In his Apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae dated October 16^th 2002 – the very date that marked the beginning of the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate – John Paul II invited us to commemorate the 120 years that have gone by since the publication of the first encyclical dedicated to the Holy Rosary by a pope. In fact it was Leo XIII, who on September 1^st 1883 published one with the title: Supremi Apostolatus officio. This Pope has written 12 encyclicals, two Apostolic Letters and a letter addressed to Cardinal Parocchi, Vicar of Rome, addressing the subject of the Rosary, and for this reason he has gained the appellation of "Pope of the Rosary". All future Popes will have at their disposal the Encyclicals and the letters as well as messages addressed to a number of personalities and communities, especially to the Dominicans, all written with the intention of propitiating this devotion and enriching it with indulgences. John Paul II however tells us that he wished to remember Paul VI in a special manner, the Pope who in his "Apostolic Exhortation Marialis cultus" emphasised, in harmony with the inspirations of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, the Rosary’s evangelical characteristics and its Christological orientation." (RVM 2).

The Vicar of Christ specifies in the introduction that he intends to set this letter in a contect of reference to the words recently written with which he invited the whole Church to continue in the dynamics of "starting afresh from Christ" at the beginning of this third millennium of the Christian era, with his Apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte. In paragraph no.3 he also tells us that " To recite the Rosary is no less than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ " and proclaimed that the year that goes from October 2002 to October 2003 will be the "Year of the Rosary".

Similarly, he answers the objections advanced against the Rosary, such as the one according to which saying the Rosary represents an obstacle because the Second Vatican Council had recommended in a special way the centrality of the liturgy. The Pope in fact has stated: "Yet, as Pope Paul VI made clear, not only does this prayer not conflict with the Liturgy, it sustains it, since it serves as an excellent introduction and a faithful echo of the Liturgy, enabling people to participate fully and interiorly in it and to reap its fruits in their daily lives." (RVM 4). Another objection consisted in the affirmation that this Marian devotion would have created an obstacle for the ecumenical work that had developed so successfully after the Second Vatican Council. To be precise the Holy Father reminds us that the Council, in the Lumen gentium (VIII, 66) hoped that veneration for the Mother of God would represent " a devotion directed to the Christological centre of the Christian faith, in such a way that "when the Mother is honoured, the Son ... is duly known, loved and glorified" " (RVM 4).

Both at the beginning and at the end of his circular letter, the Pope invites us to ensure that the Rosary is a prayer recited in a particular manner for peace that is threatened and for the no less threatened family institution (see nos. 6 and 40-42).

The Pope, after reminding us that the Christian angiography abounds with examples of Saints who distinguished themselves for having identified in the recitation of the Rosary an authentic path to sanctification, moves on to Chapter One, entitled: "Contemplating Christ with Mary ". Using the story of the Transfiguration in the New Testament as his foundation (see Mt 17, 1-9) which he had already quoted in his post-synod Apostolic Exhortation entitled Consecrated life, dated March 25^th 1996, he tells us that this evangelical scene can be considered as an " icon of Christian contemplation", because "To look upon the face of Christ, to recognize its mystery amid the daily events and the sufferings of his human life, and then to grasp the divine splendour definitively revealed in the Risen Lord, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father: this is the task of every follower of Christ and therefore the task of each one of us." (RVM 9) In fact, through the path of contemplation of the face of He who is Transfigured, " In contemplating Christ's face we become open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life, experiencing ever anew the love of the Father and delighting in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul's words can then be applied to us: "Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2Cor 3:18). ."  

In the Exhortation on consecrated life he had told us that: "The event of the Transfiguration marks a decisive moment in the ministry of Jesus. It is a revelatory event which strengthens the faith in the disciples' hearts, prepares them for the tragedy of the Cross and prefigures the glory of the Resurrection. (…)This light shines on all the Church's children. All are equally called to follow Christ, to discover in him the ultimate meaning of their lives, until they are able to say with the Apostle: "For to me to live is Christ" (Phil 1:21). But those who are called to the consecrated life have a special experience of the light which shines forth from the Incarnate Word. For the profession of the evangelical counsels makes them a kind of sign and prophetic statement for the community of the brethren and for the world; consequently they can echo in a particular way the ecstatic words spoken by Peter: "Lord, it is well that we are here" (Mt 17:4). (VC 15). Later on in the same paragraph he indicates how Peter’s words: "Lord it is well that we should be here!" (Mt 17, 4) in fact " bespeak the Christocentric orientation of the whole Christian life".

