... in traditional monasteries the contemplatives have always recited and/or chanted the total 150 psalms every week ...

... in a way similar to the chanting of the psalms, the complete rosary is the recitation of 150 Hail Mary, usually consisting of 50 Hail Mary  per day ...

Ad Jesum per Mariam

The word "rosary" means a "bouquet of roses"  Beads mean "bede" or prayer.

Blessed Mother of God

OLJC has brought us not "only" the New and Eternal Testament as the "accomplishment" of the Old, but also that the  mother of His (perfect) human nature could be Chosen ... Tradition followed in honoring her as the Co-Redemptrix in assisting the Son of God.

In 431 A.D. the general Synod of Ephesus gathered (approx) 200 bishops. It followed the heretical attempt by Nestorius to equate "one person to one nature" ... and ruled that the mother of OLJC was also the mother of God ... thus "one Person in Jesus-Christ, and that the same Person has both the human and the Divine (thus two) natures"...  it is acutely and sagaciously observed by Aquinas, that: "personality pertains to the dignity and perfection of any thing in so far as it pertains to the dignity and perfection of any thing that should exist by itself, which is what we understand by the word of personality; but there is more dignity in any thing if it exists in another of greater dignity than itself, than if it existed by itself, and therefore there is more dignity in the human nature of Christ than in ours, on this very ground, that in us it has its own personality, as existing by itself, but in Christ it exists in the person of the Word ... (Summ. Theol., III. ii. 2.)

Pius XI followed in 1931 A.D. with the Encyclical Lux Veritatis (the light of truth) ... the witness of the ages, if only it be rightly discerned and diligently examined, teaches us that the divine promise of Jesus Christ: "I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (Matthew xxviii, 20), has never failed the Church His Bride, and therefore that it will never fail her in time to come... that wondrous union which is justly and deservedly called hypostatic. We, therefore, in full accordance with all the ages of Christian history ... together with the Prince of the Apostles, who knew this mystery by divine revelation, we make profession with one voice: "Thou are Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matt. xvi. 16.)

And, indeed, if the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary is God, assuredly she who bore him is rightly and deservedly to be called the Mother of God. If there is only one person in Christ, and that one of His nature is Divine, without any doubt Mary ought to be called, by all, not the mother of Christ the man only, but Theotocos, or God-bearer.

She is the Mother of God; therefore she is most pure and most holy, so that under God no greater purity can be imagined. She is the Mother of God; therefore whatever privilege (in the order of sanctifying grace) has been granted to any one of the Saints, she obtains it more than all" (In Matt. i. 6) ... therefore she is far more excellent than all the Angels, even the Seraphim and Cherubim.

Why, therefore, do the Reformers (Novatores) and not a few non-Catholics bitterly condemn our piety towards the Virgin Mother of God, as though we were withdrawing the worship due to God alone? Do they not know, or do they not attentively consider that nothing can be more pleasing to Jesus Christ, who certainly has an ardent love for his own Mother, than that we should venerate her as she deserves, that we should return her love, and that imitating her most holy example we should seek to gain her powerful patronage?

Let all, therefore, with more ardent zeal in the present necessities with which we are afflicted, go to her and beseech her with instant supplication "that, through her prayers to her Son, the erring nations may return to the Christian institutions and precepts, which are the firm support of public safety, and from which arises an abundance of much desired peace and of true happiness. Let them implore of her the more earnestly, what ought to be desired above all things by all the good, namely that the Church our mother may gain and tranquilly enjoy her liberty; which she always uses for the best advantage of men, and from which individuals and states have never suffered any losses, but have at all times experienced very many and very great benefits." (From the aforesaid Encyclical Letter.)

Leo XIII of happy memory, says: "Fathers of families indeed have in Joseph a glorious pattern of vigilance and paternal prudence; mothers have in the most holy Virgin Mother of God a remarkable example of love and modesty and submission of mind, and of perfect faith; but the children of a family have in Jesus, who was subject to them, a divine model of obedience, which they may admire, and worship and imitate." (Apostolic Letter, Neminem fugit, January 14, 1882.)

We will not close this Encyclical Letter, Venerable Brethren, without mentioning a matter which will surely be pleasing to you all. Desiring that there may be a liturgical monument of this commemoration, which may help to nourish the piety of clergy and people towards the great Mother of God, We have commanded Our supreme council presiding over Sacred Rites to publish an Office and Mass of the Divine Maternity, which is to be celebrated by the universal Church. And, meanwhile, as an earnest of heavenly gifts, and a pledge of Our paternal affection, We impart the Apostolic Benediction, very lovingly in the Lord, to you, Venerable Brethren, one and all, and to your clergy and people.

