How to Pray the Rosary, Step by Step

To pray the Rosary, make the Sign of the Cross, pray the Apostles' Creed, one Our Father, three Hail Marys and a Glory Be. Then pray five decades: for each, name a mystery from the life of Christ, and pray one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be. Close with the Hail, Holy Queen.

That is the whole shape. The rest of this guide explains each part, gives the words, sets out the mysteries day by day, and shows where the prayer meets Scripture. The Rosary is a Catholic devotion; if you come from another tradition, there is a section for you near the end.

What is the Rosary?

The Rosary is a Catholic prayer that joins spoken prayers, counted on a string of beads, with silent meditation on events in the lives of Jesus and his mother. Those events are called mysteries.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that medieval piety in the West developed the Rosary as a popular substitute for the Liturgy of the Hours, the daily round of psalms prayed in monasteries (CCC 2678). John Paul II recalled that the prayer was originally based on the number 150, the number of the psalms in the Psalter. People who could not read the psalms could still pray a steady, repeated prayer and keep the Gospel before their minds. The Catechism also calls the Rosary an epitome of the whole Gospel (CCC 971).

The repetition has a purpose. The lips keep a quiet rhythm so that the mind can stay with one scene. In his letter on the Rosary, Pope John Paul II described the first half of the Hail Mary as contemplation of the mystery accomplished in the Virgin of Nazareth, with the name of Jesus as its centre.

Luke's Gospel shows Mary herself doing something like this after the shepherds leave Bethlehem.

¹⁹But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart.

What are the prayers of the Rosary?

Six prayers make up the Rosary. Four of them are short enough to learn in a day.

The Sign of the Cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Apostles' Creed. This is the ancient baptismal summary of Christian faith, beginning with the words I believe in God, the Father almighty. You will find the full text in any Catholic prayer book and on the United States bishops' website.

The Our Father. The prayer Jesus taught his disciples. We look at it line by line in the meaning of the Lord's Prayer.

The Hail Mary. In its traditional English form:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The Glory Be. In its traditional form:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The Hail, Holy Queen (in Latin, Salve Regina), prayed once at the end:

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Many people add one optional prayer after each Glory Be. It is known as the Fatima prayer, after the town in Portugal with which it is associated, and the United States bishops give it in this form:

O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy.

How do you pray the Rosary, step by step?

A set of rosary beads has a crucifix, a short strand, and a loop of five groups of ten beads, each group called a decade. You move one bead for each prayer.

1. Holding the crucifix, make the Sign of the Cross and pray the Apostles' Creed.
2. On the first bead, pray an Our Father.
3. On each of the next three beads, pray a Hail Mary.
4. Pray a Glory Be.
5. Announce the first mystery. You can read a few verses of Scripture about it or simply picture the scene. Then pray an Our Father.
6. On each of the ten beads of the decade, pray a Hail Mary while you keep the mystery in mind.
7. Pray a Glory Be, and the Fatima prayer if you wish.
8. Repeat steps 5 to 7 for the second, third, fourth and fifth mysteries.
9. After the fifth decade, pray the Hail, Holy Queen.
10. End with the Sign of the Cross.

Some people begin differently. John Paul II noted that in some places the Rosary opens with the first words of Psalm 70, O God, come to my aid, and in others with the Creed, and he regarded both as legitimate. Many also add a closing prayer for the Pope's intentions or a litany.

Five decades at an unhurried pace usually take somewhere around fifteen to twenty minutes. You do not need to finish in one sitting. One decade prayed with attention is a real prayer.

What are the mysteries of the Rosary?

A mystery here means an event in the story of salvation that you hold before your mind while you pray a decade. There are twenty, in four sets of five.

The Joyful Mysteries

The Luminous Mysteries

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The Glorious Mysteries

Eighteen of the twenty are scenes you can open a Bible and read. The last two Glorious Mysteries express what the Catholic Church believes about Mary's sharing in her Son's victory; they are received from tradition and are not narrated in the New Testament.

