gave the Rosary to Saint Dominic

Did Mary Give the Rosary to Saint Dominic?

What Does the Catholic Church Say?

Does the Rosary Predate Saint Dominic?

The Power of the Rosary

Fifteen Promises of the Rosary

Rosary at the Battle of Lepanto

Secret of the Rosary

Leo XIII: Pope of the Rosary

A Satanist Becomes Apostle of the Rosary

Our Lady of Fatima and the Rosary

“Pray the Rosary Every Day”

“I Am the Lady of the Rosary”

The Miracle of the Sun

Saints and Popes on the Rosary

How to Pray the Rosary

The Bible on Beads

Tips for Praying the Rosary

Various Versions of the Rosary

Prayers of the Rosary in English and Latin

Does Devotion to Mary Steal from Jesus?

Christianity is the worship of Our Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of the Father. The earliest Christian martyrs received the penalty of death for merely stating Christos Kyrios—Christ is Lord. Christianity is Christ-centered, and there is no room for other gods, saviors, or idols. This Christocentric vision has led some to conclude wrongly that honor shown to Mary or others is somehow wrong.

During the Protestant Reformation, a movement to reject any veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Saints began. This rejection emerged from the Lutheran principle of “Christ alone.” This Protestant worldview perceived Mary and the saints as in competition with Jesus Christ and thereby robbing Christ of His due glory. It’s like an apple pie with only eight slices. If Mary receives three slices and the saints receive one slice, then Christ only receives four slices left over. We have robbed Christ of half the pie.

But this is not how the life of love and family operates. If a man marries a woman and they have a baby, his love for his wife does not drop by half when the baby is born. Nor does the woman divide her love by 50 percent with her husband. And when a second child is born, love is not taken from the first child. If this were true, a mother of four children would only love each at 25 percent. This ridiculous zero-sum understanding of love and devotion is not in accordance with the New Testament.

If I love my wife, I love my children. And when I love one child, I show love to my wife. And when my wife cares for all eight children, she still loves and honors me. Her love for one child robs me of nothing. If I love my wife’s mother, I love my wife even more so. Therefore, we should not say, “By showing love to the Mother of Christ, you rob Christ!” How wrong. How childish. How selfish. If a king honored your mother, would not his royal act bring honor to your entire family?

The problem is that Martin Luther rejected the teaching of the Apostle Paul that all Christian disciples are “in Christ.”[1] When Paul persecuted Christians, Jesus Christ said to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). Paul was not merely attacking Christians; he was directly attacking Christ. This mystery reveals that Christians dwell within Christ and are constituted in the mystery of His Body. Therefore, if you persecute Saint Stephen, you persecute Jesus Christ. If you show love for Saint Stephen, you show love for Jesus Christ. This is the doctrine of participation in Christ, which I cover at length in my book The Catholic Perspective on Paul.[2]

Did the Early Christians Ask Mary to Pray for Them?

A papyrus from the A.D. 200s preserves the earliest known prayer asking for the intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Written in Greek,

Original Greek Text

English Translation

Ὑπὸ τὴν σὴν εὐσπλαγχνίαν,

καταφεύγομεν, Θεοτόκε.

Τὰς ἡμῶν ἱκεσίας,

μὴ παρίδῃς ἐν περιστάσει,

ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ κινδύνων λύτρωσαι ἡμᾶς,

μόνη Ἁγνή, μόνη εὐλογημένη.

Under your compassion,

We take refuge, O Theotokos.

Despise not our petitions in our necessities:

but deliver us from dangers,

O only Pure, only Blessed one.

Scholars agree that this prayer is addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary because her Greek title Θεοτόκε, or “God-birther,” is invoked. Moreover, this prayer invokes the exact Greek feminine word for “blessed” used in Luke 1:42 by Saint Elizabeth when she told Mary, “Blessed art thou among women”: Εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξίν.

