The Rosa Mystical prayer to Mary is a powerful prayer. Pray it. Ask for what you will. See for yourself that this prayer pleases God. (See also the Prayer of Praise to St. Joseph)

Rosa Mystica Prayer
Blessed Virgin Mary,
Rosa Mystica, [mystical Rose]
Most Pure Rose of the Most Sacred Mysteries,
obtain the Mercy of God for us
through the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and grant us repentance, conversion, and healing
through your Motherly Immaculate Heart.
Amen.

Discussion of the Prayer

Mary is the most blessed of all women, and is the most holy mere human person. In all of Creation, the only created thing greater than Mary is the human nature of Christ. As a person, Christ is both human and Divine, so she is the greatest mere human person. But His nature is greater than her nature.

Mary is called the rosa mystica,which is just Latin for mystical rose. You can substitute “mystical Rose” for “rosa mystica” in the prayer, if you prefer.

The rose is considered the most beautiful of flowers, and Mary is the most beautiful, in the spiritual sense, woman. She shines with the beauty of Christ, as she is His greatest and most perfect imitator.

The rose bears thorns, which symbolize the sufferings of Mary, in imitation of, and in union with, the sufferings of Christ. Mary suffered at the foot of the Cross. She suffered more than anyone on earth other than Christ. Each of their sufferings was so great because they each have such great love. The intensity of their love makes their sufferings greater, as they know that they suffer because of the sins of those whom they love.

If an enemy slaps you in the face, it hurts. But if a close friend, whom you love, slaps you, it hurts more because of the interior suffering from the betrayal of a friend. Similarly, Christ loves all humanity, and so when they sin, He suffers more due to His love. And the same for Mary.

So the thorns of the rose fittingly symbolize the sufferings of Mary, in imitation of Christ. Other flowers, which might be said to be more beautiful than a rose do not have the thorns, do not have the inner beauty of bearing suffering out of love for Christ.

Mary is a mystical rose. She is a mystery of God. Now that which is finite and which can be understood and comprehended by a finite human mind would not be considered a mystery. Mary is finite and she is entirely comprehended by Christ in his finite human mind, for he is greater than she. However, all of Creation, apart from Christ, is less than Mary. So we finite human persons and the finite angels cannot comprehend Mary. She is a mystery to us, and will continue to be so even when we are in Heaven and have the Beatific Vision of God.

Most Pure Rose of the Most Sacred Mysteries

Consider the other mysteries of God: the Divine Nature, the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation, the various events in the lives of Jesus and Mary leading to the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, the Dormition and Assumption of Mary. Do you know that Mary is an expression of these mysteries?

Creation is a reflection — finite and weak — of the goodness of God. All that is good in Creation is like God, to a limited extent. Since Mary is the greatest thing in Creation other than the human nature of Christ, she is an expression of the Divine Nature and of the Trinity. She is like a rose growing out of all the mysteries of God. In her is a reflection of God’s own Nature and of the Three Persons.

Created persons (humans, angels) are a reflection of God and of the Trinity. We are a reflection of God in that we have the ability to know truth, to act with justice and mercy, to love, to choose to be like the Nature of God in limited ways. Then, also we have free will, abstract reason, and the ability to exercise those two gifts in acts of love. This threefold gift is a reflection of the Trinity (will, the Father; reason, the Son; love, the Spirit). So, too, Mary is a reflection of God and of the Trinity.

Mary is also a rose growing out of (that is, expressing) the other mysteries of God. She is the Mother of God, she bore the Son of God in her womb. The Eucharist is her Son, and so she is the Mother of the Eucharist. She received the Eucharist in her lifetime. She is like a rose growing out of all the Sacraments, even though she did not receive every Sacrament, as she is most like Christ and the Sacraments are all of Christ. The power of the Sacraments is from the grace merited by the suffering of Christ on the Cross, and Mary suffered with Christ at the foot of the Cross. She participated in the merits of Christ that are dispensed in the Sacraments.

