The Glorious Mysteries - Meditations based on the Letter on the Rosary of St. John Paul II

The Resurrection

The contemplation of Christ's face cannot stop at the image of the Crucified. Christ is the Risen One!
The Rosary has always expressed this experience of faith, inviting the believer to pass beyond the darkness of the Passion in order to fix his gaze upon the glory of Christ in the Resurrection and the Ascension.

The Ascension

Contemplating the Risen One, the Christian rediscovers the reasons for his faith and relives the joy not only of those to whom Christ revealed Himself – the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, the disciples on the way to Emmaus – but also the joy of Mary, who must have experienced no less intensely the new life of Her glorified Son.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit

At the center of this glorious journey of the Son and the Mother, the Rosary places Pentecost as the third glorious mystery, which presents the face of the Church as a family gathered together with Mary, enlivened by the powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and ready for the mission of evangelization. Contemplating this, as well as the other glorious mysteries, ought to lead believers to an ever more lively awareness of their new life in Christ, within the reality of the Church – a life for which the scene of Pentecost serves as the great ”icon.”

The Assumption of Mary

To that glory in which, since the moment of the Ascension, Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, She too will be raised at the moment of Her Assumption, anticipating that destiny to which all the just are called through the resurrection of the body.

The Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth

Finally crowned in glory – as seen in the last glorious mystery – She shines as Queen of the angels and saints, the anticipation and the apex of the eschatological reality of the Church.