Pray the Rosary with Cardinal Newman

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According to tradition, the Rosary devotion in its entirety was revealed to St Dominic by Our Lady herself. Sceptics have other theories, but it is certain that the cycle of 150 prayers, corresponding to the 150 Psalms, was promoted for the use of the laity by the late Middle Ages.

The pattern of three sets of five meditations, reflecting the birth, death and resurrection of Christ as seen through the eyes of His Mother, is certainly very old, although it took time for the exact choice of meditations to become fixed, as it has remained for the last five hundred years.

The essential facts of our Redemption were summarised in just those three moments, birth, death and resurrection (as they are in the writings of St Paul). The moods of joy,sorrow and glory are also the classic moods through which a life of prayer develops, as described in many spiritual writers. After the joy of first conversion comes the sorrow of the struggle with the various forms of difficulty in prayer, until the break-through into glory.

Yet all three moods can co-exist in one person, as seen so dramatically in the life of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Radiating joy to those around her,she experienced deep sorrow in her solidarity with suffering humanity, at times unconscious of the heart of glory within her.

The Oratory is a religious institute founded by St Philip Neri (1515-95), and given a second spring of life by Cardinal Newman in 1848. Each Oratory comprises a group of priests and brothers living in community, with the particular task, inherited from St Philip, of teaching laypeople to pray, and promoting what used to be called the “lay apostolate”.

How this is done must vary from century to century and place to place, so every Oratory operates slightly differently. There are now eighty Oratories in the world, of which over half were founded since the Second World War.