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Traditional Catholic Faith => The Sacred: Catholic Liturgy, Chant, Prayers => Topic started by: Hobbledehoy on August 11, 2011, 08:20:25 AM

Title: Praying the Rosary in Honor of a Saint
Post by: Hobbledehoy on August 11, 2011, 08:20:25 AM
Some time ago the following query was submitted to me: How can one pray the Rosary in honor of a Saint, since the Rosary is constituted by the Lords Prayer, the Angelical Salutation, the Minor Doxology, the Apostolic Symbol, all which are addressed to God, save for the Ave Maria which is addressed to Our Lady?

Strictly speaking, one cannot pray the Rosary to anyone other than the Lord God and His Blessed Mother, since the two prayers that comprise the Rosary are addressed only to Them. However, one can pray a Rosary in honor of a Saint in various ways.

Regarding the Lord's Prayer:

One of the most efficacious ways to pray the Rosary in honor of a Saint is to say the Lord's Prayer in adoration and thanksgiving to the Blessed Trinity for the election [*that is, the act of will whereby God, out of his infinite and eternal love, irrevocably predestines a soul to glory and grace] of any given Saint and the concomitant graces and privileges that adorn the soul of the Saint (particularly that of the Beatific Vision).

Nothing gives more pleasure to the Saints than having their devotees realize that their predestination to glory and grace was completely gratuitous and preordained from all eternity by the Lord God who loved them with a special predilection, and, being cognizant of this, offer supreme adoration to the inscrutable wisdom and infinite charity of the Trinity for the wonders wrought in the Saints.

Such consciousness would naturally lead to the moral betterment of ourselves and a more intensified cultivation of the interior life, out of love and adoration to such an ineffable Deity and in imitation of the Saints. The Saints, in turn, will be more readily moved to assist us, seeing that we are not profaning our devotion to them as mere exterior practice of superficial piety. It is because the Protestants, naturalists, and other apostates and heretics ignore this that they so blindly spurn the beautiful dogma of the Communion of the Saints.

Regarding the Angelical Salutation:

Likewise, one may praise and honor the Blessed Virgin Mary whilst saying the Angelical Salutation for all the graces which she dispensed to the Saint. In virtue of her Divine Maternity and cooperation in the mysteries of the Redemption, the Blessed Virgin has been worthily constituted as the universal Mediatress of all graces which the Incarnate Word merited during His divine life upon earth, most especially the sacred Passion. For the same reason, she has been elevated and constituted universal and sovereign Queen over all creation, and her prayers and intercessions are as edicts and decrees of an empress.

Therefore, all the Saints and Elect owe to the Blessed Virgin the double debt of gratitude and obedience: gratitude for being the Mediatress and Co-Redemptress through whom the infinite merits and graces of the Incarnate Word were given to them, and obedience as Queen of Heaven enthroned at the right hand of our Divine Savior. Here is to be found the reason why the Blessed Virgin's sublime Magnificat is always said at Vespers in the Divine Office, just as Our Lady herself repeats this wonderful Canticle in Heaven whenever redeemed souls are finally admitted to the Beatific Vision and will forever repeat it when the number of the Elect will be filled.

Regarding the Meditation upon the Rosary Mysteries:

When one meditates on the Mysteries of the Rosary, one would do well to think that Our Blessed Lord is working the redemption of the Saint in particular, with a love so incomprehensible that Our Lord would become flesh in the womb of the sacred Virgin, live a life of suffering and deprivation, endure the almost infinite wounds, bruises, pains and humiliations of the Passion, and gloriously arise from the dead and ascend unto the right hand of the Father to send the Paraclete and to assume His Blessed Mother in soul and body, and crown her as sovereign and universal Queen, do all these things even if the Saint's soul alone incurred the curse of sin.

All the more amazing is this when one considers that a single act of will on the part of the Incarnate Word would have sufficed to redeem innumerable worlds. Yet, this would not have sufficed for the infinite and inscrutable love of the Sacred Heart. Nor would have saying the sublime Fiat at the Annunciation be enough for the love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She went so far as to offer her Divine Son on Mount Calvary and participate in His poverty, suffering, Passion and death. We will never know in this world how much our redemption cost Our Blessed Mother, because the cost was the infinite treasure of He Whom she loved as Son and adored as God.

Regarding the Minor Doxology and the Apostolic Symbol:

The Minor Doxology gives us an opportunity to adore the Three Divine Persons distinctly for a Saint's election and all concomitant graces and privileges (particularly the Beatific Vision they now eternally enjoy). We ought to offer unto the Blessed Trinity the infinite merits of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother as an act of thanksgiving united to all the Masses being said throughout the round orb of the earth as an act of gratitude for the blessings that were vouchsafed to any given Saint whom we intend to honor.

The Symbol of the Apostles may be said in the spirit of renewing our Faith in the very same sacred mysteries and dogmas which the Saint upheld and defended, which is a particularly laudable practice when honoring a Martyr or a Doctor of the Church or when one honors a Baptismal or Confirmation Patron. It would be salutary to renew one's baptismal vows when saying the Creed and resolving to live and die in communion with Holy Mother Church.