Mary is related to all the mysteries of God, very closely, as she is close to Christ who is of the mysteries of God. I could also relate Christ even more closely to each and all the mysteries of God. He is God, consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit. He is one of the Three Persons of the Trinity. And all the mysteries of salvation are of Christ. Then Mary is so close to Christ that she is also close to these mysteries. Therefore, she is a rose expressing the most sacred mysteries of God and of Christ.

Her purity is perfect. She is called ever-virgin, but the meaning is so much more than absence of sexual acts and the absence of both interior and exterior sexual sins. She is pure in soul and faithful to God, and so she is called perfect virgin. The Church is like a virgin bride, and Christ is the bridegroom. Mary is a reflection of the Church, and vice versa. She has the purity which is faithfulness in heart, mind, body, and soul. Her purity extends to never committing the least personal sin, never having been touched by original sin, never having committed an act which, though not sinful, was imperfect before the judgment of God. Her virginity is a purity and perfection of heart and mind, of body and soul. So she is the most pure rose of the most sacred mysteries of God.

obtain the Mercy of God for us
through the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and grant us repentance, conversion, and healing
through your Motherly Immaculate Heart.

Christ obtained mercy from God for us on the Cross, and Mary immerses herself in Christ so that she assists Him in all that He does for us. He obtains the mercy of God on the Cross, and she obtains the mercy of God at the foot of the Cross in Christ.

Mary can do nothing without Christ. For apart from Christ she would not have had an Immaculate Conception, she would not have remained free from all sin, she would have been an ordinary sinful human person. So she can only obtain mercy for us from God through Christ.

The sacred heart of Christ is a mystery of the Incarnation, of the union of the human with the Divine in one Person. The sacred heart of Christ is not all of Christ, human and divine, but a part of Christ which nevertheless teaches us about the whole of Christ, of how the human and Divine can be one Person.

The heart of a mere human person, like Mary, is of body and soul. It is the soul, which has free will and abstract reason, but the soul can only express these faculties, in this life, through the body, especially the brain. The emotions are of soul and body as well, since ordered emotions, united to goods such as compassion and love, require reasonable choices of the free will. The immaculate heart of Mary is then of soul and of body, in that the heart is a symbol of these gifts working together, of body and soul working so closely together that the acts are not of either separately but of both united.

The human person is body and soul. But in life, when body and soul are united, this union is so close that we say the soul is the form of the body, in other words, they are thoroughly united and work closely together — and this is the meaning of the term spirit. The human person is body, spirit, and soul. But the spirit is not a third thing; it is the close cooperation of body and soul in this life. At the separation of body and soul in death, spirit ceases to exist. Now the heart of the human person is a similar concept, in that it results from the close cooperation of soul and body.

In Christ, His sacred heart is not only expressive of body and soul, but also of the human and the Divine, which is why we say “sacred” heart. The heart of Christ expresses the Divine Nature and the soul and body of the human nature, working together in one Person, working as one. So the sacred heart is in one sense a part of Christ, but it speaks of the whole mystery of body and soul and Divinity united.

through the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and grant us repentance, conversion, and healing
through your Motherly Immaculate Heart.

Mary obtains mercy for us through the sacred heart of Jesus, and therefore through her immaculate heart, she gives us the graces of Christ. In this prayer, we particularly name the graces of repentance, which is followed by conversion, and then healing in body and soul. If you are not repentant and converted, how do you expect to be healed? If you are not willing to be healed in soul, how will you be healed in body? The path to healing is repentance, conversion, healing of soul and then of body.

Mary’s immaculate heart is immaculate due to her Immaculate Conception and her sinless life; it is immaculate because it is a reflection of the heart of Christ. And her heart is motherly, in that her gifts are given to her because she is the mother of Christ. It is a motherly immaculate heart, and therefore not a heart focused only on God, but also on us, her children.

The other prayer that I find powerful in that it pleases God and all of heaven is the prayer of praise to Saint Joseph here.

Ronald L. Conte Jr.