P. Gorazd Cetkovský, O.Carm.
We hear and read a lot. Only a part of it strikes us deeper. Those are the thoughts we return to repeatedly. For me, the thoughts I present to you here are such. We reflected on them during the national meeting of tertiaries in 2003. Since then, they have occasionally resurfaced in fragments. I have returned to them more carefully; we talked about them during the tertiary meetings throughout September and October of this year, I have “refined” them into a form suitable for our magazine's pages, and I now present them to you. Back then, twelve years ago, the Year of the Rosary was ending...
1. The Rosary is a prayer intimately connected with our entire life
The document Rosarium Virginis Mariae (RVM), which John Paul II wrote in the Year of the Rosary, brought us many insights for our spiritual life. The Holy Father mentioned in the letter several times that the richness of the Rosary is great. In this reflection, let us focus on just one beautiful aspect of the Rosary prayer that he highlighted. Namely: the Rosary is a prayer closely interconnected with the rest of our life.
John Paul II wrote at the beginning of the letter that “the mission of the Rosary is to bring forth the fruits of holiness” (art. 1). And this bearing of fruits certainly happens not only when we pray, but also afterwards, when we “allow” our prayers and go “to do something,” when we perform our ordinary tasks and deal with various matters. Precisely then, we are to bring forth fruits of holiness. And this is what the Rosary should lead to. In another article of the cited letter, John Paul II speaks of how the richness of the Rosary also lies in its “harmony with the demands of everyday life” (art. 28).
This is a very attractive proposal. Many times, when we were in the seminary preparing for priesthood or in novitiate getting to know the Carmelite tradition and were guided towards regular contemplation, I said that my inner prayer must not be a “greenhouse,” in which there is indeed a very welcoming environment but is carefully separated from the atmosphere in which I spend the rest of the day. The barefoot Carmelite Fr. David Peroutka expresses the same idea with a similar metaphor: (it is not correct) “to engage with God only in some isolated 'fine room' of one’s awareness.”1
Viewed from another angle: we all long for the “wholeness” of our lives. For our life to form one coherent, beautiful, and harmonious whole. It bothers us when we catch ourselves in some “split personality” (even if we commit it unwittingly), for example, when a moment ago I prayed, and now I am doing something that absolutely contradicts that... A moment ago, I welcomed the Lord into my heart through the Eucharist – and now I got so angry at another person... And a great pain and shame in this regard is when we discover some half-conscious or even conscious hypocrisy within ourselves. When we consciously do something different than we preach. Our surroundings struggle to cope with that. This tends to be “anti-witness,” the consequences of which linger for a long time. We usually know this in a milder form: we strive for the unity of our life, but fail to achieve it. Therefore, we feel “split,” torn apart. So, when John Paul II wrote about the Rosary that with its help we are close to that desired unity and that through this prayer leads to the harmony of our everyday life, then his words intensify within us the desire to achieve it.
At this moment, I would like to insert a reminder of completely basic thoughts about the Rosary. Surely they will not be new to you. But it is usually worth returning to the basics and reinforcing them. The Rosary is the popular contemplative prayer of the Western Church. (The Eastern Church knows, for example, the Jesus Prayer as popular contemplative prayer, but let us mention this only in passing and stay with the Rosary.) The Rosary is a popular prayer, thus very simple and accessible to everyone, even if they cannot read. And what does it mean that it is a contemplative prayer? If I can recite the prayers of the Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary by heart, and know the sequence of the individual Rosary mysteries, so that I can pray the whole Rosary without error – that does not mean I understand the Rosary. This is often the stumbling block for children or for those who still do not fully comprehend the Rosary: they perceive it as a “verbal” prayer (in which the focus is only on careful recitation) and the repetitive recitation of the same words seems to them soulless and boring.