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, 25 December the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the year 1931, the tenth of Our Pontificate.

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OLJC

The one constant teaching of the Church is that of the SACRIFICE. For our sake a child is born, to our race a son is given, whose shoulder will bear the scepter of princely power, and His name shall be Angel of Great Counsel. 

The mother gave birth to the King whose name is eternal, combining the joys of motherhood with the honor of virginity. None like her has ever been seen, nor shall there be another. Humility, poverty, obedience are the first bruises leading us towards the sorrowful wounds of the passion of OLJC. In the famous Holy Week that changed the world 2,000 years ago, the agony, scourging, crowning of thorns, carrying of the cross and the crucifixion will forever remind us of the only begotten of God the Father, Whom the Holy Prophets marvelously announced to the world as being born of a Virgin.

He humbled Himself becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. 

I have a new commandment to give you, that you are to love one another: that your love for one another is to be like the love I have borne you, says the Lord. 

... hardly in the course of life ... than we are at death's door, where do we seek help if not in Thee, O Lord? You that our sins have justly irritated ... it is for us to glory in the cross of OLJC in Whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, by Whom we have been saved and set free ... cast the burden of thy cares upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee.

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we saw His glory: glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

The meditation upon the 15 mysteries of the Rosary can be simplified to 3 main focuses: the Nativity in the joyful INCARNATION, the Crucifixion in the sorrowful REDEMPTION and the RESURRECTION in the glorious scars. 

In the same way that Our Blessed Mother brings us closer to OLJC, the Revelation brings us closer to the Holy Trinity. And the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the ritual that helps us to keep at a safe distance of either of the extreme of the "Great Divide" between the Creator and the creatures, (ie: a fixture of paganism), or of the "Rampant Ways" of humanism (ie: an equally important "standard" of our "liberalism") ... and it's devious "Rights of Man".

What the Rosary and the Mass have "in common" is the teaching of SACRIFICE. First through joyful bruises, then with the sorrowful wounds and finally embracing the glorious scars. Throughout the above pilgrimage OLJC is inviting us with Mercy and Love towards the Holy Trinity.  

To become "obsessed" about "ritualism" would be an abuse of traditional observances ... yet, it is a Gross Mistake to void most of the protocols referring to the Holy Trinity from the Sacrifice of the Mass. 

The Rosary takes us from the Blessed Mother to the maturity of OLJC as a "first" comprehensive step ... before the Mass allows the full and eternal Alliance between the Creator and the creature. His propitious Sacrifice paved the way to the re-opening of our "lifelines" with a previously offended God the Father. The "guidelines" of the Mass are leading the creature towards the Holy Trinity via a ritual that "must be" successful in avoiding the tangible sensitivities of the effusion of blood as were the previous animal sacrifices. All of the gestures and of the words must "generally" be following a protocol reaching towards the ABSOLUTE PERFECTION of God. 

The Mass in the Encyclical "Mediator Dei" is: "the chief act of divine worship, the apex and the core of the Christian religion." 

The meaningful core of the Mass lies in this, that it is par excellence a drama which is ceaselessly enacted before us, a tragedy everlastingly prolonged. The name by which this drama has been known since the sixth century is a term taken from the formulary with which, aforetime, it is brought to its closure --ite missa est! 

The Catechism of the Council of Trent states that: "no part of that Roman Missal ought to be considered vain or superfluous; that not even the least of its phrases is to be thought wanting or insignificant. 

This whole conception has in view a sort of "spiritual symphony" in which all themes are taken as being expressed, developed, and unified under the guidance of ONE purpose. The teaching of the Church has been received from the Apostles (or prophetically declared in the inspired books of the Old Law) and later in the words of OLJC Himself in the Gospel. The substance of this teaching is summed up in the Credo.

It is a fundamental aberration to ignore the propitiousness, the oblational and ascensional nature of the SACRIFICE. If and when it is  EXCLUSIVELY directed towards "ourselves", towards our utilitarian goals, towards our spiritual profit ... with calculated INDIFFERENCES towards the Glory of the Father ... it becomes diluted, to say the least. Such regrettable deviations have brought the most required ACTION of man towards God into a state of relativity that is ambiguous to the honor of the Holy Trinity.

The relentless aggression of such a constant exercise is brought to it's logical conclusion of being "only" a PRE-EUCHARISTIC introduction to a spiritual food that brings a newly created anemia to the soul.