The Scriptural Rosary

The Scriptural Rosary is prayed in the same way as the traditional Rosary, with one addition: before each Hail Mary, a short verse of Scripture is read aloud or silently, so that the mystery unfolds bead by bead through the Word of God.

1. Make the Sign of the Cross and pray the Apostles' Creed.
2. Pray the Our Father.
3. Pray three Hail Marys for Faith, Hope, and Charity.
4. Pray the Glory Be.
5. Announce the Mystery. Pray the Our Father.
6. Read the scripture verse, then pray the Hail Mary. Repeat for all ten beads.
7. Pray the Glory Be and the Fatima Prayer.
8. Repeat steps 5–7 for each of the five decades.
9. Pray the Hail, Holy Queen and the closing prayer.

The traditional fifteen mysteries. The Rosary is traditionally fifteen mysteries in three sets of five — the Joyful, the Sorrowful and the Glorious — following the Incarnation, the Passion and the Glory of Our Lord. Fifteen decades of ten Hail Marys make one hundred and fifty, answering to the 150 Psalms, which is why the Rosary is called Our Lady’s Psalter; and its three sets of fifty mirror the Psalter’s traditional division into three “fifties.” This is the form handed down in the tradition of St. Dominic and taught by St. Louis de Montfort in The Secret of the Rosary.

The Luminous Mysteries (optional; added by Pope St. John Paul II in 2002). The Mysteries of Light were proposed by Pope St. John Paul II in Rosarium Virginis Mariae (16 October 2002) as an optional set. They are not part of the traditional fifteen, nor of the Dominican and Montfortian tradition, and they are given here after the other three.

Which mysteries on which day. The traditional order of the week:

• the Joyful on Monday and Thursday;
• the Sorrowful on Tuesday and Friday;
• the Glorious on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.

Those who pray the optional 2002 set follow the schedule proposed with it: the Luminous on Thursday, with the Joyful moved to Saturday.

A note on the citations: the verses are drawn from the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Clementine Vulgate. Where a single verse is long enough to carry more than one bead, it is divided and its parts are marked a, b, and c — so Lk. 1:35a and Lk. 1:35b are two readings of one verse, not the same verse cited twice. An occasional line set below a verse in smaller upright type is an editorial comment, not Scripture.