Maria will therefore be an incomparable model of contemplation, because "In a unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the months that followed she began to sense his presence and to picture his features. When at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son, as she "wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger (see Luke 2, 7)." (RVM 10)

As he continues the Holy Father offers us a description of Mary as she looks at her Son. "At times it would be a questioning look, as in the episode of the finding in the Temple: "Son, why have you treated us so?" (Lk 2:48); it would always be a penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to the point of perceiving his hidden feelings and anticipating his decisions, as at Cana (cf. Jn 2:5). At other times it would be a look of sorrow, especially beneath the Cross, where her vision would still be that of a mother giving birth, for Mary not only shared the passion and death of her Son, she also received the new son given to her in the beloved disciple (cf. Jn 19:26-27). On the morning of Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with the joy of the Resurrection, and finally, on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14)." (RVM 10).

Mary is therefore she who preserves in her heart all the memories of her Son (see 2, 19 and 2, 51), not a simple memory that is restricted to registering events, but episodes that become her "meditation", thereby creating Mary’s "rosary". Hence, each time her children undertake an "anamnesis" of the mysteries of Jesus, they simply place themselves in communion with that living memory of the Mother (no. 11). We therefore believe that the Rosary represents a clearly contemplative supplication, and not to interpret it in this perspective means running the risk of placing the person in front of the possibility of articulating senseless reiterative formulas.

The Supreme pontiff continues by explaining "certain aspects of the Rosary which show that it is really a form of Christocentric contemplation" (no. 12): to remember His memory, to understand, to conform to Christ, to plea and announce what one has contemplated.

Remembering Christ with Mary: there is no question that, as the Second Vatican council states and as the Pope reminds us, the liturgy consists not only in the memory of God’s redeeming action in Christ, but also the actualisation of this mystery; therefore, to remember what we are discussing is a biblical remembering, that of a redeeming memory: "The Scripture I have read in your hearing is today fulfilled" (Lk 4, 21). It follows that the Rosary does not intend to replace the richness of the liturgical source, but rather proposes a place of prayer in the absence of which the celebration of the liturgy would not be able to add all its richness. The Pope tells us that: " If the Liturgy, as the activity of Christ and the Church, is a saving action par excellence, the Rosary too, as a "meditation" with Mary on Christ, is a salutary contemplation", and he expresses the hope that all that the Lord has created in the Liturgy, is " profoundly assimilated and shapes our existence" (RVM 13) 

To understand Christ starting from Mary: since it is not a question of understanding something, but rather of becoming capable of understanding Someone, it will obviously lead us to invoke that Interior Teacher who is the Holy Spirit, and no one better that Mary can help us to achieve that "interior knowledge of the Lord (…) so as to love Him more and so as to follow Him" (St. Ignacio of Loyola, Religious Exercises, 104). Mary without question accompanied the disciples from the very first sign at Cana to the Pentecost, and can help us receive from that same Spirit the gifts that are necessary for assimilating the Mystery.

Conforming to Christ with Mary: all the dynamics of Christian spirituality must lean towards this conforming to Christ, as we are reminded by the Pauline doctrine of the Corpus Christi, or the Gospel by Saint John with the image of the vines and the shoots. This configuration can be achieved through a friendly relationship with Jesus, but He works in relation to His bride, the Church, and the Church has no member more conformed to Christ than the Virgin Mary herself, therefore "Mary is the perfect icon of the motherhood of the Church " (RVM 15).

To ask Christ with Mary: the foundation of the effectiveness of prayer is the goodness itself of the Father who for Christ through the Spirit allows our prayer to accomplish its function of glorification and transformation of the presence of the Lord within ourselves. This asking prayer relies on Mary’s prayers. Without diminishing in any way the unique mediation of Christ, Mary cooperates in a particular manner so that the Church may focus on the person of Christ who becomes manifest in His mysteries.

Announcing Christ: an adequate presentation of the mystery of Christ through reciting the Rosary will transform this prayer into a instrument that will achieve greater success than a simple presentation of Christianity, because to show the Lord in contemplation will permit His assimilation in life and in the Christian perspective of he who receives the message to be even more solid because it derives from a communion with Christ in the contemplation of His mysteries.

John Paul II is the first Pope to state that the Rosary is a contemplative prayer. In the Church’s praying tradition one has resorted to the so called Lectio divina, which through the aforementioned lectio must be elevated to meditatio, to the oratio and finally to the real contemplatio. According to some, this last level can also be considered as a very elevated level which appears to be difficult to achieve. The Bishop of Rome reminds us that, remaining within the perspective of the Christian tradition, our understanding of the so-called mysteria vita Christi must not be considered as an inaccessible reality for Christians, but on the contrary that the simple proposal of the Holy Rosary introduces us gently but definitely to an observation through the eyes of faith, through Mary’s eyes, as the Pope himself showed us, of the Lord Jesus in his journey towards the Father.