But the contemplative nature of the Rosary prayer means that what is “behind the words” we recite is important, not in the words themselves. The words here play only a role of a tool, an instrument. I like to compare their function to that of a handrail: it helps us stay on the right path. But after we first briefly check its reliability, while walking, we do not particularly examine the handrail itself. We hold onto it, but we look ahead! So it is also with the Rosary: we recite prayers, but we try to gaze with our inner sight “further” – into the individual mysteries of the life of the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary: she conceived Him by the Holy Spirit, visited Elizabeth, etc. And just like while walking: when we “stumble” during prayer, i.e., when our thoughts veer off the chosen path and take us somewhere else, then the recitation of verbal prayers during the Rosary will more easily hold us in the right direction – like a handrail we encounter or hold onto when we stumble.
One more little detail brings me joy. Experts say that the Rosary originated as hermits and monks in ancient centuries prayed 150 Psalms, and ordinary believers imitated them praying 150 Our Fathers. Eventually, the practice settled on praying 150 Hail Marys, divided into decades. (The Luminous Mysteries were proposed much later by John Paul II.) So today, while praying the Rosary, we contemplate the life of the Lord Jesus while addressing Our Lady – the Hail Marys are directed towards her. This means: we look at Jesus and his life, and we learn to understand it from the Virgin Mary! With her, we take on her perspective.
Let us return to the thought we began with: the Rosary is a prayer closely interconnected with the rest of our life. Let us attempt a closer understanding of what John Paul II means. He refers to his personal experience. This is very interesting for us. (Whenever the reserved preacher “forgets” and lets us into his inner self, it captivates us. We feel that at that moment he is truly speaking from his life.) John Paul II wrote about himself: “I have entrusted many concerns to this prayer and have always found comfort” (art. 2). He goes on: “I have entrusted the first year of my pontificate to it.” Every beginning is difficult, and it is easy to imagine that the first year of his service as Pope was not easy for him. He began his service as Peter’s successor with confidence in the prayer of the Rosary and wrote in the aforementioned letter after twenty-five years: “Today (...) I desire to do the same,” i.e., once again to entrust everything he is experiencing to the prayer of the Rosary.
If the Rosary is for us a contemplative prayer that focuses us on the life of the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary, then often during it, we feel as if we are standing between two “worlds.” One world is our concerns – a world often rushed, painful, filled with uncertainties and confusion... And the other world is our prayer, the life of the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary. We recite Hail Marys, we pass through individual mysteries, trying to immerse ourselves in them.
If John Paul II says that he entrusted the world of his concerns to this prayer and always found comfort, let us ask a simple question: How do we “insert” our concerns into the Rosary? How do we do it? – And when we do, will we not then reproach ourselves for being distracted during prayer? Because during the decade, we contemplate for example how the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. Should I insert into it that I don’t know how to manage raising children? In the Rosary, we reflect on Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven and earth; should I insert my distress that I do not understand my neighbors? How then do we insert our concerns into the Rosary?
The papal letter explains what John Paul II means in article 25. First, he calls it the “anthropological dimension” of the Rosary and then beautifully simply elucidates: “If we walk the paths of Christ, which recapitulate, unveil, and redeem human journeys, we stand before an image of the true man.” We are used to contemplating the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the Rosary. What was their life like? Who is Jesus? What kind of woman is Mary? And the Holy Father encourages us to broaden our view and shows: in the Rosary, I also recognize who I am. Who is man. Or literally: “what is the truth about humanity.” And in this sense, he quotes words he wrote earlier and now echoes: “the Rosary beats in the rhythm of human life.”
Anyone who prays the Rosary perceives the pulse of human life in the sense of seeing how God views human life. Let us pay closer attention to the words we have now quoted. In the Rosary, there is recapitulation of what encompasses human life, a summary of - as is said today in a non-Czech manner - “what life is about.” In the Rosary, this becomes clearer than just experiencing it straightforwardly. In the Rosary, we look at it from a certain overview, with the Virgin Mary and through Christ. And thus, the essence can reveal itself to us better, as we perceive the summary, the recapitulation. And the Rosary is also the salvation of human paths. In the Rosary, we see human life not only in the summary and more clearly, but through prayer, healing also comes to our lives!
