How To Pray The Rosary

Welcome! If you’re reading this blog post, then you must be curious about praying the Rosary! Some people can be really intimidated by formal prayers such as the Our Father or Hail Mary and would rather pray from their heart. I am here to tell you that it is so easy to learn and not scary at all! You can take your time memorizing these prayers and saying them slowly, or you can not memorize them at all and read them from a booklet or a piece of paper. Everything can go at your own pace in a way that makes you comfortable.

So what exactly is the Rosary? The Rosary was first given by the Blessed Virgin Mary (an apparition of course), to St. Dominic. The Rosary is also sometimes referred to as Our Lady’s Angelic Psalter. A Psalter is a book that contains 150 psalms, and likewise, once you say the entire Rosary, will have repeated 150 Hail Mary’s. The Blessed Virgin told St. Dominic exactly what prayers to say and how to pray the Rosary and commanded that he go and teach it to the whole world, so that everyone could receive the graces from the Blessed Virgin and her Rosary.

This story really fascinates me because I could never imagine something so amazing happening today! Yet, there’s so many amazing stories of Marian Apparitions from across history! The very prayer that makes up the Hail Mary comes from Scripture (Luke 1:28, 1:42-43, and Hames 5:16) which we are supposed to meditate on as Catholics. The beads on the Rosary help us to stay focused and grounded in our prayer and are a common practice used in other religions, as well.

The Rosary is made up of several prayers:

The Apostles Creed

The Our Father

The Glory Be

The Fatima Prayer

Hail Mary

Hail Holy Queen

I know these prayers can seem really long and a little intimidating, but the Rosary is truly a gift from Our Lady that we should contemplate and share with others and sacrifice part of our day to pray. These prayers have been said by millions throughout the history of the Catholic Church, which I think is pretty cool. Imagine how many Saints have prayed these exact same words!

While you pray the Hail Mary’s, we are supposed to be meditating on “mysteries” which are just a way of saying different milestones of the life of Jesus. These mysteries are assigned to different days of the week, so for example: The Glorious mysteries are prayed on Sunday and Wednesday, the Joyful on Monday and Saturday, the Sorrowful on Tuesday and Friday, and the Luminous on Thursday. If you don’t know what these mysteries are, I will link a helpful video below that has a very beautiful visual of the mysteries and the Rosary as you pray along with it

The prayers we say during the day Rosary don’t change, even though the mysteries do. There are many reasons why it is important that we pray the rosary, one of them being that it gives us graces from Mother Mary. The Virgin M has had quite a bit to say about the importance of her Rosary throughout time and how much it pleases her when we recite the Rosary well. A really great book to read about the Rosary and the miracles that have accompanied it is called “Secrets of The Rosary by St. Louis De Montfort, which you can check out here!

As Catholics, we always make the sign of the cross before we pray. This does not become a magical or superstitious sign, but rather it readies our mind for prayer and reminds us of what we are about to do. To you the sign of the cross you simply touch your forehead when you say, “in the name of the father”, touch your heart when you say, “the son” and touch your left and then right shoulder when you say, “and the Holy Spirit.”

To the start to pray the Rosary, you start on the crucifix with the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed is just a statement of what we believe as Catholics. Next, on the first bead, we say the Our Father Prayer. On the 3 beads clustered together, we say 3 Hail Mary’s. These three Hail Mary’s represent the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, which we want to emulate in our own lives. On the next bead, we say a Glory Be. Then we get to our first decade!

A group of 10 Hail Mary’s is called a decade. Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t make it through more than one decade when you are starting out. A lot of people have to work up to all 5 decades. While meditating on whichever mystery there is, you pray 10 Hail Mary’s on the beads. After the ten Hail Mary’s, we always pray a Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer. You keep repeating this pattern until you go all the way around and get back to the center of the Rosary. At the end, you always pray the Hail Holy Queen prayer.

Linked below is a video showing you how to pray the Rosary along with a visual rosary that you can always pray along with for every day of the week!