The Complete Rosary: A Guide to Praying the Mysteries

I love William Storey's THE COMPLETE ROSARY for the same reasons I love the writings John Paul II, Catherine Pickstock, Thomas Merton, and Ruth Burrows: from the inspiration of his own interior conversion, he is able to disclose the liturgical and contemplative depth of a traditional devotion that may otherwise be regarded - and often is - as an ossified relic of our unenlightened past. Storey's work on the rosary is historical without being condescending and devotional without being affected. Most of all it helps us reconnect the prayer of the rosary to the scriptural and liturgical mysteries that alone have the power to make the Rosarium Virginis Mariae a wellspring of ressourcement instead of an antiquated pious practice. His judicious use of the doctors of the church, east and west, ancient and new, to illustrate the Christological pedigree of devotion to the Theotokos evokes the ecumenical possibilities inherent in true devotion to Mary. Perhaps best of all, his efforts to show forth the beauties of this prayer reveal the interior re-awakening Professor Storey seems to have experienced that led him to offer this little volume as a gift, as his "attempt at drawing you into the mystery and power of the Rosary as it is meant to be prayed" (p. xix). In this he surely succeeds, perhaps as much because of the love with which he writes of as the beautiful scriptural and liturgical truths he proclaims.