The Rosary in My Life

As far as I can remember, I started praying the rosary at an early age, as soon as I started going to school. I must be about four or five years old then. Our house is situated within a compound, where the ancestral house of my paternal grandmother is also located. And since I am close to my grandmother who is half Chinese and half Filipina, it was from her that I learned how to pray the rosary. Every evening, before dinner time, at about six o’clock, she would call all of us her grandchildren, together with my parents, when it is time for “oracion” or prayers. As soon as we heard the church bell ring for the evening Angelus, we know it was time to pray the rosary. Our parish church is just about five minutes’ walk from our house.

My grandmother would lead us in praying the rosary in Filipino, while all of us are kneeling down in front of the altar. I could still remember her big black wooden rosary beads, made smooth and shiny over years of being used at prayers. After praying the rosary, she would recite the litany of saints which she knows from memory without the benefit of a copy of the prayers. After the prayers, we would kiss the hands of my grandmother, my grandfather, my aunt and uncle, and my father and mother.

Praying the rosary has become a hollowed daily family tradition even after my grandparents have passed away. On our family altar can be found the images of Christ the King or “Cristo Rey”, a small image of Santo Niño de Cebu, a crucifix and the image of Mary Help of Christians. All of us four brothers have our own rosaries, and while kneeling down in front of the altar, would take turns in leading the praying of the rosary together as a family. That was how we were brought up by our parents.

When I entered the Dominican seminary, little did I know that the praying of the rosary is a devotion made popular by St. Dominic, the founder of the Order or Preachers. In the seminary, the praying of the rosary always preceded either the Morning Prayer or the Evening Prayer. When I entered the Dominican Novitiate and wore the Dominican habit, the rosary is part of it, with a full fifteen decades of the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries of the rosary, hanging on the left side of our belt. Every Saturday evening, on which the memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated, we have a procession to the altar of Our Lady of the Rosary – La Naval de Manila inside Santo Domingo Church, while singing Salve Regina.

From the start of our seminary days as Aspirants, up to the time I became a priest, it is a Dominican tradition to hold the nine days novena prayers and mass before the Feast of the Holy Rosary. The grand procession and feast day is celebrated every second Sunday of October at Santo Domingo Church, which is the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary – La Naval de Manila. Many Dominican schools like University of Santo Tomas and Colegio de San Juan de Letran and other schools of the many congregations of Dominican sisters join the grand procession, which takes place around the vicinity of Santo Domingo Church. More than twenty images of Dominican saints are included in the procession, which includes among others, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Lorenzo Ruiz, St. Martin de Porres, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Vincent Ferrer.