Catholicism All-in-One For Dummies
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In Catholicism, the Glorious Mysteries are prayed on Wednesdays and Sundays, and they remind the faithful of His Resurrection and the glories of heaven (they may also be said during all of Easter season):

  1. The Resurrection (John 20:1–29)

  2. The Ascension (Luke 24:36–53)

  3. The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1–4)

  4. The Assumption of Mary, the Mother of God, into heaven

  5. The Coronation of Mary in heaven

These last two mysteries are inferred by Revelation (Apocalypse) 12:1; Jesus Christ was the source and center of these miraculous events in that He did them to His mother; she did not do them alone. What Christ did for His mom, He will later do for all true believers at the end of time.

Both the divinity and humanity of Jesus are presented in these mysteries. Only God could be born of a virgin, rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven, and yet only a man could be born, get lost, be found, suffer, and die. Meditating on the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries helps Catholics confirm that Jesus is both divine and human.

Contemplating the time when Jesus was crowned with thorns, scourged with whips, and nailed to the cross — meditating on Jesus’s Passion — convinces the prayerful that those sufferings are real, and only a real man could feel such pain and agony. Yet reflecting on His Transfiguration, Resurrection, and Ascension reminds believers that only God can transfigure, rise from the dead, and ascend into heaven. By praying the Rosary, the faithful reaffirm that Jesus is true God and true man, one divine person with two natures — divine and human.

Just as Pope Paul VI did, Pope John Paul II reminded the faithful that the Rosary is Christocentric — it focuses on Christ and is more than a Marian (of Mary) devotion.

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