John Paul II explains, for example: “The contemplation of Jesus’ birth teaches us to understand the sacredness of life.” Not only the life of one Bethlehem Child but all children. “The view of the house in Nazareth reveals the fundamental truth about the family according to God’s plan.” That is, about family in general, about every family! Or when praying the Glorious Rosary: “if we contemplate Christ and his Mother in glory, we will see the goal to which we are all called if we allow ourselves to be transformed and healed by the Holy Spirit.” Thus, we understand not only the life of the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary in the Rosary, but it also clarifies who we are and what God’s plan is for us.
John Paul II ends this explanation with the words: “It can be said that every correctly meditated Rosary mystery sheds light on the mystery of man.” These words reveal how those two worlds – the world of our concerns and the world of the life of Jesus and Mary – meet. When we gaze inwardly during the Rosary at the life of Jesus and Mary, we do not flee to another world, as when someone turns on a movie to escape everything that burdens them. That “movie” of events presented by the Rosary mysteries also tells us a lot about ourselves, and thus serves as a source of light into the world of our concerns!
In this sense, the Rosary is light into the world of our concerns, even when we do not directly think about them during it. The Rosary gives us light on how we should approach other people with respect. How carefully we should take care of our children, even though we have previously reflected on another Child and on other parents. This is how the Rosary should influence us, touch us within, and ultimately transform the world of our concerns. John Paul II thus from the image of inserting concerns into the Rosary, which he mentioned, transitioned to the metaphor of receiving light.
But even the original metaphor of inserting concerns into the Rosary he ultimately mentions once more in his letter: “At the same time, it becomes entirely natural to bring to these encounters with the holy humanity of the Redeemer many of the problems, anxieties, efforts, and plans that characterize our lives. “Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you” (Ps 55:23). To meditate with the Rosary means to lay our burden before the merciful heart of Christ and his Mother.”
Here we realize: yes, certainly not every time we pray the Rosary do we intend to seek an explicitly contemplative prayer. If we pray the Rosary in moments of great distress, we certainly won’t be able to immerse ourselves consciously into the mysteries of the Rosary. The prayer will remain more a verbal prayer, yet it “drains” from our hearts unrest, fear, and pours trust in God’s help, strengthening our surrender to God, gradually transforming us. At other times, we take the Rosary as a verbal prayer that we simply bring to God – we offer it to Him – praying for someone dear to us or for some matter. And at other times, our goal with the Rosary is simply to linger with the Virgin Mary and with Jesus, without aiming for the depths of contemplation... We have that world of our concerns simply within us, and during prayer, it is somehow “touched” by the presence of the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
Thus, John Paul II concludes article 25 of his letter: “yes, this prayer truly “beats in the rhythm of human life,” so as to tune it to the rhythm of the divine life, in joyous fellowship with the Most Holy Trinity – the desired goal of our existence.”
2. Prayer for specific fruits of contemplation after each decade
In the mentioned letter, John Paul II presents several “improvement proposals” for our Rosary prayer. In article 35, he mentions one, promising us: “The Rosary will thus express its connection with Christian life more effectively.” This is a beautiful expression: connection! The connection of prayer with everything else that belongs to our life. This is what we have been aiming for from the beginning, and this is what John Paul II now promises us.
But what is this proposal of his about? “Contemplation will be better able to express all its fruitfulness if we conclude each mystery with a prayer for the reception of specific fruits of contemplation.” We are thus encouraged to conclude our contemplation of each mystery (each decade) with a prayer asking God for our contemplation to yield specific fruits. It is not enough that deep thoughts arise in our hearts or that a geyser of strong feelings erupts; what matters is that our contemplation indeed brings fruits in our lives. The Pope urges: let us ask for that! Let us take a moment for a spontaneous petition for it!
Such a petition is contained in the prayer with which we are accustomed to conclude the entire Rosary. We pray: “as we contemplate these mysteries in the sacred Rosary of the Virgin Mary, may we also live according to them and obtain what they promise.” But John Paul II recommends that we ask for specific fruits after each decade – directly related to the theme of the contemplation we are concluding. So if we have, for instance, contemplated Jesus’ humility at his birth in Bethlehem, let’s not forget to ask for humility for ourselves at the end! It will be beneficial to summarize and conclude contemplation this way.