This prayer found on an ancient Egyptian papyrus is a prayer still said daily throughout the world in Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Latin. The prayer was known and preserved by spoken tradition for 1,800 years before archeologists found this long-lost papyrus. This means that early Christians asked the Blessed Virgin Mary to pray for them.

Two Kinds of Prayer: Direct and Instrumental

In early Christianity there were two kinds of prayer. Prayer can be either direct or instrumental. Through Jesus Christ, I can pray directly to God the Father, as Christ taught us. This is direct prayer. For Catholics, the entire liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is direct prayer. The priest, joined by the people, speaks directly to “God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord in the unity of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Instrumental prayer, however, is whenever we ask other people to pray for us to God. They become instruments of prayer. If I say to you, “Please pray for my sick grandmother,” I am beseeching you to beseech God on behalf of my grandmother. We can add even more people into this prayer chain, allowing hundreds of people to pray and intercede for one another. We are instruments of prayer, creating a symphony of intercession directly to God.

We read in the Book of the Apocalypse that there are twenty-four elders in Heaven (signifying the Twelve Patriarchs of the Old Testament and the Twelve Apostles of the New Testament) who offer to God the prayers of those still on earth:

And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures, and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. (Revelation 5:8)

Early Christians knew they were still connected to other Christians who had been martyred or died. They believed the deceased saints were alive with Christ in Heaven but remained around us on earth as “a great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). The network of intercessory prayer expanded into Heaven. They said and wrote things like, “Holy Peter and Paul, pray for us.” If we ask our neighbor on earth to pray for us, we can also ask Mary, Peter, Stephen, or even an angel to be an instrument of prayer for us. Everyone in Heaven and earth is directing their direct prayer to Holy Trinity.

Prayer to Mary and the devotion of the Rosary is merely asking her to “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She is the Mother of Jesus. She carried Him in her womb. She birthed Him. She nursed Him. She taught Him. She was instrumental in His first miracle at Cana when she said, “Do whatever He tells you to do” (John 2:5). She stood at the foot of the cross. She loves Him, and she loves us. Christ said from the cross, “Behold thy Mother” (John 19:27), and we believe those special words on the cross apply to all those redeemed by the cross.

Did Early Christians Honor Mary?

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin begins with Christ. One of the Ten Commandments reads, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” We know that our Christ perfectly honored God the Father. But did He also perfectly honor His earthly human mother? Undoubtedly Christ honored Mary at all moments perfectly with His divinity and humanity.

This is why Catholics believe that Mary is sinless. What is the greatest honor a person could receive? To be saved and filled with the Holy Ghost at the very first moment of embryonic conception, the very first moment of existence. This is what Christ did to honor His mother and fulfill the Ten Commandments. Early Christians testify to this profound love for the Virgin Mary. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (d. A.D. 202) discussed how the sin of Eve parallels the sanctity of the Virgin Mary. The following quote was written about A.D. 180:

For as Eve was seduced by the word of [a fallen] angel to flee from God, having rebelled against His Word, so Mary by the word of an angel received the glad tidings that she would bear God by obeying his Word. The former was seduced to disobey God, but the latter was persuaded to obey God, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the Virgin Eve. As the human race was subjected to death through a virgin, so it was saved by a virgin.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5, 19)

When Saint Irenaeus wrote, “saved by a virgin,” he did not mean that Mary is the savior of mankind. In the Bible, Mary says God is her “savior” (Luke 1:47). The Savior Jesus came to us through her immaculate womb. Hence, Mary saves us instrumentally, not absolutely.

Saint Athanasius (d. A.D. 373), the great defender of the divinity of Christ and the Holy Trinity, also testified to Mary being the greatest of God’s creatures and the Ark of the New Covenant:

O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O Virgin? You are greater than them all O Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which divinity resides. (Athanasius, Homily of the Papyrus of Turin, 71:216)

Where Did the Hail Mary Come From?

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