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The rosary is a powerful tool for evangelisation - with Fr Lawrence Lew

The rosary, Fr Lawrence Lew O.P. said, “is a tool for evangelisation” because at the heart of the rosary is a “proclamation that God is with us. It’s a proclamation of Emmanuel - God’s abiding presence with us”.

In a video interview, Fr Lawrence, the Dominican Promoter General of the Holy Rosary, said the rosary:

“in a nutshell is about God becoming man, redeeming us in the flesh so that man can become God. The Joyful Mysteries are about the marvel of the Incarnation, the Sorrowful Mysteries are about the wonder of our redemption in Christ, and the Glorious Mysteries are about our gift of eternal life that Jesus has won for us and gifts to us”.

The rosary is Christocentric

The rosary therefore, Fr Lawrence explains, is “all Gospel centred. It’s all about Jesus Christ”. This is because the rosary is a meditation on the Scriptures and “the Scriptures are at the core of what makes the rosary come to life. It’s the soul of the rosary”.

Fr Lawrence said “for many people, the rosary maybe has become boring, repetitious, and maybe a little bit dead. I think we need to bring it to life again by first meditating on the Word of God”.

This is easily achieved, he adds, as “the rosary is entirely Gospel centred and Christocentric, it has at its core the mystery of salvation in Christ God becoming man so that man can become God”.

Moments of grace

People will often say they are too busy for prayer, to read Scripture or to pray the rosary, but “no matter how busy people are, they always find time to scroll through their social media feeds”, Fr Lawrence said. This can be “when we’re standing at the bus stop or waiting for our food”, wherever you look people are “always scrolling through Instagram”.

But these are what Fr Lawrence calls “golden opportunities of the day. They’re graced moments. So don’t squander those grace moments by scrolling through social media and getting riled up”, he said, and instead “pick up the rosary and pray one decade a time”. Stop letting these moments in our day “become lost moments, fill them up with the rosary”.

Pray the rosary in public

Fr Lawrence said, “the rosary is best prayed with movement… it’s the best prayer to use when you’re travelling”. Praying when travelling helps us to evangelise.

That is why Fr Lawrence said “don’t be afraid to take out your rosary beads and pray on the bus, the train, the underground. It’s a great way of evangelising, it’s a great conversation starter... it’s a way to help people at least begin to think about God and the things of God”.

History of the rosary

According to legend and stories, Fr Lawrence explains, it was around 1206 that St Dominic - the founder of the Dominican Order - received the Holy Rosary from Our Lady. But, “historians always get in the way of a good story, Fr Lawrence said, as “there isn’t any written evidence that St Dominic ever received the rosary from Our Lady”.

However, what we do have in the earliest documents about the life of St Dominic, Fr Lawrence added, “is something about how he prayed. It’s called the 9 ways of prayer of St Dominic, written sometime in the 1250s”. St Dominic meditated “on the Scriptures as he walked the length and breadth of Europe and essentially that’s what the rosary is: meditation”.

Praying with beads goes back even further, with the Desert Fathers in the 4th century - who were early Christian monks who lived in deserts across the Middle East - using 150 beads to pray. By the Middle Ages, Fr Lawrence explains, Cistercian monks began to say 150 Haily Mary’s.

But it was the Dominican Order, Fr Lawrence stated, that split the Hail Mary’s into sets of ten and united them to the mysteries of salvation – which is how we pray the rosary today.

Fr Lawrence was interviewed by the Archdiocese of Southwark to promote the Agency for Evangelisation and Catechesis’ rosary for evangelisation, for which Fr Lawrence provided a reflection.

The rosary for evangelisation also has a reflection from Archbishop John Wilson, who said:

As you pick up this booklet and your rosary, I invite you to pray for your family, friends, and neighbours; for your parish and local community. Pray that the love and hope of the Lord Jesus will fill our churches, schools, homes, shops, streets, and stations; our villages, towns, and boroughs, the quiet corners and busy centres of our Archdiocese.

Copies of the rosary for evangelisation are selling fast, so order your booklet now at aec.rcaos.org.uk/prayer.

You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.