There are some activities which are so widespread among human cultures that one might almost describe them as 'natural' to the human condition. Praying or mediating with beads may be one such activity. The very word 'bead' is cognate with the German gebet, meaning 'prayer' and the English word 'bid' which still has religious connotations in the phrase 'bidding prayers.' Thus we can see that beads and prayers are connected to one another from antiquity. Buddhists, Muslims and Catholic Christians across the world mediate with strings of beads, and Orthodox Christians use knotted ropes. The 'worry beads' that Greeks put around their wrists probably have their origin in a similar practice; and the New Age 'power beads' that are sold in the form of bracelets because of the special properties that are supposed to be inherent in the stones from which they are made evidently have an explicitly spiritual function.

In the British Museum there is a string of beads from the Aigina Treasure - Cretan work from about 1,700 to 1,500 years before Christ - in which each bead is carved or moulded in the form of a woman's breast with a hand around it. The identification label displayed next to the beads includes the observation that fertility goddesses in the ancient Near East were often shown holding one breast, and that the beads probably had a religious function. In other words, it looks as though they formed a rosary. The beads are made of carnelian, lapis lazuli and gold, which is to say that their colours are red, blue, and gold - the same colours that in the Middle Ages came to be associated with Our Lady, in whose honour the Catholic rosary is dedicated. And - as we shall see below - the motif of the nursing breast is likewise one with strong rosarian associations.

The most widely used modern Catholic rosary consists of mediation upon a circle, or chaplet, of 50 beads, divided into five groups of ten, or decades, with a separating bead between each decade and its neighbour. The mediator passes the beads through the fingers, saying the prayer 'Hail Mary' on each bead of each decade, and beginning each decade by reciting the 'Our Father' on the previous separating bead, and finishing the decade by reciting the 'Glory be' on the bead following. For each decade there is a different subject of mediation or mystery. These are divided into three groups of five, so it takes one round of the rosary to complete one set of mysteries.

The mysteries are as follows. The Joyful Mysteries: the Annunciation, the Visitation, Christ's Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Scourging at the Pillar, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, and the Crucifixion; the Glorious Mysteries: the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Coronation of the Virgin in Heaven. A 'complete' set of rosary beads includes 15 decades with their separating beads, but the shorter form is more commonly used, and is often for reciting only one set of mysteries at a time.

Pope John Paul II (in the Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Marie) promoted the use of an additional set of mysteries, the Mysteries of Light. These are concerned with Christ's earthly ministry, and are placed between the Joyful and Sorrowful mysteries. They are: the Baptism in the Jordan, the Wedding Feast at Cana, the Proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Institution of the Holy Eucharist.

Most rosaries have a pendant of additional beads with a cross or crucifix attached, and there are a various traditions as to what prayers are recited on these and why, although the Apostles' Creed is almost always included.

At this point, the puzzled enquirer may ask, 'What is the point of repeating the same prayer over and over again?' Is it to gain the merit that accrues to each recitation? Well, partly. Is it to help keep one's mind on holy subjects and to stop it from wandering? Yes: that is quite an important function. But most of all, perhaps, the repetition of a prayer over and over again is a technique for lulling the mind into a meditative state in which - to put the thing in Christian terms - it may become attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit. The more it is used, the easier it becomes to slip into a meditative state.

The habitual use of the rosary can turn it into something to which the mediator has recourse at times of panic or other distress. It makes the reassurance of God's presence close at hand: the trust that the mediator is grounded in the divine may be summoned by the movement of a hand or the silent recitation of simple words.

The repetition of the rosary, especially when recited by a group of people, may be compared to the repetition of a sea shanty. The recurrent pattern of verse and response induces a sense of being caught up in the flow of something greater, and thus liberates the mediator to throw him - or herself completely into the task. It is probably the case that the two most ancient forms of song are those used for ritual and those used for work. If the sea shanty retains an ancient manner of working then the rosary retains a correspondingly ancient manner of praying.

Repetitive incantation is common to the use of prayer beads in all the traditions that employ them. What is more unusual about the Catholic rosary is the practice, which grew up in the Middle Ages and endures to the present, of using the beads to meditate upon a variety of different topics or 'mysteries' in sequence. The grouping together of a number of related topics under a single heading has been a popular religious practice retained until recent times, for example, English folk song. It acts as a mnemonic device, that is, helping one call to mind sacred mysteries or other points for meditation or devotion.

Thus there are the well-known Seven Sorrows of Our Lady - a devotion particularly promoted by the Servite order. The so-called 'dolour rosary' consists of seven groups of seven beads to assist in meditation upon the seven sorrows. Our Lady's Joys have been variously enumerated; one English song recounts ten, and another tells of seven. A common number is five, although these are by no means always the five which are familiar in the modern rosary.

One song lists them as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Ascension. It is most interesting that the Crucifixion is included in a list of Our Lady's Joys: it always occurs, of course, in lists of her Sorrows, but its inclusion in the list of Joys reflects the fuller understanding that the mystery of the cross is a paradox. For the instrument of death is simultaneously the instrument of life and salvation, and to see the Crucifixion as one of Our Lady's Joys invites the devotee to mediate upon this central Christian mystery at a much deeper level than that of the human drama.