According to my experience, this little detail has great significance. If at the end of the decade, I try to summarize in my own words what I have contemplated, and attach a spontaneous request to it, I often realize that I actually did not contemplate at all! This realization is unflattering, but beneficial. It gives me the opportunity to quickly try to “catch up” on what can be, at least with a brief thought, a return to the contemplated mystery.
Moreover, a request is always addressed. It can happen that I experienced contemplation as thinking about God without turning to Him. As Professor Heller once figuratively expressed, in such prayer we assign the role of mere background to God, and do not give Him the opportunity to truly engage in prayer... Whereas, a request is inherently directed and leads me to address God or Jesus, to focus directly on Him.
How we can technically insert such a short request for the fruits of contemplation into our Rosary prayer is something to explore and try. When we pray the Rosary alone, it is easiest. When we discussed these thoughts during our tertiary meetings and then prayed the Rosary, we agreed in advance to leave a moment of silence after each decade, in which everyone who wished could voice such a prayer for the fruits that arose from their contemplation.
3. Prayer for the fruits of contemplation at the conclusion of contemplative prayer in Carmel
What we are reflecting on here is very much related to the Carmelite tradition. I do not mean to say that there exists any specific Carmelite treatise on the Rosary or how to pray it. I am not aware of anything like that. But the tradition of Carmel regarding inner prayer in general is very profound, particularly in contemplation. It is not just about how to pray a certain oral prayer with concentration, even if it goes as far as the breviary itself, but how to open one’s heart more to God. Our brothers and sisters in our monasteries have been striving for contemplative prayer with ironclad regularity since the times of Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), reflecting on it and writing entire books on how to proceed correctly in it. And the Rosary is nothing more than a specific form of contemplation. We have already clearly reminded ourselves: what happens “behind” the recited words or – in another image – beneath their surface is what hides the very depth of prayer.
What John Paul II proposed to do after each decade is actually what the Carmelite teachers of prayer also place upon our hearts when they describe the scheme of contemplation – how good contemplation should proceed. Although our time does not have much fondness for elaborate self-discipline, they greatly enjoyed reflecting on the correct, thorough approach to prayer. And they were also concerned that our prayer should be well connected and supported by everything else we experience throughout the day.
John Paul II suggested that after each decade, we ask for the fruits of our contemplation. Our Carmelite teachers of prayer advise us always to conclude contemplative prayer best with three final parts, which should be:
- Gratitude to God.
- Offering ourselves to God:
- general: “I belong to You, I want to serve You,”
- but also through specific resolutions. (Perhaps today we hear this reluctantly; today’s mentality does not favor acts of will. But no matter, our teachers of prayer lead us to that.)
- Petitionary prayer.
And it is precisely that petitionary prayer that I am concerned with here. What is precisely meant by petitionary prayer at this stage of contemplation? The barefoot Carmelite Bl. John of Jesus and Mary in his prayer manual Schola de oratione, which he wrote in 1611, explains that here it is about what Saint Teresa of Jesus expressed with the words: “calling down God’s grace upon the world.”
And now I dare to oppose an esteemed authority. The guidelines of the barefoot Carmelites for contemplative prayer were reportedly based on the teachings of the Dominican, the venerable Louis of Granada (1504–1588). His instructions for petitionary prayer at the end of contemplation2 encourage us to pray: for all the nations of the world, that they may know and praise the one true God, for the shepherds of the Church, for rulers, for the Church, for the suffering, and then also for ourselves, for what we need the most. For the forgiveness of our sins and for help against those temptations to which we have the greatest inclination. And finally, Louis recommends: “Conclude then with a request for God’s love and remain with it the longest, asking the Lord for this virtue with fervent feelings and desires, for in it is all our good.” All these are certainly legitimate intentions for petitionary prayer. But the connection to what we contemplated is missing! Isn’t it a pity to lose this connection?
