By Daniel Cerqueira Afonso
Rome, October 19, 2026: October is, in the tradition of the Church, the month of the Rosary. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7recalls the victory of Lepanto (1571), which Pope Saint Pius V attributed to the Rosary he had asked the whole Christian people to pray.
At the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII devoted a long series of encyclicals to the Rosary and consecrated the month of October to this prayer. And on October 13, 1917, at Fatima, the Virgin presented herself as “the Lady of the Rosary”.
Yet the question many people ask is simpler: why repeat the same prayer so many times?
Prayer that looks to Christ
In the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), Saint John Paul II answered this objection head on. The Rosary, he wrote, is a “Christological prayer”.
The Hail Marys are not the focus. They are the rhythm, the musical background against which one contemplates the face of Christ. To pray the Rosary is “to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ” (RVM 3).
For this reason the Pope proposed the Luminous Mysteries (the Baptism in the Jordan, the Wedding at Cana, the Proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration and the Institution of the Eucharist), so that the Rosary would take in the whole public life of Jesus, and not only his infancy, his Passion and his glory.
Repetition as a school of love
Saint John Paul II uses a beautiful image. The repetition of the Rosary is like the threefold question of Jesus to Peter: “Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17). Whoever loves does not tire of saying the same thing. The repeated Hail Mary is not a mechanical formula but the way love finds to remain.
In practice this changes the way one prays. The apostolic letter itself suggests:
- Announce the mystery and, if possible, read the corresponding passage of Scripture.
- Keep a brief silence before the Our Father, so that the scene can sink in.
- Pray slowly, attending to the scene and not to the counting of the beads.
- End each decade with a short prayer asking for the fruit of that mystery.
Gospel prayer
Each mystery is a page of the Gospel. Whoever prays the whole Rosary through the week goes over, almost without noticing, the heart of the New Testament: from the Annunciation to the Assumption, by way of the Jordan, Cana, Gethsemane and the empty tomb. This is why the Popes have insisted so much on it.
The Rosary is the “compendium of the Gospel”, open even to those who lack the time or the training for longer meditation.
In this month of the Rosary the invitation is simple: pray one Rosary a day, slowly, looking at Christ through the eyes of Mary.
This article was first published by Locus Mariologicus, a Catholic institute for the teaching of Mariology, Angelology and Josephology.