The rosary in its current form is a relatively modern invention, having evolved over many centuries. It is likely that Christians from early times counted their prayers by moving pebbles from one pile to another, and subsequently by pulling beads or knots along a string or by turning a prayer wheel a spoke at a time. The devout Lady Godiva, Queen of Mercia, founded the women monastery of Our Lady at Coventry (the name 'Coventry' derived from 'convent' after the monastery) and when she died in 1401, in her will she left a string of beads, on which she used to keep a tally of her prayers, to be hung upon the neck of the image of Our Lady. However, the evidence does not indicate that praying with beads was associated especially strongly with Marian devotion; rather, beads were used for prayers of several kinds.

In monasteries, monks and nuns chanted the 150 psalms, and lay brothers and sisters, who were not bound by the obligation to do this, may have said 150 Pater nosters instead. By having 150 beads to pass through their fingers, they would have been easily able to count of the number of prayers they had said. here again, it does not seem that the pattern of reciting 150 prayers on 150 beads was anything like a universal practice for several hundred years. Beads were strung together in lines as well as circles, and the number could vary quite widely. In London, the streets around Saint Paul's Cathedral bearing the names Ave Maria Lane, Creed Lane and Pater Noster Row are the streets where the beads-makers lived and worked.

The names indicate the prayers used for bead meditation in the Middle Ages were largely those that are still in use today, but they would not always have been used in the same sequence. For example, the 'Our Father' or Pater Noster has given rise to the English word 'patter' after the sound of the practice of constantly repeating the prayer.

A popular Catholic legend recounts the origin of the rosary as follows. In the twelfth century in southern France there was a group of Christians known as Cathars (or Albigenses, after the town of Albi) who did not subscribe to the teaching of the Catholic Church, but believed that the material creation was evil and taught a world denying doctrine of the necessity for retreat into a purely spiritual realm. Saint Dominic tried by his preaching to convert them to Catholicism, but failed. In the year 1214, after much fasting and prayer, and when he was on the point of losing hope, Saint Dominic received a vision of the Blessed Virgin escorted by three queens and 50 maidens. The Virgin gave him the rosary, explaining to him the prayers that were to be said and the mysteries which the devotee should meditate upon when passing the beads through the fingers. The rosary would convert the heretics to the love of Christ in human flesh. The Virgin also pressed milk from her breast which Dominic drank.

We shall return later to the origins of this legend: for the present, let us attend to the symbolism of the milk pressed from the breast.

The Virgin's milk signifies the real humanity of Christ. His humanity was given by his mother, and her milk fed his dependent human body. In medieval iconography, Mary's bare breast often has connotations of mercy and these connotations are directly related to the doctrine of the incarnation. It is because the eternal Word of God took human flesh and understands our weaknesses the Christians can trust that he will show mercy to sinful humanity: indeed, he was so much one of us that he even depended upon a mother's milk for his survival.

So Mary's breast is the reminder of Christ's humanity and vulnerability, and hence of Christ's mercy. Her breast is sometimes compared in art and literature to the wound in the side of Christ, since both show his human weakness and both point to his pity for the world. Or again, it was because Mary gave Christ his humanity (symbolized by the wound) The mysteries of the rosary are centrality concerned with the incarnation, and it is therefore fitting that the motif of Mary's milk should appear in the legend of the rosary's supernatural origin.

Saint Dominic is not the only saint of whom such a legend is recounted. Most famously, it is Saint Bernard - noted for his Marian homilies and great devotions to Our Lady - who received from the Virgin's breast drops of milk upon his lips. Roland Bermann, a contemporary French writer on esoteric subjects, suggests that the symbol of the Virgin's milk falling upon Saint Bernard's lips stands for the mercy of God (made of the Virgin's own substance) falling upon that part of his body with which he speaks, indicating that he is called to transmit (by preaching) the grace that he has received.

This interpretation would perhaps be even more appropriate to Saint Dominic, since he founded the Order of Preachers and in the legend of the rosary is being called to preach this particular form of devotion. Moreover, since the rosary is a devotion conducted not only with the fingers but also with the mouths, or at least the lips, there is the implication that the prayers of the rosary are themselves like drops of the Virgin's milk in their spiritual purity and their capacity to nourish the life of Christ within the devotee.

Yet the image of a nursing breast gains its symbolic power because it evokes a profound emotional reaction. It has often reminded men and women of their dependence upon their own mothers and upon the whole material world that nourishes us, as we transform it into our very selves and participate in it through labour and pleasure - the same world, of course, which can fail to provide us with that nourishment and pleasure. Perhaps, the pagan goddess whose breast is represented in the Aigina Treasure personified that world and its divine power. The Blessed Virgin and the mysteries of the rosary point the devotee to the Creator God who makes and sanctifies both the human race and all that sustains or destroys it.

The colours of red, blue and gold - the colours of the Cretan beads - are found on a number of ancient Mediterranean images that seem to be representations of goddesses. When applied to the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages, people attributed the colours with symbolic meanings. In thirteenth- century Spain, king Alphonsus X ('the Learned') of Castile or one of his court musicians, wrote a song retelling the story of a monk who illuminated the name of Mary in three colours. Gold, traditionally associated with royalty, was appropriate to the Virgin because it was 'rich, harmonious, noble and very precious.'; blue, traditionally symbolic of heaven and of purity, 'resembles the heavens which show her splendours'; and the third colour, vermillion, is also called 'rose', a flower which, as we shall see below, has often been associated with Mary.

But since gold may be represented - in heraldry, for example - by yellow, it is surely the case that what we have here are the primary colours: the three colours which underlie all the colours of creation, as well as white and black. The nursing breast, the primary colours and the beads themselves: all are things which are primitive and fundamental to the human condition as something both physical and social. And it is precisely in operating at that most primitive and universal level that the rosary leads the devotee into intimacy with the divine.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -