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Learn how to pray a 54 Day rosary novena here. This is the miraculous prayer that will change your life. This site will show you how to pray, what to pray, and when to pray.


If you are new to praying the rosary and want to jump right in with an audio "pray along with the book" (START HERE .mp3 Audio ) -- Introductory Version of Joyful Mysteries (in petition)
Other days follow below along with more detailed instructions.


Basics

Click on the links below at each of the mysteries to listen and pray along with the narrator: Each rosary takes about 18 minutes. If you have never prayed a rosary before, forgot how or just want to learn to pray this rosary click on the introductory audio file link. That link is more in depth step by step than the everyday version.

Audio of Rosary Mysteries - In Petition

Joyful Mysteries (in petition) - prayed on days 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 and 25 (.mp3)
   Introductory Version of Joyful Mysteries (in petition) (.mp3)
Sorrowful Mysteries (in petition) - prayed on days 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23 and 26 (.mp3)
Glorius Mysteries (in petition) - prayed on days 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24 and 27 (.mp3)

Audio of Rosary Mysteries - In Thanksgiving


Joyful Mysteries (in thanksgiving) - prayed on days 28, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49 and 52 (.mp3)
Sorrowful Mysteries (in thanksgiving) - prayed on days 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50 and 53 (.mp3)
Glorius Mysteries (in thanksgiving) - prayed on days 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 51 and 54 (.mp3)



History and Origins


The concept of prayer has been part of mankind since the beginning of time. Similarly, using beads or knots on a string has also been shown to exist from very early history.

So how and when did the rosary come about?

In the middle ages a belief began to spread which was very persuasive to many people in Europe. It made sense to average people but was devastating to society as a whole. Called Albigensianism or Catharism it held that the universe was a battleground between good, which was spirit, and evil, which was matter (earthly). Human beings were believed to be spirits trapped in physical bodies. The leaders of the religion, the “Perfect”, lived with great austerity, remaining chaste and avoiding all foods that came from sexual union meaning they were strict vegetarians, abstaining from all animal products. (They ignored the fact that even vegetables came from the earth.) They were also celibate abstaining from sexual intercourse and therefore no children were to be born. The “Perfect” allowed ordinary believers “the not so perfect” to be married however.
You can see how this would strain civilization. Does this sound similar to the “Green New Deal” and abortion? The focus of you life becomes you and not God.
A Dominican catholic priest took it upon himself to try to convince the people that this belief was wrong. He preached this everywhere. He was completely unsuccessful. He decided to devote himself to three days of prayer especially praying to the Blessed Mother. Then Our Lady appeared to him and instructed him: “I want you to know that, in this warfare, the battering ram has always been the angelic Psalter (Rosary), which is the foundation of the New Testament. Therefore if you wish to reach these hardened souls and win them over to God, preach my Psalter (Rosary). Our Lady next explained how the Rosary was to be prayed, thus giving us — through St. Dominic — the Rosary as we know it today. The 150 Hail Marys were to be divided by Our Fathers into groupings of 10. As each decade was said, one of the 15 principal mysteries of the life of Jesus and Mary was to be the subject of meditation. This meditation is the heart of the prayer.
Our Lady was explicit about this when she later said to Bl. Alan: “When people say 150 Angelic Salutations this prayer is very helpful to them and is a very pleasing tribute to me. But they will do better still and will please me even more if they say these salutations while meditating on the life, death and passion of Jesus Christ — for this meditation is the soul of this prayer.”What St. Dominic then observed was that as he preached and taught the rosary to the people they began to see that these beliefs were wrong and contrary to God’s divine plan.

Diagram of the Beads and Structure



The structure of the fifteen mysteries and the Our Fathers and Hail Marys of the 1300s remained essentially intact for several centuries. In 1569, a papal bull officially established the devotion to the rosary in the Catholic Church. Saint Peter Canisius, who is credited with adding to the Hail Mary the sentence "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners", was an ardent advocate of the rosary and promoted it (and its Marian devotion in general) as the best way to repair the damage done to the Church by the Reformation. From the 16th to the early 20th century, the structure of the rosary remained essentially unchanged.[4] There were 15 mysteries, one for each of the 15 decades. In the 20th century the addition of the Fatima Prayer to the end of each decade became popular. There were no other changes until 2002 when John Paul II instituted five new Luminous Mysteries Blessed Alan said that he received the Blessed Mother's "15 Promises". Before his death on September 8, 1475 he reinstituted the rosary in many countries and established many rosary confraternities. Can the rosary be said without the mysteries? Our Lady was explicit about the meditation on the mysteries when she later said to Bl. Alan: “When people say 150 Angelic Salutations this prayer is very helpful to them and is a very pleasing tribute to me. But they will do better still and will please me even more if they say these salutations while meditating on the life, death and passion of Jesus Christ — for this meditation is the soul of this prayer.” Of what does the meditation consist? How is it done? It is simply a deep consideration of each mystery, a matter of looking through the mind’s eye and with loving faith on the scene (the scene of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, etc.) and contemplating the virtues practiced

rosary

The 15 promises granted to those who pray the Rosary