What takes place during the paradoxal prayer of the Rosary?

Sometimes we hear people say, in a somewhat condescending tone: "The Rosary is the prayer of the poor." We should say instead, "It is the perfect prayer for us, because we are poor." When are we poor?

We are poor when we go through long periods of helplessness that leave us weak, without desires, and riddled with doubts. We are poor during days of happiness, because our hearts are then free and available to God and to others, as fresh clay in the creative hands of the Holy Spirit. We experience the poverty of Easter when Jesus comes to fill our daily life with His glory, and that we know, with a deep sense of peace, that we are loved, looked after, and can hear God calling us and know that he understands us.

The Rosary is a chaplet of single moments where Mary, the Mother of Jesus, offers her presence and her intercession, as in the beginning of the Christian faith, when the whole Church was gathered in the Upper room and Mary "was there," encouraging their prayer with her own prayer.

The Rosary is the spontaneous prayer of our painful, joyful, and glorious hours that constitute our own mysteries, or rather the trace in us of the mustèrion or mystery, which is God's plan revealed in Jesus Christ.

What happens in this paradoxical prayer of the Rosary, where the words help focus our sight, and give rhythm to our memory, like an ostinato* upon which our hearts can improvise? It is simply a filial imitation, which imprints in us the icon that we contemplate. If Mary excels at meeting us in our individual mysteries, it is because, keeping all things in her heart, she never ceases to scrutinize the mysteries, the saving moments during Jesus' life. The Rosary allows us to dwell in her gaze, to commune with her, and let her own prayer resonate in our hearts.

There are many ways to walk through a garden. One might think that the most enriching way is to look at the flowers. But there is actually a more fulfilling, more transformative, more impoverishing attitude—to let oneself be looked at by the flowers. The Rosary is a little bit like that—it is a way of placing oneself, with a poor heart, in the radiance of the life of Jesus. A way of letting oneself be looked at by Jesus, as Mary would have done, throughout an ordinary day.

* A musical phrase repeated over and over during a composition.

Brother Jean Lévêque, French Carmelite (Province of Paris)