The Luminous Mysteries are the most recent. For centuries the Rosary passed directly from the childhood of Jesus to his Passion. On 16 October 2002, in the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Pope John Paul II proposed five Mysteries of Light drawn from the public ministry, so that the Rosary would more fully be what he called a compendium of the Gospel. He left their use to the freedom of individuals and communities.

Which mysteries are prayed on which day?

Before 2002 the Joyful Mysteries were prayed on Monday and Thursday. When John Paul II proposed the Mysteries of Light he suggested moving the second Joyful day to Saturday, which in his words has always had a special Marian flavour, and giving Thursday to the new set. The United States bishops also note the custom of praying the Joyful Mysteries on the Sundays of Advent and the Sorrowful on the Sundays of Lent.

This is a pattern for ordering the week. You are free to pray the mysteries that fit the day you are having.

Where does the Hail Mary come from in Scripture?

The first half of the Hail Mary is two verses of Luke set side by side. The opening words are the greeting of the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation.

²⁸Having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, you highly favored one! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women!”

The World English Bible translates the angel's first word as rejoice, and the Catechism notes the same possibility when it gives the opening of the prayer as Hail Mary, or Rejoice, Mary (CCC 2676). The familiar phrase full of grace follows the old Latin Bible, gratia plena, and Catholic translations such as the RSV Second Catholic Edition keep it.

The next words belong to Elizabeth, when Mary arrives at her house in the hill country.

⁴²She called out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!

The prayer adds the name of Jesus to Elizabeth's blessing, and John Paul II called that name the hinge that joins its two parts. The second half, beginning Holy Mary, Mother of God, is the Church's own petition. The Catechism explains it phrase by phrase: with Elizabeth we wonder that the mother of the Lord should come to us, and by asking Mary to pray for us we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and entrust to her both the present moment and the hour of our death (CCC 2677).

Mary's answer to the angel is the disposition the Rosary tries to teach.

³⁸Mary said, “Behold, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

How do you keep your mind on the mysteries?

Wandering attention is the ordinary experience of everyone who prays the Rosary. A few practices help.

• Read first. Before a decade, read two or three verses of the Gospel passage for that mystery. The scene will stay with you through the ten Hail Marys.
• Add a clause. An old custom adds a few words after the name of Jesus that recall the mystery, for example Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem. John Paul II commended this practice.
• Pause. Allow a short silence after you announce the mystery, before the Our Father.
• Bring a person. Offer each decade for someone: a friend who is ill, a child, someone you find difficult.
• Slow down. If you are racing, pray one decade well and stop.

If you already practise slow, prayerful reading, you will find the two fit together. See our guide to Lectio Divina for a way of reading the Gospel scenes before you pray them.

Emmaus includes a guided Rosary for those who pray it: a meditation on the Joyful Mysteries, each with its verse from the Bible in the app. It belongs to the guided prayer library in Emmaus+ and is offered when you have chosen the Catholic tradition, alongside the other prayer tools.

What if you are not Catholic?

The Rosary is a Catholic prayer, and it is fair to say plainly where Christians differ. Catholics ask Mary and the saints to pray for them, and teach that this honour differs essentially from the adoration given to God alone (CCC 971). Most Protestants do not address prayer to anyone but God, and many would not pray the second half of the Hail Mary.

There is still a good deal you can share. The first half of the Hail Mary is Scripture. Eighteen of the mysteries are Gospel scenes, and meditating on them with the Lord's Prayer is open to any Christian.

Other traditions have counted prayers of their own. Anglican prayer beads, developed in the Episcopal Church in the United States in the 1980s, use thirty-three beads, with four groups of seven called weeks. Orthodox Christians have long used a knotted prayer rope to count the Jesus Prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. We describe that prayer in how to pray the Jesus Prayer.

What these practices have in common is older than any of them: a few words, repeated without hurry, so that the heart can stay in one place before God. After the Ascension, Luke shows the first community doing exactly that, with Mary among them.

¹⁴All these with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer and supplication, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.