The Rosary as the Epic of Our Salvation
On this Memorial of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, I would like to share this Rosary Reflection I delivered last year, October 9, 2005, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, here at the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel of the Saint Meinrad School of Theology.
She never learned how to read or write. She never went to school. And so, my grandmother, Elpidia Soriano viuda de Zamora, learned her prayers the way we learned ours as little children: by first hearing them and then repeating them on her own. That was how she learned the rosary: by first listening to the rhythm and regularity of misterio, one Ibpa mi, ten Bapu Marias, one Gloria Patri, O Jesus co, and so on, and then saying this mantra-like sequence of prayers: misterio, one Ibpa mi, ten Bapu Marias, one Gloria Patri, O Jesus co. That was also how the rest of my family learned the rosary; we first heard it and then we repeated it.
But the way grandmother prayed her rosary was different from the way my cousins and I did it. She always said the words slowly and surely, while the rest of us, all college educated, just spouted and sped through the prayers like trains madly rushing to their destinations. No matter what happened, grandma never sped through her rosary; she prayed it deliberately, meant and measured every word. She meant and measured every word because it was only in the speaking and the hearing of those mysteries of faith that she could remember them. She could not read them again in the Bible or in a theology textbook. She could not expound on what they meant in writing. All that she could do was to repeat the Good News that she had heard before. Indeed, while my cousins and I were merely repeating formulas we have learned, formulas read and further explained to us in our education, my grandma, on the other hand, was drawing from her own fragile memory an epic story taught to her by her own parents, an epic handed down through the centuries from one generation of Sorianos and Zamoras to another. Unfortunately, the rosary was not an epic for me and my cousins; it was merely a string of words: one word after another. For our illiterate grandma, the rosary was more than that; it was for her words of joy, sorrow, glory, and light.
She never learned how to read or write. She never went to school. All that Mary of Nazareth could look forward to as the wife of a carpenter was to be the mother of a carpenter. After all, nothing good was expected to come out of Nazareth. And yet, from that forgotten town the epic of our salvation was fulfilled, having as its main characters that same illiterate woman and her carpenter son. It is that epic of joy, sorrow, glory, and light that we remember in every rosary. It is that epic of mysteries from on high unfolding from those considered lowly that we have recited from generation to generation to generation. It is that epic taught to me by an illiterate woman about another illiterate woman in ages past who said but a word and the Word was made flesh and the world was never the same way again.
She never learned how to read or write. She never went to school. And so, my grandmother, Elpidia Soriano viuda de Zamora, learned her prayers the way we learned ours as little children: by first hearing them and then repeating them on her own. That was how she learned the rosary: by first listening to the rhythm and regularity of misterio, one Ibpa mi, ten Bapu Marias, one Gloria Patri, O Jesus co, and so on, and then saying this mantra-like sequence of prayers: misterio, one Ibpa mi, ten Bapu Marias, one Gloria Patri, O Jesus co. That was also how the rest of my family learned the rosary; we first heard it and then we repeated it.
But the way grandmother prayed her rosary was different from the way my cousins and I did it. She always said the words slowly and surely, while the rest of us, all college educated, just spouted and sped through the prayers like trains madly rushing to their destinations. No matter what happened, grandma never sped through her rosary; she prayed it deliberately, meant and measured every word. She meant and measured every word because it was only in the speaking and the hearing of those mysteries of faith that she could remember them. She could not read them again in the Bible or in a theology textbook. She could not expound on what they meant in writing. All that she could do was to repeat the Good News that she had heard before. Indeed, while my cousins and I were merely repeating formulas we have learned, formulas read and further explained to us in our education, my grandma, on the other hand, was drawing from her own fragile memory an epic story taught to her by her own parents, an epic handed down through the centuries from one generation of Sorianos and Zamoras to another. Unfortunately, the rosary was not an epic for me and my cousins; it was merely a string of words: one word after another. For our illiterate grandma, the rosary was more than that; it was for her words of joy, sorrow, glory, and light.
She never learned how to read or write. She never went to school. All that Mary of Nazareth could look forward to as the wife of a carpenter was to be the mother of a carpenter. After all, nothing good was expected to come out of Nazareth. And yet, from that forgotten town the epic of our salvation was fulfilled, having as its main characters that same illiterate woman and her carpenter son. It is that epic of joy, sorrow, glory, and light that we remember in every rosary. It is that epic of mysteries from on high unfolding from those considered lowly that we have recited from generation to generation to generation. It is that epic taught to me by an illiterate woman about another illiterate woman in ages past who said but a word and the Word was made flesh and the world was never the same way again.
posted by Fr. Noel at 10/07/2006 02:47:00 PM
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