A Helpful Hint:

To conclude, it would be very praiseworthy to offer the indulgences one gains by saying a Rosary in honor of a Saint for the relief of those souls in Purgatory who were most devout to the Saint, or to those the Saint wishes to assist the most. This would be a supernatural act of charity that would be most pleasing to Our Lord, His Blessed Mother and the Saint, and would therefore make the Rosary more efficacious and meritorious.

I hope you find this post helpful  :reading:
Title: Praying the Rosary in Honor of a Saint
Post by: Sigismund on August 12, 2011, 08:41:57 PM
Couldn't one perform any prayer or good action in honor of a saint?
Title: Praying the Rosary in Honor of a Saint
Post by: Hobbledehoy on August 12, 2011, 09:57:55 PM
Quote from: Sigismund
Couldn't one perform any prayer or good action in honor of a saint?


Yes. The query in question (which I paraphrased, so perhaps it may not be as clear) particularly inquired as to how to meditatively recite the Rosary in honor of any particular Saint who may have been born centuries and many many kilometers away from the time and place of the Rosary Mysteries. The inquirer had pointed out that the Holy Rosary pertains to latria and hyperdulia, being an act of devotion in honor of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary respectively. In light of this fact, how is one to recite the Rosary as a simultaneous act of latria, hyperdulia and dulia (that is, the veneration of Angels and Saints) whilst meditating on the prayers and Mysteries of the Holy Rosary? That is what I attempted to answer.

To illustrate the question further, here are some notes that were taken sometime ago from my study of Rev. Father Callewaert's De Sacra Liturgia universim, (Bruges: Beyaert, 1953; Reprint: Romanitas Press, 2010) --- they may be sketchy and obscure, but they're just notes that were taken in haste:

Quote from: Notes upon Rev. Father Callewaert regarding the terminus of liturgical cult
---> The teleology of prayer based upon the ontological relations that exist between mankind and God:

1) God is the First Cause and Supreme Lord of all creatures, and especially of man himself: we ought to acknowledge this supreme dominion and our essential dependence upon God and adore God in the strict sense of the word

2) God is the Creator and Governor of all things: all that we are and all good wherein we joy has He given unto us: we ought to make return for all things received from Him, that is, make thanksgiving

3) God is our Final End: the means to attain thereto surpass the exigencies and powers of any created or creatable nature whatsoever, and ought therefore to be earnestly entreated and impetrated from Him, “without whom mortal infirmity can do nothing”

4) It behooves us to placate the infinite majesty of God outraged by sin and render propitiation and beg forgiveness from Him, “who doth greatly manifest his omnipotence in pardoning and pitying.”

---> Prayer as the honor paid unto God by man in the totality of human nature; and from the substantial union and mutual influx of the soul and of the body internal cult spontaneously produces its external signs and, in turn, by means of corporeal acts and things “the mind of man is spurred unto spiritual acts by which it is united with God; and therefore religion has interior acts as principles and in themselves pertaining unto religion, and exterior acts as secondary and ordained unto interior acts” (S. Thomas). Thus therefore regarding the external rendering of cult, exterior acts separated from internal affection of reverence and submission are not to be understood, without which external acts will not constitute cult.

---> The blessed Mother of God above all other Saints is celebrated in many proper feasts, votive Masses, Office in Saturday, Final Antiphon in the recitation of the Canonical Hours; she is celebrated together with her Son in many feasts of the Lord; she is always placed before the Angels and the other Saints. But all her privileges of grace upon the earth and of glory in the heavens are celebrated in order as to her divine maternity, which is the formal reason of the cult of hyperdulia, by which “neither a similar has been seen before nor shall there ever be hereafter,” and the reason by which she has a singular relationship with the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, by which “she has conceived the only-begotten Son [of the Father] by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost.”

---> In the cult of the Mother of God and of the Saints, the Church intends three things:

1) With veneration to celebrate their excellence and merit, which they have by the grace of God through Christ unto whom they have been incorporated

2) To obtain their suffrages, which would avail to nothing save in as much as how, God thus ordaining, they intercede by the graces given unto them by Christ, and plead for good things as to be given in view of the merits of Christ

3) To propose their examples and virtues to be imitated, which they could not have exercised save in as much as they by the grace of God imitated Christ the universal exemplar.


Of course the interior soul that avails itself of the means of grace in order to attain to an ever-progressing augmentation of the three theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, need not have recourse to discursive reasoning or speculation to apprehend these things. As your question seems to indicate, devout souls immediately intuit the truths of the faith. It just makes sense, that is, sensus Catholicus.

It's not the brain, but the heart that matters...
Title: Praying the Rosary in Honor of a Saint
Post by: Sigismund on August 13, 2011, 08:32:36 AM
It did miss that.  Thanks.  And as always, you posts was very informative.