Where Did the Rosary Come From?
The Holy Rosary came right out of Sacred Scripture and has been used, in changing forms, (all of them Scriptural), since the birth of the Church.The word Rosary comes from the Latin word rosarium, which means a rose garden. The Rosary has for centuries been used as a prayer that gives Our Lady wreaths of beautiful spiritual roses to tell Her of our love for Her and ask Her to bring us safely to Jesus.
Our Lady is Queen of heaven and of mankind, and has a right to our homage; she is the Daughter of the Father, the Spouse of the Holy Ghost, and the Mother of the Son. Holy Church urges us to offer Our Lady a triple crown of roses called the Rosary.
The early Christians used to pray all 150 Psalms to give praise to God. In time this became Our Lady’s Psalter, a series of 150 Hail Mary’s said as a kind of substitute for the 150 Psalms which take a great deal more time to pray and which do not directly place before our minds the story of our Redemption.
The 150 Hail Mary’s are divided into 3 sets of 50 each. While we call one set of 50 Hail Mary’s, "the Rosary," in fact, the entire Rosary consists of saying all 3 sets. The prayers of the Rosary are counted on a circular string of beads for the 5 Our Fathers and Glory Be’s and the 50 Hail Mary’s to which is attached also a pendant of 5 beginning beads and a crucifix, (the Standard of Redemption), on which are said the introductory prayers. At the end of the Rosary it is customary to recite the Salve Regina.
The words of the Hail Mary come right out of St. Luke’s Gospel. They include the greeting to Holy Mary from the Angel Gabriel announcing that she was to be the Mother of God (Lk. 1:26-38); and the greeting given to Mary by her cousin St. Elizabeth when Mary visited her aged cousin to care for her till the birth of St. John the Baptist (Lk 1:45). The last part of the Hail Mary, "holy Mary Mother…" is the fulfillment of Mary’s own words in Scripture that "all generations shall call me blessed" and help us obey the last command to us from Jesus on the Cross: "Son behold thy Mother."
And so, with the words of the Hail Mary we, like Gabriel, are lovingly greeting the Mother of God and asking Her to be a Mother to us: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
Early in the 13th Century, the great St. Dominic was fighting tirelessly, but with little success, the terrible errors of the Albigensian heresy. In this discouraged state of things. St. Dominic redoubled his prayers and works of penance, and begged Our Lady for help in combating this heresy, which threatened to snuff out the light of the Faith. One day Mary appeared to Dominic. She said to him: "Wonder not that you have obtained so little fruit by your labors, you have spent them on barren soil, not yet watered with the dew of Divine grace. When God willed to renew the face of the earth, He began by sending down on it the fertilizing rain of the Angelic Salutation." Then Mary taught him the Rosary. She taught him which vocal prayers, and their number, should be said: 150 Angelic Salutations (Hail Mary’s) and 15 Our Father’s and that at the same time specific mysteries or events in the life of Jesus and Mary should be meditated upon.
St. Dominic began to teach the Rosary everywhere he went with astonishing and miraculous results. In a short period, more than one hundred thousand heretics and sinners were converted.
Pope Gregory XIII testified to the Divine origin of the Rosary in the Papal Bull of the year 1577.