In fact, repeatedly and no doubt intentionally, the Holy Father uses the word path, in the sense that Christian spirituality cannot be understood in any other way than a sequela Christi, but this is not possible unless he who follows does not observe, does not contemplate the face of the Teacher. The Pope’s presentation in Chapter II: "Mysteries of Christ, Mysteries of His Mother" reminds us, quoting Paul VI, that the words of the Ave Marie form the warp in which the contemplation of the mysteries develops, because " the Jesus that each Ave Maria remembers, is the same that the sequence of mysteries presents us, each time, the Son of God and of the Virgin" (see Marialis cultus, 46).

In this perspective the Pope proposes, also with the objective of emphasising the Rosary’s Christological characteristics, that the mysteries that refer to Jesus’ public life should be incorporated with those he calls the "Mysteries of Light", so as to affirm with greater certainty that the Rosary is really a "compendium of the Gospel"; hence one can say that this prayer aims to encourage us to live the Christian spirituality with renewed interest " as a true doorway to the depths of the Heart of Christ, ocean of joy and of light, of suffering and of glory " (RVM 19). Later on he will examine each single phase.

The Mysteries of Joy: If supplication is really a dialogue between God and man, he must perceive the effects of this communication; the Christian tradition has verified that this vital communication of the Father and His Word produces an immediate effect on man, a joyous effect, without future perspectives for a link with sin. The reality of the "Rejoice, Mary" is no different, "the child as exalted with joy in my womb", "I announce a great joy, in the city of Bethlehem…", "my eyes have seen", "they have found him". But the Christian mystery in its integrity must necessarily be characterised not only by the joyful reality of the Incarnation, but also by the contrasting event of Easter, by the pain and the glory, as takes place in the Trinitarian pneumatological perspective. This is why Joseph does not know how to behave when faced with his pregnant bride, this is why the Child was born in extreme poverty, threatened with death and obliged to experience exile and the exodus, but at the same time was acknowledged and glorified by the angels and adored by the Magi. As the Holy Father reminds us, this is indicated as a sign of contradiction and caused His parents to suffer confusion. On the other hand, the central mystery of the Incarnation, the reason for the profound joy, does not occur without the will of the Most Holy Trinity: "He will be called the Son of the Almighty"; "the Holy Spirit will descend on thee". In this context, Mary helps us to "discover the secret of Christian joy, reminding us that Christianity is, first and foremost, euangelion, "good news", which has as its heart and its whole content the person of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the one Saviour of the world." (RVM 20).

The Mysteries of light: these are presented in the perspective of He who calls Himself the "Light of the World" (John 8, 12), and in them also one discovers the reality of the Incarnation that receives all that has already been consolidated in the purifying baths or in the celebrations for the wedding in Cana, and continuing the parable genre, since He Himself is God’s Great Parable integrated in the extraordinary Theophanous event and within the framework of the celebrations for the Judaic Easter. Similarly however, the paschal dimension of death related to life is present here. From the point of view of the drafting of the scriptures, the unity between baptism and temptation emphasises the exaltation and humiliation of he who is submitted to the test, precisely because He is the "Favourite Son", even though "his time had not yet come", that of His definitive self-revelation. He is the one who proclaims the good news of the Kingdom, but who generates a refusal from the institutions that will lead Him to the cross. This paradox is described by Jesus very precisely in the Beatitudes, which describe as happy those who are considered unhappy by the world. It appears to be clear that the theophany of the Tabor and the dialoguing witnesses summarising the Laws and the Prophets announced what would take place in Jerusalem, Easter, together with Jesus’ severe prohibition to discuss this with anyone until He had risen from the dead; as the Holy Father says, the Eucharist represents the sacramental expression of the paschal mystery.

The Trinitarian and pneumatological reference can also be found in every mystery that has been "contemplated". The baptismal Trinitarian theophany, the strength of the Spirit that drags into the desert and the glory that the Son gives to the Father, the only One that must be adored. The event at Cana shows the self-revelation of He who is the new wine, but the good wine in turn must be placed in the new barrels of faith, because it is there that He made manifest His glory and His disciples confirmed their own faith and experienced that His sequela led straight to God. The Father is the Kingdom’s referent, preserving the Holy Spirit as the principal gift for those who should request it, but this presupposes a change in the way reality is observed, not looking at mankind’s merits but starting from the gratuitousness of God’s love. The Transfiguration seen as theophany and as a gazing at the Easter and the Pentecost so as to understand the meaning of resurrecting the dead, this was the subject that the disciples discussed among themselves while they walked down the mountain. The strength and the presence of the Spirit of the Sacrament that one senses in the Eucharist, the glorification and the acceptation of the Father’s will, that want the unconditional gift of Jesus’ life so that the world may have life.

The Pope tells us that in these mysteries, Mary, with the exception of the episode in Cana, is not conspicuous, but then " it becomes the great maternal counsel which Mary addresses to the Church of every age: "Do whatever he tells you (Jn 2:5)." (RVM 21).

