October is the month of the Holy Rosary, a month in which the Church takes up each year the earnest cry of St John Paul II to “confidently take up the Rosary once again” (St John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae 43). Among the spiritual treasures associated with the Holy Rosary is that of a Plenary Indulgence which can be obtained on any day of the year (Enchiridion Indulgentiarum 17). To obtain this indulgence the Rosary must be recited in a church or chapel; or it may be obtained outside the church if the Rosary is recited in a gathering of a family, prayer group or sodality or even a more informal group of a few persons who come together for some good purpose. To obtain the plenary indulgence: at least five decades (one set of mysteries) must be recited; the prayer must be uninterrupted (the decades must be said one after the other); and to the vocal prayer must be added meditation on the mysteries involved (you must try to meditate on the mystery within yourself). To these are added the usual conditions of going to confession (this may be some days before or afterwards); receiving holy communion (preferably on the same day as saying the Rosary); and prayer for the intentions of the Pope (an Our Father and a Hail Mary are sufficient). In this manner, according to Catholic doctrine, the properly disposed person receives remission of the temporal punishment due to sin (from which we must be purified here on earth or otherwise after death in Purgatory – Catechism of the Catholic Church 1472). You can also choose to apply the indulgence for the benefit of the departed.
The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn” (Gaudium et Spes, Second Vatican Council, No. 45).
(Image: detail from Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Virgin and Child with a Rosary, c. 1650-1655, oil on canvas)