Why we should pray the Luminous Mysteries.

n Octo­ber 16, 2002, Pope St. John Paul II added a new group of Mysteries—the “Lumi­nous Mysteries”—to the Rosary. Hith­er­to there had been three groups: the Joy­ful Mys­ter­ies, the Sor­row­ful Mys­ter­ies, and the Glo­ri­ous Mys­ter­ies. These three togeth­er totaled 150 Hail Marys: orig­i­nal­ly meant to cor­re­spond to the 150 Psalms.

An objec­tion, among tra­di­tion­al-mind­ed folks, to a new set of mys­ter­ies was that it would under­mine this con­nec­tion. John Ven­nari at Seat­tle Catholic imag­ines the objec­tions the pope’s pre­de­ces­sors might have had. (As though he him­self speaks for the dead.) He explains:

Thus, if one could go back in time and ask any of the pre-Vat­i­can II Popes why they nev­er added “new mys­ter­ies” to the Rosary, the answer is easy to pre­sume. “Because,” the pre-con­cil­iar Pope would say, “if I add 5 new mys­ter­ies, I will have to add 5 new decades. If I add five new decades, then the Rosary can no longer be called ‘Our Lady’s Psalter’. Now Catholic tra­di­tion, my holy pre­de­ces­sors and Our Blessed Moth­er referred to the Rosary as Her ‘Psalter’, because the 150 Hail Mary’s of the 15-decade Rosary cor­re­spond to the 150 Psalms of David. It would be auda­cious of me to add 5 decades. This would be the dec­i­ma­tion of the entire con­cept of Mary’s ‘Psalter’, a term hal­lowed by cen­turies of usage, a term that explains the ori­gin and essence of the Rosary, a term used by the Queen of Heav­en Her­self. Fur­ther, if I make this rad­i­cal change to the Rosary, then what is to pre­vent more rad­i­cal changes in the future?

So an entire­ly option­al addition—not to doc­trine or dog­ma, but to tradition—constitutes a change; and a change so rad­i­cal it might presage even more rad­i­cal changes! The hor­ror! the hor­ror!

And yet Mr. Ven­nari does not explain why “Mary’s Psalter” must always have just as many “psalms” as David’s. Nor, even with 150 Aves over three mys­ter­ies, does Mary’s Psalter con­tain 150 dif­fer­ent Aves. It has only a sin­gle Ave repeat­ed 150 times.

Orig­i­nal­ly, as Fisheaters explains, the poor who could not afford a copy of the Bible in order to pray the Psalms would sim­ply sub­sti­tute 150 Aves. And so the Rosary also became known as “the poor man’s Psalter.”

But this is not a dif­fi­cul­ty in much of the world today—lack of access to the Scrip­tures (admit­ted­ly it is in some places)—and thus there is less need to think of the Rosary as mere­ly a sub­sti­tute for the inabil­i­ty to pray the Psalms. (As though those who can pray the Psalms do not need the Rosary.)

Nor does any­thing pre­vent a per­son from con­tin­u­ing to pray the Rosary as it had always been prayed. In Rosar­i­um Vir­gi­nis Mari­ae, where John Paul II pro­posed the addi­tion­al Lumi­nous Mys­ter­ies, he was at pains to point out that their inclu­sion was option­al. No one is required to pray them, just as no one is required to pray the Rosary at all. It is a devo­tion, not a dog­ma.

At the back of objec­tions such as these is an attach­ment to tra­di­tion in excess of its sta­tus as doc­trine. There is no doc­trine of the three mys­ter­ies of the Rosary.

Eight years after the Lumi­nous Mys­ter­ies were added, Christo­pher Fer­rara at The Rem­nant argued that they should be scrapped, and among his objec­tions to them was the curi­ous one that the New York Times approved of them, so they must be bad! Case closed!

“For most Catholics,” Fer­rara wrote, “the lumi­nous mys­ter­ies are neb­u­lous mys­ter­ies.”

I would hope he does not real­ly mean this, since three of them are direct­ly relat­ed to Sacra­ments of the Church—baptism, mar­riage, and the Eucharist. Am I to believe the sacra­ments are “neb­u­lous”? The bap­tism of Christ is hazy? No one knows what the wed­ding feast at Cana was all about? The insti­tu­tion of the Eucharist makes Catholics draw a com­plete blank?

Indeed it is the very fact that the Lumi­nous Mys­ter­ies invite us to med­i­tate on these sacraments—which of the oth­er mys­ter­ies involve a sacrament?—that makes them worth pray­ing. And indeed, what could be more Mar­i­an than to med­i­tate upon the Wed­ding Feast of Cana, where Christ, prompt­ed by his moth­er, per­formed his first pub­lic mir­a­cle, and where Mary instruct­ed us to “do what­ev­er He tells you”? Every­thing we learn from Our Lady comes back to this: Do what­ev­er he tells you. That is worth med­i­tat­ing upon in the Rosary.

In addition—and John Paul II point­ed this out in his apos­tolic letter—none of the oth­er Mys­ter­ies of the Rosary involve Christ’s min­istry itself. The Joy­ful Mys­ter­ies cov­er Christ’s con­cep­tion to his twelfth year; the Sor­row­ful Mys­ter­ies cov­er Christ’s Pas­sion; the Glo­ri­ous Mys­ter­ies cov­er events sub­se­quent to Christ’s death. Only in the Lumi­nous Mys­ter­ies are we invit­ed to med­i­tate upon Christ’s earth­ly min­istry.

But if—as again John Paul II point­ed out—the Rosary is the Gospel, it seems to be a strange over­sight that Christ’s earth­ly min­istry should be left out. Is that not the Gospel too?

It may seem strange to sug­gest that the Rosary was lack­ing for so many years, and that the Lumi­nous Mys­ter­ies alone com­pletes it. Was the Rosary not per­fect before? In fact, a sim­i­lar objec­tion could be raised to Paul’s words: “I fill up what is lack­ing in the suf­fer­ings of Christ.” What does Paul mean? What could pos­si­bly be lack­ing in the suf­fer­ings of Christ?

Yet Paul meant that Christ’s suf­fer­ings were sup­posed to be shared in by Chris­tians. And in the same way, Christ’s incar­na­tion, and Christ’s pas­sion, and Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion, while lack­ing in noth­ing, were meant to be “com­plet­ed,” as it were, by what he did here. He was bap­tized, he per­formed mir­a­cles, he sanc­ti­fied mar­riage, he was trans­fig­ured, he brought us the King­dom of God, and he gave us him­self as food. With­out these things, the rest of the sto­ry would have been for naught. Christ did no insignif­i­cant thing.

And that is why it is well to pray the Lumi­nous Mys­ter­ies.

 
Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Epic Pew, July 11, 2016.