The Mysteries of pain: it only within the framework of love and obedience to the Father that one can perceive the ineffable profoundness of Christ’s Cross, which according to Paul is a scandal and represents the foolishness of those who have no faith, but is strength and knowledge for those to whom God has revealed His real perspective of love. The completeness of the paschal mystery encourages us to observe with attention the various stages of Jesus’ Calvary and the reality of His Resurrection. The Word made Flesh, in His highest moment, is pronounced within the context of the silence of the condemned, and His words are simply those He Himself had pronounced during His Last Banquet, in the Cenacle: there is no greater love than to give ones life for those one loves. The pneumatological perspective in turn is realised in the Lord’s passion, in the measure in which He, who possesses the Spirit without limitations, now consigns Him to the world and to His disciples: "Then He bowed His head and yielded up His spirit" (John 19, 30). In this context, John Paul II tells us that: " The sorrowful mysteries help the believer to relive the death of Jesus, to stand at the foot of the Cross beside Mary, to enter with her into the depths of God's love for man and to experience all its life-giving power" (RVM 22).

The mysteries of glory: the mystery of Christ in its fullness would be incomplete without the contemplation of the glorious mysteries, starting with the intervention of the Father, who accepts His Son’s unconditional giving of Himself, resurrects and glorifies Him, giving Him the name that is above all other names (see. Phil 2, 11). Regards to the Incarnation and although it is discussed in the paragraph concerning the mysteries of pain, the Pope has told us that: " This abject suffering reveals not only the love of God but also the meaning of man himself. Ecce homo: the meaning, origin and fulfilment of man is to be found in Christ, the God who humbles himself out of love "even unto death, death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). (RVM 22). Starting with the profoundness of this man, John Paul II presents with an anthropological consideration of the Rosary that is far more radical than it appears to be at a first glance, and reminds us about the Second Vatican Council, in paragraph No. 22 of the Gaudium et spes : " The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.". In fact, following the itinerary of Christ’s life, one perceives the image of the real man: "Contemplating Christ's birth, they learn of the sanctity of life; seeing the household of Nazareth, they learn the original truth of the family according to God's plan; listening to the Master in the mysteries of his public ministry, they find the light which leads them to enter the Kingdom of God; and following him on the way to Calvary, they learn the meaning of salvific suffering. Finally, contemplating Christ and his Blessed Mother in glory, they see the goal towards which each of us is called, if we allow ourselves to be healed and transformed by the Holy Spirit. It could be said that each mystery of the Rosary, carefully meditated, sheds light on the mystery of man." (RVM 25) Starting from this proposal of mine, I dare briefly comment the Holy Father in saying that every well contemplated mystery of the Rosary provides us with the Christian key for discernment in the Spirit of the Risen Lord so as to always proceed with evangelical principles. 

I have wished to transfer here the anthropological reference proposed by His Holiness in paragraph No. 25 and read it in the perspective provided by paragraph No. 23, since it is in the light of the Risen Lord that we can understand the dynamics to which the Incarnate Word leads mankind.

The entire pneumatological dynamism appears active, since it is through the strength and the power of the Spirit that the resurrection takes place; the body that through the "shadow of the Spirit" was generated in Mary, now, through that same strength and that same power is transformed into a pneumatic body, as Paul tells us in 1 Cor 15, 44, and in turn is donated to the Church, who contemplates It in the final mysteries that concern the glorification of Mary, as the Pope teaches: " enjoying beforehand, by a unique privilege, the destiny reserved for all the just at the resurrection of the dead (…) the anticipation and the supreme realization of the eschatological state of the Church." (n. 23)

All this unfolding of the mysteries of Christ’s life in the Rosary must have no other objective than that of participating in the Mystery of Christ. Quoting the Letter to the Ephesians, the Holy Father reminds us what the ideal should be for all those who are baptised: " May Christ find a dwelling place through faith in your hearts; may your lives be rooted in love, founded on love; may you be able to [...] measure, in all its breadth and length, and height and depth, the love of Christ. May you be filled with the completion God has to give " (3, 17-19). In this manner, " The Rosary is at the service of this ideal; it offers the "secret" which leads easily to a profound and inward knowledge of Christ. We might call it Mary's way. It is the way of the example of the Virgin of Nazareth, a woman of faith, of silence, of attentive listening. It is also the way of a Marian devotion inspired by knowledge of the inseparable bond between Christ and his Blessed Mother: the mysteries of Christ are also in some sense the mysteries of his Mother, even when they do not involve her directly, for she lives from him and through him." (No. 24).

In Chapter III: "For me, to live is Christ", there is a complete series of practical and concrete suggestions for enriching the reciting of the Rosary and therefore receiving all the richness that such a pilgrimage, through the life of Christ, offers the sequela of the Master.