HYMN FOR THE HOLY ROSARY

The Grand Priory of England wishes to all our Readers a very happy and blessed Feast of the Most Holy Rosary. In the Extraordinary Form today, though being Sunday, is celebrated as the Feast. In the Novus Ordo, the Mass is of the Sunday, but the Divine Office may be that of the Feast, logic in such matters being set to one side.

The Holy Rosary is the foremost weapon of the Order's armoury in her battle of Tuitio Fidei through her long history. Not of course since the very beginning, as the Rosary in its currently know form was developed only in the 15th century, when we were already over 300 years old, but we have held it faithfully in our calloused hands during the long years of the naval battles in the Mediterranean, and there is good ground to assume that the more primitive version of this prayer, as preached by Saint Dominic following Our Lady's apparition to him in 1214, was early adopted by our crusader knights, whose devotion to Our Blessed Lady is aboriginal.

The Feast of the Most Holy Rosary was instituted by Pope S Pius V in 1571. In 1757 Father Augustino Tomasso Ricchini O.P. (1695-1779) composed this hymn, in four sections, for the Dominican Breviary. It was added to the Roman Breviary for the universal Church in 1888 by Pope Leo XIII, the 'Pope of the Holy Rosary'.

The hymn is based upon the Fifteen Mysteries, and it is to this end that we offer it to our gentle Readers, as an aid to meditation and prayer. The first three parts, for I Vespers, Matins and Lauds of the Feast, adopt each of the 15 mysteries for each successive verse. The last five verses, for II Vespers, is a sort of recapitulation and summary, and this may fruitfully be used as a thanksgiving at the end of the recitation.  Each section of the hymn recited liturgically concludes with the doxology "All honor, laud, and glory be." given here at the end, though this may be omitted in private recitation and simply replaced by the final "Gloria Patri" of the last decade.

UPDATE There has been a request for the tune on the Facebook page. The correct chant tune is appended at the end of the post, giving the first two verses. This is the tune members of the Order know as the Lauds and Compline hymn from the Little Office of Our Lady. It may nevertheless be sung to the well-known Roman tune for Advent Vespers, Creator alme siderum,  known also by its English title 'Creator of the stars of night'.

The translation is by Monsignor Hugh Thomas Henry (1862-1946).

THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES  CAELESTIS aulae Nuncius. 

THE Messenger from God's high throne
His secret counsel making known
Hails Mary, child of David's race,
God's Virgin Mother, full of grace. 

The Mother Maid with joyous feet
Her friend, John's mother, goes to greet;
He, stirring in the enclosing womb,
Declares that Christ his Lord has come. 

The Word, who ere the worlds began,
From God the Father's thought forth ran,
Of Mary, Virgin undefiled,
For us is born a mortal child. 

Christ to the Temple courts they bring;
The King's own law subjects the King;
The world's Redeemer for a price
Is there redeemed, our sacrifice. 

The joyful Mother finds once more
The Son she mourned as lost before;
While doctors by His speech were shown
The mysteries they had never known. 

THE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES  IN monte olivis consito.

THE Mount of Olives witnesseth
The awful agony of God:
His soul is sorrowful to death,
His sweat of blood bedews the sod. 

And now the traitor's work is done:
The clamorous crowds around Him surge;
Bound to pillar, God the Son
Quivers beneath the blood-red scourge. 

Lo! clad in purple soiled and worn,
Meekly the Savior waiteth now
While wretches plait the cruel thorn
To crown with shame His royal brow. 

Sweating and sighing, faint with loss
Of what hath flowed from life's red fount,
He bears the exceeding heavy Cross
Up the verge of Calvary's mount. 

Nailed to the wood of ancient curse,
Between two thieves the Sinless One
Still praying for His murderers,
Breathes forth His soul, and all is done! 

THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES   IAM morte, victor, obruta.

NOW Hell is vanquished; every chain
Of sin is broken; Christ again
Returning, victor over death,
The gates of heaven openeth. 

We mortals saw Him, till He passed
Into the heavens, where at last,
Partaker of God's glory bright,
He sitteth on the Father's right. 

From thence He sheds the promised boon,
The Holy Spirit, on His own
In fiery tongues of love, o'erspread
Above each sad disciple's head. 

The Virgin, from the flesh set free,
Is borne beyond the stars; where she
Receives from heaven's joyous throngs
The welcome of angelic songs. 

Twice six the stars that crown her brow;
The gracious Mother reigneth now
Beside her Son's eternal throne
O'er all creation as her own. 

TE gestientem gaudiis.

THE gladness of thy Motherhood,
The anguish of thy suffering,
The glory now that crowns thy brow,
O Virgin Mother, we would sing. 

Hail, blessed Mother, full of joy
In thy consent, thy visit too;
Joy in the birth of Christ on earth,
Joy in Him lost and found anew. 

Hail, sorrowing in His agony
The blows, the thorns that pierced His brow;
The heavy wood, the shameful Rood
Yea! Queen and chief of Martyrs thou. 

Hail, in the triumph of thy Son,
The quickening flames of Pentecost;
Shining a Queen in light serene,
When all the world is tempest-tost. 

O come, ye nations, roses bring,
Culled from these mysteries divine,
And for the Mother of your King
With loving hands your chaplets twine. 

All honor, laud, and glory be,
O Jesu, Virgin-born to Thee;
All glory, as is ever meet,
To Father and to Paraclete. Amen.

Our Lady Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us.