The connection between contemplation and petitionary prayer at the end of contemplation was very well sensed by the Carmelite Fr. John Brenninger (1890–1946). In his book summarizing Carmelite spirituality, he writes:3
“Even though we can present our requests to God at any time and our needs really force us to do so constantly, contemplation is a special opportunity for it, because in contemplation, we better see our needs and all our misery and inadequacy, and we are ignited by the desire to reach God. Furthermore, what can our good resolutions, which essentially belong to contemplation, accomplish if the grace and strength from above is not granted to us for their faithful implementation?”
Therefore he presents the order of our petitionary intentions as follows: “First of all, let us ask for the grace to accomplish and attain what we recognized in contemplation as necessary or useful for us or that we are lacking, such as uprooting some vice.
Then we can transition to some more general requests for ourselves and others, remaining alert to the inner disposition we experienced, and (being faithful) to the promptings and guidance of the Holy Spirit.” And John Brenninger concludes: “In any case, the deeper our contemplation, the more easily and perfectly we will ask, and the more fervently we ask, the more abundant fruits our contemplation will yield.”
4. Prayer for the fruits at the conclusion of contemplation among non-Carmelite authors
Saint Ignatius of Loyola includes at the conclusion of contemplation a part that he calls “conversation” (with Christ, with the Virgin Mary, the guardian angel, etc.). Other authors referred to the concluding part of contemplation as “going out” (in the sense of: stepping out inwardly, not upwards). Jan Ev. Urban combines both, when he writes: “In going out, however, I am not outside contemplation. I stand at the threshold, and at the threshold, there is an overall conversation about what I have contemplated. The conversation revitalizes the entire contemplation; in it, we implore the grace, especially the grace helping us to fulfill resolves; without it, we will either forget our resolves or we will be hesitant and weak in executing them. Heartily and humbly, we will converse with the Savior, with the Mother of God, with the guardian angel about what we have received, or we will ask for help. Childishly and intimately, we will tell the Lord everything that burdens and hurts us.”4
5. The prayer for fruits is both an end and a beginning
Through inner prayer, our lives are transformed. We contemplate Christ or some situation from his life or from the life of the Virgin Mary, realizing how they acted and what is captured in these events about them, but also about humanity in general. And because we are also human and know our weaknesses and the divine gifts we receive, our contemplation ends with a prayer for fruits in which I relate what I contemplated about Christ or the Virgin Mary or humanity in general to myself and ask for it to be realized in my life. That my life corresponds to it. I ask for the specific fruits of my contemplation. The “medicine,” the beauty, goodness, wisdom that I glimpsed in contemplation, I try to embody, praying that God may instill it into my life. This is what the prayer for the fruits of contemplation is about. Its source is the ending contemplation; it resonates with my prayer (in the most beautiful sense of the word). At the end of the decade of the Rosary or contemplation of Scripture, with a comprehensive view, we encompass and relate to ourselves what we have gazed at with our inner sight and which we are still filled with...
But equally, the source of my prayer for the fruits of contemplation is the vision of what awaits me shortly, today – this day or week (as in Sunday prayer). That already looms on my horizon: what I will experience now, where I will go when I put down my Rosary or close the Bible. To what people will I go and that I need to prepare for it, asking God for strength. (Although, of course, experience teaches us that we must be cautious in this: our expectations frequently do not come true; we often see things too bleakly or, on the other hand, too rosy.) Thus, the prayer for the fruits of contemplation is essentially a preparatory prayer – connected with what lies ahead of me.
6. General wisdom also realizes this
The Latin saying goes: “Finis coronat opus” (the end crowns the work). This is something we express colloquially in Czech: “A good ending makes for a good everything.” But it is not just about ensuring the final impression is good. When something good culminates, does it not also have to conclude! Skillful teachers at the end of a lesson summarize what they covered and verify how the students understood it. Priests carefully prepare their sermon’s conclusions: a good speaker ensures they know what they want to convey, how long they will speak, and how they want to finish. And we could recall other examples of efforts to keep our endeavors from falling fruitless, or as young people say today: “not to fizzle out.” This is precisely what the prayer for fruits serves.
